He Hears & Cares
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you. Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour. Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world.
1 Peter 5:6-9
Jesus prayed. Jesus, not only fully man but also fully God, prayed. His prayer is a display of his humanity, but read it again—Jesus prayed.
Mark 1:35 “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”
Luke 5:15-16 “Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”
Mark 6:45-46 “Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.”
If the circumstances surrounding you have you rattled, turn in your desperation to the one who longs to hear our cries. Pray, read your Bible, spend time with the very one who created you. Prayer and reading your Bible is a sign of our belief that God is who he says is and will provide us with what we need. He can soothe our restless hearts. A lack of prayer, however, signifies the very opposite—that we believe God is not able or does not care. A failure to pray is an invitation for the devil to devour, an invitation we certainly don’t desire as God’s people.
Friends, God is able and God cares and if the Son of God, who was fully God and fully man needed to pray and spend solitary time with the Father, then so do we. In 2009, John Piper made a Tweet that simply said, “One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from a lack of time.” If your heart is reeling from the circumstances that we face today, make sure that you have not failed to set aside time to desperately take your anxieties to the Father who cares for you.
Prayer
Father,
We thank you that our elder brother, Jesus, provided the means for us to have a relationship reconciled with you. No longer are we orphans, but we are joint heirs, sons and daughters of God. Awaken our spirit to see every life circumstance as a providential prompting to seek you and your kingdom. Grant us a mind and heart arrested by desperation to not seek to live without you. Father, when we fail to know what to pray, let us rest in the Spirit, who speaks what our minds, hearts, and mouths cannot. Amen.
Written by Doxa Covenant Member