relationships and community on Affliction

I was listening to a lecture on friendship to prepare this sermon and the speaker used the movie The Bride of Frankenstein as an illustration. Now, for this to work, you have to put the movie Young...

Nothing unites people as sharing the same affliction.

All: Remember your mercy, O LORD, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the...

The Lord says, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. I have surely seen the affliction of my people. I have heard their cry, for I know their s...

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, those he redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east...

Pastor: You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; ...

Our God is a righteous Judge who presides over all the earth. He defends the weak and the fatherless. He upholds the cause of the poor and the oppressed. He rescues the weak and the needy and delivers...

I never considered myself a perfectionist before I had children. Perfectionism was someone else’s problem. It was the affliction of those pasty-faced library moles that haunted the campus stacks on Sa...

We may remark in passing that to be blind and beloved may, in this world where nothing is perfect, be among the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. The supreme happiness in life is the assura...

Lord God, we rejoice in your resurrection and in your promise to return. Help us live today as people who await the fulfillment of your kingdom. We confess we often look for comfort outside of you. Be...

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. He protects all of their bones. Not one of them is broken. Evil shall kill the wicked. Those who hate the righteo...

Defilement is what sin does to us; damnation is what sin introduces as our eternal end. Except for God’s intervention. We have needs, and God addresses our needs. Even our sin, the most destructive re...

O curse of marriage, that we can call these delicate creatures ours and not their appetites.

When we find worth by our affluence, it promises rest but brings stress, increasing demands, and a greater devotion to a god that will never love us and always forsake us.

Adversity is not simply a tool. It is God's most effective tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. The circumstances and events that we see as setbacks are oftentimes the very things that...

Arise, 0 LORD; 0 God, lift up your hand. Forget not the afflicted. We call to you in our sorrow and frustration, Lord God, eternal, everlasting God. Why do you stand so far off? Why do you hide y...

We boast of taking advantage of others, love evil more than good, speak deceit rather than tell the truth. We relish words that hurt and harm. We take refuge in wealth, security in savings and in succ...

Your torture puts hostility to death Your broken body breaks down every dividing wall Your blood makes us blood What wondrous truth What dazzling grace Bring us near again, Jesus Help us remember an...

Pastor: For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised ...

Remember Miss Haversham in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations? Her entire life was defined by the fact that she was jilted on her wedding day. People can become very attached to their pain and i...

All addictions begin in shame. They don’t begin with troubling behavior—a binge on porn, a night of overdrinking–but with a sense of lack or limitation. An addict may be loved deeply, but sense of lac...

Leader: Blessed Lord Jesus, before your cross I kneel and see the heinousness of my sin, my iniquity that caused you to be made a curse, the evil that provokes divine wrath. All: Show me the enormit...

All: Gracious God, we have become callous to those in need, holding back compassion yet unsparing with judgment. We defend our motivations, rather than using all you have given us to love and care for...

Dearest Father, we long for light, but dwell in darkness. We crave the warmth of the sun, but crawl into our caverns of sin and sadness. We are a people who prefer the misery and melancholy that we kn...

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart. May God bless you...

Pastor: Father in Heaven, I have sinned times without number. I am guilty of pride and unbelief. I’ve failed to delight my heart in your Word and have neglected you in my daily life. All: My transgr...

God intentionally allows you to go through painful experiences to equip you for ministry to others.

Curiously enough, it is a fear of how grace will change and improve them that keeps many souls away from God. They want God to take them as they are and let them stay that way. They want Him to take a...

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men: We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have comm...

In his classic fictional work on spiritual warfare, The Screwtape Letters , C. S. Lewis imagined a senior demon (Screwtape) corresponding with one of his protégés (his nephew Wormwood) as the latte...