By Dr. Francis Akin-John

8. “God, I thank You for this never-ending, always aching, ever-before-me thorn in my side.” Paul showed us in II Corinth-ians 12:10 why we need to pray this prayer—it is in our weakness that God is most glorified as our str-ength. Do you delight in the thorn in your life today?
9. “Not my will, but yours be done.” This is the Luke 22:42 “blank check” prayer that says, “God, I’m yours, whatever that means, whe-rever that takes me, no matter the cost.” Can you really give God a blank check today and be a lead-er who follows Him with abandon?
10. “Even so, come Lord Jesus.” The Bible ends wi-th this prayer of John in Revelation 22:20. Knowing all that Jesus’ return me-ans not only our being with Him eternally in hea-ven, but also our standing before Him to answer for our lives can you genuinely pray this prayer today?

Spend some time with the Lord today. The Nigerian and African church needs leaders who have knees worn out by prayer. Lawless

10 Reasons people are hurting silently in our churches

It happens every week-end. Our congregations gather for worship, and in our pews or chairs are members who are filled with an-guish but aren’t talking to many people. My res-earch is anecdo-tal, but I’ve learned several reasons that explain this reality:

1. Some folks are embarr-assed by their problems. Whatever the issue is, they’d rather hurt alone than risk anyone knowing what’s going on. Too of-ten, they assume that oth-ers will look down on them if they knew the details.
2. Some are simply loners who fight their battles al-one. They may not even let their own family help them—much less their church family. They don’t need anyone else, they think.
3. Some are hurting too badly to talk to anyone. Maybe they’ll talk at some point, but not now. Only tears come now, espec-ially when the heartache is fresh.
4. Some don’t trust us as pastors. I don’t like to ad-mit this reality, but I can’t ignore it. It takes getting burned only once before you hesitate to ever again be honest with a church leader.
5. Some view pastors as too busy to bother. Some members think this way out of respect–“My pastor has so many burdens. I don’t want to be another one.”

Others assume they sim-ply won’t get any of their pastor’s time.