God's Answers

Last night, I was talking to a dear friend, getting advice. It was a very small, insignificant problem of mine, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. Despite that, she gave me advice. There was one piece of her advice that I remember most clearly. She said: “Pray on it. He doesn’t care how small [your problem] is. If we ask for help, He’ll give it…”
I realized that I don’t really pray on my decisions. I usually take the weight of whatever problem I have on my own shoulders. Very rarely do I pray to the LORD, lifting up my problems. I realized how hypocritical that is. I’m sure you have noticed how often I preach about the LORD always being there, but here I find myself not listening to my own advice. Life would be so much easier, less stressful, if I just lifted my problems to the LORD. He always answers our prayers. The second piece of advice I remember is this: “…Be prepared to not like the answer, though.” As I said, the LORD always hears and answers our prayers. That doesn’t mean his answer is our favorite. I know I’ve written about this many times before, but I just find it one of the most important things we need to know about the ever-mysterious ways of our LORD. We must remember that He has a plan for us, and He has had that plan since before we were born. If you ever find yourself wondering why you are going through a hard time, remember this: it is the LORD’s doing. That is not to say that our God is trying to bring us pain. There’s just times in which one must go through an amount of pain to reach something great. Consider these two examples:

For out first example, let’s think of a sport. We’ll use football, as it is a physically demanding sport. As a former football player, I can testify that practices weren’t always a blast. There were days that were very tough. Why would one put up with that? Well, the answer, in this example, is game day. A player puts themselves through the tough practices to reach the thrill and rush of game day.

For our second example, let’s look to the Bible. Alas, I cannot give a specific verse or chapter, but I know that Jesus said somewhere that, in order to follow him, one must drop everything in order to follow him. That must have been really hard, but, in the words of a Relient K song: “The ends justify the pain it took to get us there.”

Though it may be hard to see this, we must remember that the light of the LORD shines at the end of every dark tunnel. Everything, even the bad things, happens as part of a greater plan. We must trust God by lifting up our problems, letting Him answer them, but remember: we must also be prepared for an answer that we may not like. Just trust that it is for the best, because it most certainly is, for the LORD our God is loving and merciful. Amen.

Keep the Peace,
Kyle