4 Prayers for Hope and Peace in Difficult Times
I’m sorting through my eight-year-old’s backpack when I hear the words echo from the TV in the living room. Another shooting. Fatalities. Children running for safety with their arms stretched in the air. Bowing my head at the table, I turn to the Lord with urgent prayers for hope and peace in this broken world.
4 Prayers for Hope and Peace
We’re all facing the consequences of living in a fallen world.
We all face dark days and troubled times.
After a few minutes of prayer, I think about this as I set the homework on the dining room table and hand my sweet girl a snack.
My mind drifts to the parents who will never again help with homework.
It drifts to the horror that cannot be described when the call comes to say there were shots fired. We all pray it won’t ever happen to us. We hold our little ones just a bit tighter and consider how we might live differently in light of these fleeting days.
Prayers for Hope and Peace in Difficult Times
As I sort through these emotions, I also think of the valleys we’ve walked throughout the past months.
I’m reminded that no trite cliché can take away the pain of the families who have lost their children. I’m also reminded that we have promises to hold us when the darkness threatens to overwhelm us.
Do you need to find a safe place of hope in life today? Here are four prayers for hope and peace in painful times.
1. Thank God for his presence with you.
Tragedy prompts us to ask the same question every time it strikes: “Where is God in the midst of this mess?”
We want to know why he hasn’t swooped in to save the day. The familiar words of John’s gospel offer an answer.
Jesus’ dear friend Lazarus has died. Jesus arrives on the scene, and Lazarus’ sister Martha runs to him with a grief-stricken heart. She says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32).
I can relate.
I have uttered the same words over my losses: “Lord, if you had been here, this dream would have come to pass. If you had been here, we wouldn’t be weeping over a gravesite. If you had been here, we wouldn’t be sitting in this sterile hospital room watching pigeons flutter carelessly out the window.”
Tragedy strikes and we grow offended. We tell God if he’s not going to protect us, we’re done living for him.
But what if we have it all wrong?
Jesus isn’t folding his arms and gazing down from heaven to see if we’ll pass some sort of test.
Jesus does this while you weep:
John 11:35 offers the most compelling answer to our question of what Jesus is doing in our deepest pain: “Jesus wept.”
Our loving Father isn’t standing in the distance measuring our faith or lack thereof. He has promised to be with us always. He is closer than you think. And he is weeping with you.
Find consolation in encountering the weeping Savior. He weeps when our hearts are broken and our lives are shattered. He promises to use our pain to make us more like him, but he weeps as we walk with him through the darkest valleys.
Here is a prayer: “Dear Lord, thank you for being with me in my darkest moments. Even when I feel alone, I trust in the promise that you will never leave me. I cling to the image of you weeping with Martha. Please fill me with hope and peace as I draw near to your compassionate heart.”
2. Ask God to guide you as you pursue healing.
In the beginning, God created the whole world, and it was good. We were not created to endure the kind of suffering this world offers. We were created for pure and unhindered communion with God forever.
God will one day make all of this right. Until then, when gruesome tragedies and unimaginable losses destroy our realities, we can extend grace to our broken hearts. We were never meant to endure this kind of pain. Our minds don’t know what to do with it.
The Lord has promised healing of all things and restoration, and until then, we turn to him and ask for guidance to find healing for the deepest kind of trauma.
Here is a prayer: “Dear Heavenly Father, I don’t know how to process this pain. Please guide me. Show me what it might look like to follow you in processing this in a healthy way. I commit to following where you lead. Most of all, thank you for minstering to me through your Holy Spirit. I pray for your comfort to bring me hope and peace.”
3. Honestly bring your emotions to God.
I like to pull myself up by my bootstraps and get onto the next thing. I’d rather ignore my feelings than feel them. If we want the healing light of God’s love to bind our broken hearts, we begin the process by letting ourselves feel our emotions.
We don’t shove anger, bitterness, sadness, or despair under a rug and say the brave Christian things that sound impressive to the world. It is important to feel what we feel.
We bring God our broken hearts, and we ask him to fill us with light, love, and healing. We turn to his written Word and find consolation through Psalms and the words of those who have suffered before us.
Here is a prayer: “Dear God, I am feeling many emotions right now. Please help me sort through all I’m feeling. Today, I’m feeling______ (fill in the blank with as many emotions as you can name and don’t hold back). I give these emotions to you and ask you to guide me and lead me toward healing.”
After processing these emotions with God, it might be helpful to talk to a friend, write more in a journal, or open your Bible for Truth to stand on.
4. Ask God to do what you cannot do for yourself and reveal himself as your Great Healer.
For years, I believed time was the secret to healing my broken heart. I believed the bad breakups, unhealthy relationships, and cycles of habitual sin would be healed with time.
This is where I had it all wrong.
Time is not the great healer.
Jesus is the great Healer.
He offers healing when he invites us to come as we are and meet him at the cross. At the cross, he paid the price for our sins. Jesus took the punishment we all deserve. God poured his wrath on Jesus instead of pouring it on us.
When we come to the cross and receive his gift of rescue, asking for forgiveness and declaring faith in him, he freely embraces us just as we are.
Jesus heals us again and again. He offers healing when our worlds fall apart. He promises to be our portion and our hope, even in the darkest valleys. Our Savior reaches down from on high and pulls us out of the deep waters of despair. And in our most broken moments, he holds us and shares our tears.
There are no easy answers for a week like this. We mourn with those who mourn, even when we can’t begin to wrap our minds around this kind of loss. We trust in the Lord who promises to carry us through the darkest valleys, and we step forward, one slow step at a time.
Here is a prayer: “Dear God, thank you for being the Great Healer. Part of me wants to rush through the discomfort of what I’m facing today. Instead, I turn to you. Please begin the work of healing my heart. Please help me grow in trust as we walk through this together.”
If these prayers for hope and peace blessed you, I invite you to draw near to God as you download a free chapter of my life-changing book, Lean Into Grace.
A Free Resource to Help You Through Difficult Losses
God wants to lift your head. Learn how to turn to him for hope and healing by downloading a free chapter of my book, Lean Into Grace. This chapter will help you process your emotions and bring your broken heart to God for healing. This chapter “Crying in the Bathroom,” is yours for free with promo code GRACE right here today.
Calling all moms and daughters!
Additionally, my teen daughter, Bekah, and I are passionate about helping moms and daughters grow closer while connecting with God. We have written two mother-daughter devotionals together. Girl to Girl: 60 Mother-Daughter Devotions for a Closer Relationship and Deeper Faith is written for girls ages 7-12. It includes 60 devotions with Scripture, conversation starters, and a shared journaling section after each devotion.
Heart to Heart: A Mother-Daughter Devotional With 50 Devotions for Teen Girls is for teenage girls ages 13-20. It includes 50 devotions, each with a shared journaling section to help moms and daughters connect through writing. This is a great book for moms who want to communicate about awkward topics—like dating, purity, peer pressure, and more—but don’t know where to start. We will help you!
Multitudes of mothers, daughters, mentors, and younger women are being transformed by these books! You can buy them as paperbacks or get your free Kindle Unlimited eBooks on Amazon right here.
