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    In Our Suffering, Lord Be Near: Prayers of Hope for the Hurting
    In Our Suffering, Lord Be Near: Prayers of Hope for the Hurting
    In Our Suffering, Lord Be Near: Prayers of Hope for the Hurting
    Ebook232 pages1 hour

    In Our Suffering, Lord Be Near: Prayers of Hope for the Hurting

    By Ben Locke

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    About this ebook

    Find hope when your world is falling apart.

    Where do you turn in seasons of despair? What do you do when you don't know what to do?

    Hardship and adversity touch everyone--illness, grief, accidents, trauma, loneliness, relationship struggles, financial crises, sin, addiction, life stressors, and so much more can leave you feeling lost, hopeless, and isolated.

    You are not alone. When author Ben Locke was in his darkest valleys, he was determined to tell God exactly what he thought. He poured out his agony and anger--and was met with God's grace, love, forgiveness, and mercy. He discovered in those moments that God can handle it. All of it. And the prayers that poured out Ben's experience offer a road map for you to take your sorrows, grief, and troubles to God, knowing He will meet you in your time of suffering.

    In Our Suffering, Lord Be Near can be a light in the darkness if you ever:

    • Feel like questioning, yelling at, doubting, or even denouncing God
    • Want to separate from the church
    • Wonder if God is listening to your prayers and cares about your troubles
    • Do not know what to do with your anger
    • Fear that life will be this way forever

     

    The psalm like prayers borne out of these experiences will meet you in your own moments of suffering. But they are more than prayers. They're cries for help and explosions of anger, mourning, weeping, grieving, celebrating, rejoicing, and praising. They're liturgies to heal your soul, balm for your wounds, and tender mercies for your heartache. This book will help you know that:

    • God is with you, even if you don't feel Him or understand what is happening
    • God offers you grace and mercy, no matter what
    • God delivers you and gives you strength

     

    Let these words help you articulate your own sorrows, bring you to your knees, encourage you to confess your insufficiency, and express your most genuine emotions. In Our Suffering, Lord Be Near will help find hope in God when your world is falling apart. God can handle your suffering. So, tell Him.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateJul 16, 2024
    ISBN9780310465164
    Author

    Ben Locke

    After multiple injuries and chronic illness forced him to abandon his hopes of playing professional soccer, Ben Locke dove headfirst into writing as a means of escape, expression, and faith. He began journaling his interactions with the Lord, often hunched over the side of his bed due to illness. Now Ben is inspiring the often-silenced voices of the sick, lost, lonely, and hopeless. His unexpected discovery of the profound grace of God, combined with his intense experiences of pain and suffering, motivate him to speak with directness, write with vulnerability, and tell the story of the broken.

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      Book preview

      In Our Suffering, Lord Be Near - Ben Locke

      A Note to the Reader

      Sister, Brother, Mother, Father, Husband, Wife, Child, Friend, Warrior, My Fellow Sufferer—

      You are not alone. You are not forgotten, nor are you overlooked. You are not too broken, nor are you too far gone. You are not crazy, nor are you defeated. There is breath still in your lungs; therefore there is absolute purpose for your life.

      Thank the Lord, it is undoubtedly true.

      My invitation as you read this book is simple: come as you are. Don’t fake a single thing. Approach every word with absolute vulnerability and honesty, and don’t withhold even an ounce of your emotion. If you are bitter, bring your bitterness. If you are angry, bring your anger. If you are sad, bring your sadness. If you are empty, bring your emptiness. Bring your tears, groans, cries for help—bring it all. Come as you are with the fullness of what you are carrying.

      All I ask is that you come with the right expectation. But do not come with the expectation that this book is going to solve your problems, or that reciting a prayer will give you the miracle you’ve been waiting for. Come with the expectation that the God of the universe cares infinitely for you and is unequivocally listening to your every word and your every emotion. His presence is the reward we are after. That’s it. With this posture, the gift we receive is not an outcome, a change of circumstance, or an answer to prayer we can touch or see. The gift is Him—His promises, His grace, His plans, His will.

