Weekly Prayer: Prayer for Hope and the Arrival of God’s Promise
SCRIPTURE:
“I remain confident of this, I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage, wait for the Lord.”
-Psalm 27:13 to 14
WEEKLY PRAYER REFLECTION:
I spent years as a young wife waiting for the filling of my womb. Eleven years is a long time to hold on to faith. I did not wait perfectly, but God, in His kindness, rewarded my surrender with three beautiful children, beginning in our twelfth year of marriage.
When I write about waiting in faith, I do so as someone who has experienced it firsthand. Waiting is hard. It is not for the faint of heart. It will test everything you believe about God and everything you think you know about yourself. At some point, you feel foolish for asking one more time. And eventually, even dear friends, wanting the best for you, begin urging you to take matters into your own hands.
But trusting God can be a lonely road. There are stretches of the journey that no one else can walk with you. In those places, it is just you and the Lord. And it is there, in the quiet ache of the long wait, that faith is forged and intimacy with God deepens in ways you could never have imagined.
In this season of Advent, let me urge you to renew your hope and bravely ask again for the coming of God’s promise. He is a faithful Father. And though we see only dimly now, the day will come when we will see clearly and are fully known. Until that day, we choose daily to come before the Father once more and place our hope in His relentless goodness.
WEEKLY PRAYER:
Father,
You know how long the waiting season can feel. You have waited patiently since the beginning of time for humanity’s heart to fully trust You. You waited the three days while Your Son battled death, and You wait now for the appointed time when Your Son will come again for those You love.
Help us to wait patiently in hope as well. Help us to trust You when it feels hard. Help us to believe, even when all physical proof seems absent, that Your Word will be made manifest. Teach us, like Mary, to trust that it will be done to us according to Your promise. Guard our hearts from discouragement and doubt. Give us the grace to stand firm in the truth of who You are and in the certainty of what You have spoken to us.
During this season of Advent, we choose to turn our hearts again to You in hopeful expectation of Your coming, both in redemption, but also in pure goodness.
Amen.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Where do you sense God inviting you to hope again, even in a place that has felt quiet for a long time?
What promise from God are you being encouraged to bring back before Him during this Advent season?
How has waiting shaped your understanding of God, and where do you see evidence of His kindness in your story?
In what moments of loneliness or uncertainty do you feel God drawing you into deeper trust?
What simple step can you take this week to quiet your heart and sit with the Lord in expectation?
