Have you ever wrestled with God
in prayer? Have you ever found yourself
in such a desperate situation that you fell before the Lord in such desperation
that you cried and wept before the Lord knowing that no one else could help
you? Have you ever come to a place in
your life where you knew you were at a crossroad and the rest of your life would
depend on the decision you made that day?
Sometimes it seems that we agonize
over things that we can’t change and it seems to take so long before we give it
over to the only One that can change it. We struggle with so many things, even as
believers, in fact I think even more so as believers. The reason I think this happens is that we have
this idea that we shouldn’t have any problems because we are God’s children, wrong,
we may be God’s children but we are still in the world, but hopefully not of
the world. As long as we are here we
will have problems.
Try to remember what Jesus said
when speaking to His disciples in John 16:33, “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In
the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the
world.” Jesus wanted His disciples to
take courage in their struggles and never give up and to always remember that
He would be with them, that He would never leave them or forsake them. Jesus will also be with us in our struggles
and we will never be left alone as long as we don’t give up.
Do you remember the struggles
that Jesus faced from the beginning to the end of His life here on earth? When all was said and done He was victorious,
because He never gave up, had a pity party or felt sorry for himself. Knowing the victory that Jesus won, and all
that He had accomplished, should help us to take heart.
I think one of the problems is, many
believers are taught if they just had enough faith they wouldn’t have the
problems they have, so they don’t feel right about sharing them with others and
asking for prayer. They may even think
that if the Lord cared, He wouldn’t allow them to be in the situation in the
first place, it is like we blame every problem on God. We live in a world where people like to blame
everyone or everthing for what we face in life. If we hold to that altitude, which I am also
guilty of, we will not trust anybody to help, not even God. Maybe that is why so many believers don’t
spend much time in prayer, because they don’t really think that God cares. We live in a corrupted environment and,
because of it, bad things happen to good people and that is reality, so it is
time to take responsibility and if we need help we need to ask God for it
because He cares for us. Just because
God allows us to suffer at times doesn’t mean He doesn’t love us, He does.
When Jesus faced the greatest
challenge of His earthy life, while in the Garden of Gethsemane, He didn’t
blame God the Father for the tremendous difficulty He was about to face, no, He
prayed to His Father in such agony and distress asking if He could to take this
cup of suffering from Him, but not His will, but the Father’s be done. What if He just complained, saying Father this
is your fault so why should I waste my time praying, you don’t even care and
stormed off having a pity party, things would have turned out much different than
they did. This was so hard on Jesus that
some of the capillaries broke in His head and blood dropped to the ground like sweat;
I don’t think I ever heard of anyone else that desperate for an answer to
prayer.
Jesus never forsook His heavenly
Father, even when He said, “Father why has thou forsaken me?” At that time Jesus could have called the angels
to minister to Him, but He trusted His life to His heavenly Father and so
should we. We need to let Jesus be our
example and start seeking our heavenly Father in prayer.
No comments:
Post a Comment