      Come as you are, as you really are—every wound, every sin, every emotion, every piece of your humanity. But come earnestly with the expectation that God alone will give you everything you need. Seek Him with the understanding that He is seeking you. Pray to Him knowing He is listening and acting, regardless of what you may see or not see, feel or not feel.

      My promise to you is that your pursuit will not be in vain. If you give Him everything you have—good and bad, earnestly and with expectation—He will redeem you in your suffering. He will restore you in your sorrows. He will give you life.

      So, I invite you to join me in praying each of these words honestly and boldly:

      Here I am, O Lord;

      all of me,

      before all of You,

      here I am.

      I have nothing to give You

      but everything that I am,

      all that I carry,

      and a desperate hope

      that You will save me.

      Because all else has failed me,

      here I am.

      Because suffering brought me to ruins,

      here I am.

      I will seek You

      when I can barely move;

      I will call out to You

      when I can hardly breathe.

      For I know

      You are my only hope.

      O Lord,

      You are certain to deliver me,

      for I am Your beloved.

      Expectantly,

      earnestly,

      and without ceasing,

      I will remain at Your feet.

      You are all that I need;

      here I am,

      here I always will be.

      Amen.

      Preface

      Suffering is the most important experience we have in this life. It may not be the best thing we experience, and it certainly isn’t the most enjoyable, but it is undoubtedly the most important. If you picked up this book, you might already know that.

      I’m sorry for whatever brought you to choose a book on suffering. However, I am also glad that you are here, and I believe you’re in the right place. I celebrate that you are still standing, fighting, surviving, and pressing on. My desire is to share in whatever you are facing, have faced, or will face soon through the words in this book.

      This is not something I wrote from me to you, standing on the other side of suffering, saying, Keep your head up! It is a magnifying glass on a particularly excruciating chapter of my life, as well as a telescope that reflects who I am today, a truthful extension of my heart, mind, body, and soul right now, right alongside you. I am next to you, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, whether you are barely standing, crawling on your knees, or struggling to get out of bed.

      In many ways, this is not really a book at all. It is an invitation to share life’s most miserable, challenging, and difficult experiences together. It’s an honest glimpse into my personal suffering, yes, but it’s also a tool that I hope you can use as you navigate through your own life. I hope that if you share some of these same emotions, you’ll know you aren’t alone. I hope this book helps you put words to your own suffering. I hope it forces you to confront the deepest and most honest parts of yourself, challenging you to bring those things to the Lord. Most of all, I hope it brings you closer to your Creator.

      For a long time I hated my story. The challenges of what I was facing seemed unfair, and I felt ready to give up. I was at my breaking point when the Lord found me, saved me, and I began to write. Here’s a glimpse of how this book came to be.

      In the fall of 2019, my senior year of college, I was playing in an NCAA Division I soccer playoff game. It was a cold and windy November night in New Jersey as our team took the field for a must-win game. I was hoping to pursue a professional soccer career after I graduated, but I didn’t know if it was possible. We ended up losing the game with ten seconds left on the clock. It was a devastating loss, and it made my future seem even more uncertain.

      Two weeks later, I suddenly found myself in the emergency room. On the day after Thanksgiving, I was out to dinner with my family—my favorite people in the world. We were sitting in the restaurant when my body started to, for lack of a better term, go weak. The floor began moving and the walls started spinning. I excused myself to the restroom and splashed cold water on my face, then returned to the table and acted as if nothing was wrong. But I couldn’t hide my maladies for long; my body began shutting down, and I was quickly taken to the hospital.

      I was placed in a bed in a crowded hallway, since there weren’t any private rooms left. My condition became worse; my body felt like it was slipping in and out of consciousness, as if the lights were getting ready to turn off and never come back on again. In between tests and evaluations, I tried standing up from my hospital bed in hopes this might keep my systems alert. My head still felt like it was spinning, my body felt disconnected from my mind, and I thought I might die. After sitting in the hallway of the ER for what felt like an eternity, a doctor came to me with a message that is now the headline of my life: We know something’s wrong, but we have no idea what it is.

      My life turned upside down after that trip to the ER. I spent the following months unable to get out of bed. Each day since, I have battled a slew of disorienting, life-draining, highly complex symptoms that

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