Prayer – Page 15 – Carried in the cross

Walking stick

You know how when you are hiking you generally either bring a walking stick or you pick one up on the road as you go? If you did not bring one with you, at what time in your journey do you generally pick up a stick to use? When the journey starts getting hard, right? When you feel like you need something to support you and to help you carry on, that’s usually when you bend down and pick up a sturdy stick to help you along the way. I know you all know where I’m going with this. God has become too much like our walking stick, we usually tend to leave him behind, and then when the journey starts getting hard return to him again and ask him to help us. Then when the journey becomes easy again we drop him and continue on by ourselves. Why do we do this? I suppose because God and walking sticks have one more thing in common, when the road is easy the’re a lot of work to carry. When the path is flat and you’re not really using the stick anymore and you’re more just carrying it with you it becomes tiresome doesn’t it? So we give up and we drop it, then we hit a rugged part of the road and we go back and get our stick again to help us along the rough part, then it becomes easy again and the stick becomes something we’re just carrying so we put it down again. Praying everyday reading your Bible, even going to church once a week can seem like a lot of work at times, when things are hard we run to these things because they draw us closer to God and God is helping us over the hard times, but then when times become easy and we find ourselves having to do these things we feel like they’re too much work and we don’t want to. But God isn’t a Genie in a Bottle, he’s not there to grant wishes and then to just disappear, God is our father he wants a relationship with us he wants us there with him all the time, so even on the times where you feel like you just don’t feel like going to church, or like you read the Bible so often that you’re just tired of it now, keep going, keep attending Services keep reading your Bible keep praying because these things are drawing you closer to the father. Serving God can be a lot of work at times but it will always be worth it, he will always be worth it. So don’t put him down when the road gets easy and pick him up when the road gets hard cling to him at all times instead and trust him as he Journeys with you.

Pain

Pain is a word we all know too well. Recently I hurt myself. I have hurt myself many times and this pain that didn’t want to leave is a familiar enemy. Thank God we have an intelligent chiropractor who feels my neck and shoulder and says I have hurt my 3-1 or V-4 or whatever vertebrae and then he puts it back in place and then he rubs it and then I go back again a few times because the injury wants to persist and he needs to keep reminding it where it belongs until it stays.
Let’s break pain down like this:

P- problem occurs
A- attempt to fix problem
I-injury occurs
N- now what?

We are like our pain, and we cause pain to ourselves. We fall out of place, a problem occurs and we try with all our hearts to fix the problem ourselves and we end up hurting ourselves in the process. Our hearts get broken, we cry, we get angry, nothing works so now what?
We look down and there is nothing there, then we slowly look up. Jesus is looking back at us and we lift our hands and give it all to Him. He takes the pain, the sorrow, the need and He heals it all. We cause ourselves more pain by fighting to fix things ourselves, if we give the problem to Jesus He is the one who knows how to fix it with ease.