Tag: worry

Prayer Changes Things Outside of Us (Prayer Changes Things Pt. 1)

By Ife J. Ibitayo

During my junior year of college, I went with my church on a retreat. There isn’t much that I recall about that trip, but I do remember committing to spending one hour each day in prayer.

It felt like a foolish choice at the time. Between my academic obligations and my church responsibilities, I was barely treading water. I struggled to find enough time each day to sleep, let alone surrender a whole hour to prayer. Yet somehow God provided the time during that harrowing season of life. Since then, I’ve prayed for many things both great and small, and I’ve seen God move in both cases.

Prayer Changes Lives

A few months after I started praying more, a good friend of mine was attempting to transfer into the geology department at the University of Texas at Austin. He’d already been rejected twice before. And if he didn’t get accepted this time, he was going to transfer universities. So I told him, “Why don’t we pray about it?” And by the end of that week, my friend excitedly told me that he’d been accepted into the geology apartment with a scholarship!

And about a year ago, another friend of mine was on the verge of graduation. But one of the most important people in his life was not planning on being there to see it—his father. Their core values had diverged drastically when Donald Trump was elected president, and their tenuous relationship had become so strained that my friend struggled to even visit his parents. So for a whole year, I prayed for healing in their relationship. And on the eve of my friend’s PH D. defense, his father flew into town and even stayed to help him work on his project for a couple days afterward!

Conclusion

These stories may not be the most exciting. I haven’t yet seen mountains fling themselves into the ocean. But there’s good reason Jesus emphasized asking God for things in prayer so much. He said, “Ask, and you will receive” (Matthew 7:7). “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). And “will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones who cry out to Him day and night” (Luke 18:7)?

Jesus came to earth to connect mankind to the Father. And we do so by committing our cares to Him. Maturity in Christ is not asking God for less but entrusting Him with more. And I’m trying to learn how to do that one hour at a time.

“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.”

(1 Peter 5:7)

Falling Apart or Holding Together (The Terrifying Trio Pt. 3)

By Ife J. Ibitayo

For Part 1, “Doubt”, click here. For Part 2, “All Eyes On You”, click here.

These past several weeks have been crazy hectic. I’ve been meeting current friends to say goodbye, calling new acquaintances to say hello, and finalizing my moving plans. Just as my doctor mentioned that I need to find ways to relieve stress, I’ve been stockpiling it in heaps! I’ve found that coordinating a move across the country to a home I haven’t even found yet has been exceptionally challenging. And the metastasizing number of unknowns is triggering subliminal warning bells throughout my system.

Falling Apart

In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus poses a key question, “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life” (Matthew 6:27)?” We all know the answer to this rhetorical question, so why do we still worry?

My worry is a reflexive, visceral response. If I can’t actively manage a situation, the least I can do is focus my mental energies on it. I treat the problem like a Rubik’s cube my head. If I tweak this here and rotate that over there, maybe a solution will finally crystallize. But the Greek word merimnao means to be “divided into parts, to be distracted.” But we are terrible multitaskers. When we exert all of our mental energy on our worries, we can’t focus on what God wants us to.

Jesus goes on in Matthew chapter 6 to say we are to “seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33a).” And speaking about this kingdom, Paul says that the kingdom of God is about “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 4:17). So we should be focused on loving others by living righteously and loving ourselves by finding peace and joy in God.

Holding Together

That probably sounds like a pat answer only sufficient for a church retreat. But when the rubber of life hits the potholed road of student loans, angry bosses, and rebellious children, you may wonder how practical that really is. If you don’t spend all your time not worrying about these distressing issues, who will?

Matthew 6:33 in its entirety says, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field. God cares for everything on this planet and most of all for us. Just as children trust their parents and don’t shoulder the same worries they do, neither should we. Our heavenly Father was built to carry the weight of the world on His shoulders because He made it in the first place!

Rather, we’re called to trust Him, even if we don’t know where we’re going to sleep next month. Because God holds the universe together by the strength of His mighty power (Colossians 1:17), we can certainly trust Him to hold our lives together too.

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

(1 Peter 5:7)

New Problems, Same God

By Ife J. Ibitayo

Last Monday, I found myself perched uncomfortably on a hospital bed. A woman in a black dress strutted in and took a seat across the room from me. She glanced my way and casually said, “You might have had a heart attack.”

With a sheet of paper in my hands with obscure lines traced across it and a sticky note referral to a cardiologist, I realized I was back in my car. I gripped my steering wheel, fighting back tears. But the dam broke, and I wept bitterly, “Not again! Lord, please let this not be happening all over again!” I’ve had petty problems and big problems, but now it seems that every new year I collide face-first with a new problem. But then God brought to my mind a Bible story I’d read just that morning.

