World Gone Mad

Three ways to survive and thrive when the world is plunged into chaos.

Does this picture resonate? I was not prepared for the year 2020. None of us were. Not only were we thrust into political upheaval, racial unrest, but also an unprecedented pandemic threatened our lives and led to the closures of our schools, churches, and work places. For me personally, the largest blow of them all, was the unexpected death of my father.

Yet, joy and spiritual peace has filled me at this time more so than any other time in my life. How is this possible? All things are possible through God. It is physically impossible for me to be at peace with my life circumstances right now. Only numbing substances could give the average person some semblance of tranquility in times such as these. We are not even supposed to physically “lean” on each other right now! The only explanation for my peace is a spiritual intervention. How many times in your life has spiritual intervention been the only possible explanation for events that take place in your life? If you can’t think of any, it’s about time you start.

Like all things, the simplest course is the most effective. We all know there is no secret dieting trick. Just eat healthy and get exercise. Boom. Mind blowing, right? We all know this, yet we look for short cuts, for an easy path, one that the privileged and “in the know people” must have the answer to! They don’t. It isn’t there. What I am about to share with you is not secret knowledge, God does not hide his truth. Isaiah 45:19, “I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I, the Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right.” The Lord wants us all to walk in light and truth. Navigating these times does not go without instruction. Do you want peace? Do you want answers? Do you want hope? Do you want to rid yourself of stress and anxiety? Do you want truth? Do you want to start transforming your life today? Then do these three things.

1. Ask for the Lord’s wisdom and discernment. Pray right now for His truth to speak to you so that you may hear it above the storm.

You will ask many things of God during this time. You will want answers. You will want Him to show you the clear path upon which you must take. And He will answer you, but will you listen?

So many times we say we are waiting on God to answer a prayer we brought before him, yet we are waiting on an answer that He has already given. For some of you reading right now, I have a word for you: God has already answered your prayer. And right now, many of you will have the Spirit of the Lord tug at that farthest corner of your heart and mind and you will know exactly what answer I am talking about. It is the answer He gave you to your “unanswered” prayer that you did not like. That answer that you pushed aside because it was your least favored response, and because it was your worst case, your ‘No, that can’t be it’ answer, you pushed it down and away and kept praying. Praying for God to give you the “right answer,” YOUR answer. Ask God to give you clarity into His will and His voice. Ask Him to open your heart to His answers. He will. Then you must ask for the strength to accept His answer and obey. Obey in whatever form that may take. If you are not sure, pray that He reveal it to you, but that prayer is likely already answered as well….That action on your heart, that impossible, inconceivable movement. And it is impossible! It is the mountain. But with God, mountains can be moved and with God nothing is impossible or inconceivable. The peace, joy, and fulfillment you will feel immediately after acting in obedience to His will is indescribable. The more obedient you are, the more your faith will grow, and the more your faith grows, the closer you will get to Him and the closer you get to Him, the more clearly you will hear His voice when you come to Him in prayer. Repeat!

2. Pray with an intent to rely on God for all things.

This sound like step number one, but it is different. The first step is to pray for God’s discernment and wisdom. Ask for God to give you ears to hear His voice and a mind to understand and a heart to accept His will. If you come to God in prayer without doing that, you will feel like your prayers are not being answered. I have found that the first step is incredibly important during times of trial and tribulation. There is so much noise and chaos it is hard to hear God’s voice, even when we are leaning in on Him in prayer. Therefore, it is imperative to do step one first. Ask and receive that clarity. Ask and receive an open heart. Then pray!

Prayer is simply talking to God. Talk to Him about everything. When you have a problem come to Him for His burden is light. Many non-believers, and some believers, ask "Why do we need to pray if God already knows what is going to happen? If He already knows what we are going to say?" Notice how in the New Testament Jesus continually asks this question: What do you want? Why have you come to me? Every time a person comes to ask Jesus to heal them, He asks them first what they want, yet we know He must know exactly why they have come to Him. So why does He ask? Jesus asks this question because He is showing us that to pray, to ask something of God, is man giving authority to God to take care of what ails him. When you pray you are willingly giving God the authority; you are submitting your issue over to Him. You are saying, I have faith in Your authority and Your ability to take care of this issue; I submit it to Your will.

I would often get frustrated with my dad because when I came to him with a problem his solution would always find its way to God. I would think, “Okay, but what should I actually DO?! I need real-world action I can take.” Looking back, I can’t help but marvel at my dad’s faith. How hard must it have been to give the glory to God and not give me his own worldly introspection and wisdom to solve my problems. By always directing me back to God, my dad gave God the glory and not himself. And in doing so, he taught me the greater lesson: all answers do point to God! You may think that some of your issues and questions need to be solved by worldly means, entailing worldly actions, and that prayer cannot duplicate the result. This is a falsity. Whatever issue you face it can only be resolved with the intervention of God. This is the only way it will be resolved in the way He described, “Working out all things for our good.” Do you want your issue resolved the world’s way with the world’s answer or God’s way?

