After we remove the worry and anxiety, we can then move on to the next phase, which is to believe in the trust-fulness of prayer. Here, God is calling us to talk to Him concerning the things that would otherwise cause us worry and anxiety.
Remember that we are custodians of the children in our care and we are co-labourers with God in the assignments He has given us. In this case, the children are the assignment at hand. The online dictionary defines co-labourer as one who labours with another or an associate labourer. This means that if you had one acre to plough in a co-labourer contract and you ploughed the entire acre again, you have laboured in vain.
Talk to God about your disappointment, your suffering, your pain, your needs, the needs of the children, the uncertainties of life, your broken heart, your provision – talk to Him about everything. That is called prayer and supplication – communication with God. His promise in this communication agreement is in Jeremiah 33:3 ‘Call to me and I will answer you. I’ll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.’
Since communication is two way, when you pray God will talk back. He has many ways to talk to us. Some of the ways are through the Bible (so read it often), through dreams, through visions, through other people, through revelation, through a small still voice within us among other ways according to His manifold wisdom.
We are also called to thanksgiving. In my life, when faced with challenging and uncomfortable times I wonder what’s the point of giving thanks. But everytime I look back in retrospect, I realize that things could have been worse.
The Bible is filled with commands to give thanks to God (Psalm 106:1; 107:1; 118:1; 1 Chronicles 16:34; 1 Thessalonians 5:18). Most verses go on to list reasons why we should thank Him, such as “His love endures forever” (Psalm 136:3), “He is good” (Psalm 118:29), and “His mercy is everlasting” (Psalm 100:5). Thanksgiving and praise always go together. We cannot adequately praise and worship God without also being thankful.
And yet in the midst of those trials we can thank God, because we know that He has promised to be with us and that He will help us. We know that He can use times of suffering to draw us closer to Himself: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance” (James 1:2-3, NIV).
When the prophet Daniel learned that evil men were plotting against him to destroy him, “he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10, NIV). The Bible commands, “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, NIV). Paul declared, “You will even be able to thank God in the midst of pain and distress because you are privileged to share the lot of those who are living in the light” (Colossians 1:12, Phillips).
