Faith
The mystery of suffering is really difficult to understand despite the insight the scripture gives about it. Life challenges come in different ways to people. There is no person I know who has mastered life challenges. We all want them to go away quickly; and when they don’t we get worried. The challenges can be sickness, unemployment, family, finance, relationship, rejection and so on.
When problems come, it is normal to look for solutions and the Lord wants us to. This is stated in James 5:13-16. ” Is any among you suffering? Let him pray…is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the sick …and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (Paraphrase mine)
It is not wise for us to be over burdened with troubles without seeking for help. How we seek such help is what matters. The Psalmist say “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made the heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1-2. NAS)
When problems come to us, we are to ask God for help. We ask God for help by praying. We can pray on our own, we can ask other people to pray for us. We can pray in different ways. The advice is that we should pray fervently. That is, we must do it with all seriousness. “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”
I have observed that many people pray with one eye open. What I mean is that while they are praying to God for help, they are worried and scared. They are looking out for human help instead of trusting God for help. Their excuse is that God will use people to help. In such situations, they are actually dictating to God how to help them. They are like Naaman who “knew” how he wanted Elisha to heal him.
“But Naaman became furious, and went away and said, indeed, I said to myself, he will surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and heal the leprosy.” 2 Kings 5:11.
Prayer is not our idea. It was put in place by God to help us. We can read this from Matthew 7:7 and James5:13. God wants us to ask him for help.
We must trust God to answer our prayers. We must not pray in fear, unbelief and doubt. We must not pray with eyes on someone who we believe has the ability to help us, eager that he will come through for us. We should not to be tempted to work out our own ways to the solution without bothering whether it is the will of God or not.
Some years ago, I was a young believer then, I wanted to sit for an examination. When the time to register for it came, I had little money, which I had hope will sustain me for the month. I prayed and fasted, hoping that someone will help me with money. No person did. I waited but no help came until the registration ended. I was unhappy about it; however, the closing date for registration was extended by a week. I felt an urge to use the money I had to register for the examination. God sustained for the rest of that month. Every time I had a need God provided help for me. One of such help came when a Christian brother offered to drop me off at work; that way, he saved me transport fare. He did not know what I was going through.
In Mark 11:22-24, Jesus told us to have faith in God. He said that when we pray, we should believe that we have received whatever we asked God for. Those that trust God will never be put to shame. We face constant trials of faith. It is part of Christian race. We must keep trusting God, it is not a one off thing; it is a lifelong battle. God is always there to help us. Lets trust him.
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