I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there. Then by God’s will I can come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed. The God of peace be with you all. Amen.
The Book of Luke, our next study, reveals 7 positive steps Jesus took while suffering. Luke, a physician, was attune to Jesus’ suffering and how He worked through it with God’s power. These steps also work for suffering to break bad habits. Jesus was certain of His death, but Paul struggled because his life was in danger. Paul uses the first step of suffering, prayer, by asking the Romans to pray for him.
All of us suffer. Use discomfort as a reminder to pray. Jesus prayed for God’s Spirit to lead him; for God to remove Satan’s angel; to drink from God’s cup, not his own; and for God’s angel to intervene and strengthen him. He prayed again with more earnest and faith.
Paul drank from God’s cup by going to Jerusalem, praying for the Holy Spirit to lead him. When he arrived, Satan’s angel had people lined up to stone him. But God’s angel turned the head of the commander of the Roman legion to look on the other side of the wall and into the temple court, and that commander rescued Paul. The Book of Acts ends with Paul in Rome being refreshed at the Three Taverns with his Christian friends. Prayer works.