When my dad suffered a stoke this year, I read countless of articles and medical journals on strokes. When he went into a coma, I read everything possible about comas thinking I could resolve this issue with medicine, with science, with proactive observation and research. And in the midst of that reading, I always felt God calling me to His feet instead of a scientific journal. My answer, my hope, my father’s saving would never be found in a medical journal but at the feet of our Lord. I poured myself into the Word and prayed for hours in the Spirit. My father passed after 30 days in a coma, and so all my time with God did not save my father’s physical body, instead it revealed God’s sovereignty and redemptive power. My time with God gave me peace with the answer to my prayer: that my prayer to save my dad had already been answered. My father had already been saved the day Jesus died on Calvary. I would never have been able to accept that answer in joy and in peace if not for the time I spent deeply entrenched in the Spirit of the Lord through prayer and reading the Bible.

3. Read the Bible daily. Full stop.

Which leads me to the last step. Read your Bible daily. I cannot stress how important and transformative this step is when it comes to a real change in your life. Think of every good, honest, real relationship you have: do you spend the whole time discussing yourself or do you mutually engage with one another? Only praying and not reading the bible is a one-way relationship with God, where you do all the talking, while never fully getting to know the other person in the relationship, God! Or a relationship where you ask all the questions and share everything about yourself, and the other person answers, yet you never ask them anything about themselves. A relationship with God without reading the Bible of course exists, but it is a very one-sided relationship with YOU being the one who misses out.

The Bible is the most important physical gift God gave us. He could have filled volumes of texts with His wisdom, but He selected only the most viable teachings and messages for the Bible. It’s actually relatively slim when you think about what He could have included! This means every sentence was chosen by God to live through the ages; His Word never ends and never fails. It stands the test of time and is just as relative to your life now as it was thousands of years ago. The persistence of the Bible’s truth, defining our values and culture throughout time, is a testimony to that fact. Even if you are not a Christian, do you like it when someone steals from you? Murders those you love? Lusts after your spouse? These values transcend time and culture because they are God given values and God transcends time and culture.

But let me make it simple: You must read the Bible daily if you want a change in your life. It is the one thing you can do, that I can 100% promise will change your life. Nothing is as transformative as the Bible. I did not start studying the Bible until I was in my twenties. I missed so much! I always read it in times of need or moments of reflection, but not habitually. It was only when I made dates with God to read the Bible every night without fail that I had a truly transformative revelation of who my Savior was and is and is to come. This one habit changed my life. It changes my life still!

There are so many daily moments when I can refer back to God’s word and use His wisdom and apply it towards my everyday life. For example, with all the chaotic challenges we are facing now in 2020, I have read countless examples in the Bible of how uprisings and challenges society faces are allowed to happen because it ignites change in people, in society, in culture, in humanity. Throughout history, society undergoes suffering in order for them to finally break from their dazed comfort and wake up! Our paths of complacency sometimes need to come up against a wall for us to realize we are on the wrong path. We should be taking the detours towards the path of God on our own, but many times we don't. God allows the walls (most of which are natural consquences to our behaviors) to form in our paths, it hurts when we come up against them, but it's the only way we will take the detour.

Many of us are surrounded by panic and chaos, feeling we are more in a pandemic of fear than a virus. Scripture tells us to not worry. You've heard that one? But have you applied it to your life? Jesus tells us that all of our worrying cannot add even one inch to our height or one second to our life. How tiny are these measurements and yet consider all the energy you waste worrying over matters which are far larger than these tiny measurments. If you think it's irresponsible to not worry over matters such as your family, job or home, consider what Jesus also said, "Where your treasure is there will your heart be also." It is right to consider your family, home and livelihood, but what is the ratio of your energy going towards those things and the eternal things of heaven? You make sure your children have food to eat, but are you feeding their souls with God's words and wisdom? How much of your energy is spent toiling after the things of God? The things that will transcend this world? We need to ensure we are providing the real sustenance of life which is God's word, strong character, and faith. We need to ensure that our children, our families, and our friends have a clear perspective of what faith in Jesus Christ looks like, because there is no greater truth, no greater gift we can share. It's the gift that will transcend time.

Actions tasks

• Pray for discernment and wisdom and an open heart to accept and obey God’s will.

• Pray about all things; give everything over to God.

• Make a commitment to read your Bible daily.

See, there is no secret here! You probably already knew in your heart these are the steps you must take to find peace, joy and comfort in a world gone mad. God will not hide the truth from you; He does not speak from a dark place. Do these three things that you may have heard for the first time or have heard from your youth; do these three things because they work!

You don’t have to take my word for it, take God’s.

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