Prayer in the Midst of Discouragement and Despair by Rev. Lonnie C. Crowe

Oh, Lord God, we know that you are our refuge and our strength.  Your desire is that we should not walk in fear.  Therefore, You have placed within us Your love, Your peace and Your joy so that, in spite of what is happening around us, we rejoice in Your Holy Spirit Who is our Comforter  (John 14:26).

If we allow terrorism to terrorize us, we allow terrorism to win.  Therefore, we stand against the spirit of terrorism, that Hittite spirit, with the sword of the word of God in our right hand. We stand in the promises of Your peace and protection.

Because Jesus is the Name above all Names, we are unafraid to name our enemy.  In naming our enemy, we come to understand our enemy.  In that understanding and in the wisdom from above, we find strategy to defeat that enemy.

You have told us, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you”   (Matthew 5:44 NKJV).The greatest good that can come to those who are now raging against us is for them to come into covenant with You through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. 

Therefore, we pray for those who deny that Jesus is the Son of God, who deny that He paid the ultimate sacrifice for sin, who deny that He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords to come to know Him, to embrace Him as Lord and to come into His peace.  The enemy of our souls has them in the bondage of fear.  We pray for them to be released into the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Lord, we, too, step out of the bondage of fear and into the security of Your love.  We remember the words that Paul wrote to the church, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: "For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35-39 NKJV).”

Amen.