So here's a prayer point from today from the PPT site.
President Obama Signals Middle Class Relief
Promising repeatedly to �keep fighting�� for average Americans, President Obama rolled out proposals yesterday to help struggling middle-class families care for their children, save for retirement, and pay off college debts. �Unfortunately, the middle class has been under assault for a long time,�� President Obama told a gathering of his Task Force on Middle Class Families. �Too many Americans have known their own painful recessions long before any economist declared that there was a recession.�� The proposals are part of broader themes that the White House said Obama would tie together in his State of the Union speech tomorrow night, including the importance of job creation, the need to reduce the deficit and, as ever, the urgency of changing the way Washington works. His new proposals include nearly doubling the child and dependent-care tax credit for families making under $85,000 a year, and limiting a student�s federal loan payments to 10 percent of income above basic living allowance. They would also require many employers to provide the option of direct-deposit access to a worker�s individual retirement account and would expand tax credits for retirement savings.
Pray for the President and his team in leading our country�s economy. Pray for the millions of American families that are unemployed and facing financial hardships.
Seriously, folks, this just keeps getting worse. There's a serious possibility that I may lose my job in the next few months. It's crazy.
Psalm 22:1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
As I read this Psalm, it mirrors the experience that Christ felt on the cross, hundreds of years later! This lament is a prophecy from the hands of David that applies directly to Jesus.
There is extreme darkness in this Psalm, which opens with what is probably one of the most tragic questions in all of Scripture. These are the words that Christ screamed at the height of his agony on the cross.
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
But David does not stop there. He does not let the feeling of forsakenness be the end result. He goes on to speak of God's work in history. He relates experiences of others who trusted in God.
And at the end of the section for today, David pleads for God's help because there is no one else who can help him. We are helpless without God. I am utterly helpless without God. That is the beginning of trust.
"The Spirit in Prayer"
Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.
(This reading was so good, I'm quoting the whole thing.)
While we are in this world, hoping and waiting, for what we see not, we must be praying. Hope supposes desire, and that desire offered up to God is prayer; we groan. Observe our weakness in prayer, "For we do not know what to pray for as we ought." As to the matter of our requests, we know not what to ask. We are not competent judges of our own condition. "For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life?" (Eccles. 6:12). We are short-sighted, and very much biased in favor of the flesh, and apt to separate the end from the way. "You do now know what you are asking" (Matt 20:22). We are like foolish children that are ready to cry for fruit before it is ripe and fit for them. As to the manner, we know not how to pray as we ought. It is not enough that we do that which is good, but we must do it well, seek in a due order; and here we are often at a loss - graces are weak, affections cold, thoughts wandering, and it is not always easy to find the heart to pray (2 Sam. 7:27). The apostle speaks of this in the first person: "We do not know." He puts himself among the rest. Folly, and weakness, and distraction in prayer, are what all the saints are complaining of. If so great a saint as Paul knew not what to pray for, what little reason have we to go forth about that duty in our own strength! The assistances which the Spirit gives us in that duty is such that he helps our infirmities, meant especially of our praying infirmities, which most easily beset us in that duty, against which the Spirit helps.
How is it that Matthew Henry, writing in the 18th century, seems to know me? He really nailed it with this reading.
Grace and peace, friends.