God knows your affliction. He feels your pain. The Lord promises to carry you through! You are either in the middle of pain, coming out of pain, or about to experience pain...pain and affliction are a part of life until we see Jesus face to face!
Someone Needs HOPE! Often people turn to the Lord in the middle of a crisis of pain and affliction. God Cares! God is always there for you and those that He has strategically placed in your life that are experiencing situations where they need the Hope that comes from Him!
What are some simple ways you can share HOPE?
H - Share examples from your life when you received Hope from the Lord that helped you through your pain or afflictions? Share Him & the Hope He has given you! Jeremiah 29:11-13 says it best! "For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." (NASB)
O - Share examples from your life when you Opened your life up to the Lord and asked Him to save you! Share some examples of how He has helped you with your pain or afflictions? Share Your Testimony With Others! John 3:16 says it best! “For God so loved the world, that He gave His [a]only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." (NASB)
P - Share examples from your life about how the Lord has answered your Prayers & Pray for those that are experiencing pain or afflictions! Romans 10:9-10, 13 says it best! "if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed....for “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (NASB)
E - Share examples from your life that will Encourage someone that is experiencing pain or afflictions with the encouragement God has given you? Share God's Promises with those that are hurting! Here are several promises from God's Word that say it best!; Isaiah 35:3 "Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble." - Romans 15:5 "Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus" - 1 Thessalonians 5:11 "Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing." - 1 Thessalonians 5:14 "We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone." & 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20cor%201:3-7&version=NASB (NASB)
Also, when we share songs that are full of Hope, God often uses His Praise & Worship to minister to those that are experiencing pain or afflictions! He inhabits the Praise of His People = God Is Always There For You!!
Here is an example of one of those songs of encouragement that is based on the Poem "Footprints in the Sand" & goes so beautifully with Isaiah 63:9 NASB "In all their affliction He was afflicted, And the angel of His presence saved them; In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them, and He lifted them and carried them all the days of old."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBLkbBEfjcc (Footprints in the Sand - Leona Lewis)