Old Problems

King Hezekiah was one of Judah’s last good kings. He demolished idols and defeated nations leading to spiritual and economic revival. But during his reign, the mighty Assyrian empire ransacked the northern kingdom of Israel and set its sights on the southern kingdom of Judah. It captured every fortified city in Judah besides Jerusalem (Isaiah 36). And on top of all that, King Hezekiah fell fatally ill and was told by the prophet Isaiah that he was going to die (Isaiah 38:1). In the middle of his grief, King Hezekiah made a passionate plea to the LORD for his life, and God sent Isaiah back to the king with this message, “‘I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life’” (Isaiah 38:5).

This was the verse that God brought to my mind. He told me sitting there in my car crying in that hospital driveway, “‘I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.’”

Same God

Later that day, I made a call to the cardiologist, and they were able to slot me in for a visit at the end of the week (a mini-miracle in and of itself). And by Friday’s end, I was walking out of another hospital, but this time I had a smile on my face and a fresh lease on life. The same God who was faithful to King Hezekiah has been faithful to me.

God taught me that His promises don’t come with an expiration date. They never go bad. The same promises He made thousands of years ago, He is faithful to keep today. Because God doesn’t change, neither do His promises.

“‘The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.'”

(Isaiah 40:8)

Expecting Much but Finding Little (Broken Hallelujah Pt. 2)

By Ife J. Ibitayo

For Part 1 on “A Foundation of Rejoicing and Regret”, click here.

The Israelites returned to the ruins of Jerusalem in 538 BC. As soon as they reached their homeland, the LORD commanded them to rebuild Jerusalem and His temple. They took the command to rebuild the city to heart, resurrecting their homes and businesses as soon as they arrived. But they put the command to restore the LORD’s temple on hold. Haggai the prophet said, “‘The people are saying, “The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”’ Then the Lord sent this message through the prophet Haggai: ‘Why are you living in luxurious houses while my house lies in ruins’” (Haggai 1:2-4 NLT)?

Expecting Much

The Israelites priorities were clear: their own health and well-being. They furnished fine homes for themselves and planted much seed for themselves hoping to achieve success for themselves. But here was the fruit of their labor: “‘You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it… You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why’” (Haggai 1:6,9a NLT)?

God not only didn’t assist their hard work, He actively opposed it. He worked to minimize their profit and increase their losses. Why indeed would a good God trouble His people as they strived to secure security and prosperity?

Finding Little

The rest of Haggai 1:9 says that the LORD blew away the reward for their labor “‘because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own house.’” There are two reasons the LORD opposed the Israelites’ efforts: priority and provision.

Jesus Himself said, “‘Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you’” (Matthew 6:33 ESV).  An honest inventory of our time, money, and energy would force many of us to admit that God is not number one on our lists. He may receive one day of our week and—in good months—one-tenth of our paycheck, but He is the moon to our world of self rather than the Sun we revolve around.

The reason why God often finds Himself second-best is because of worry. Our cratering economy pushes us to labor from the crack of dawn to midnight. Our strained marriages send us into a death spiral of heated arguments and cold shoulders. We need financial peace, relational peace, and bodily peace, so we strive to lay hold of these things before we find spiritual peace.

Jesus, right before speaking about priorities in Matthew 6:33 said, “‘Don’t worry about these things, saying, “What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?” These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs’” (Matthew 6:31-32 NLT).

Our God knows what we need better than we do, and chief among our list of necessities is not food, water, or shelter but our heavenly Father.

Finding Much

Once the Israelites finally prioritized building the LORD’s house over their own, the LORD told them, “‘“Does anyone remember this house—this Temple—in its former splendor? How, in comparison, does it look to you now? It must seem like nothing at all!”… The future glory of this Temple will be greater than its past glory, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. And in this place I will bring peace’” (Haggai 2:3,9 NLT).

If we align our priorities with the Father’s, He’ll fill us with spiritual peace and restore the other areas of our lives. But we must have the faith to reorient ourselves from our worries to His temple.

“‘Think about this eighteenth day of December, the day when the foundation of the Lord’s Temple was laid. Think carefully. I am giving you a promise now while the seed is still in the barn. You have not yet harvested your grain, and your grapevines, fig trees, pomegranates, and olive trees have not yet produced their crops. But from this day onward I will bless you.’”

(Haggai 2:18-19 NLT)