Prayer Worriers

            “Prayer Worriers” is how the message began.  The message continued with an  old friend sharing that he  was getting ready to have surgery and asking folks to pray for him.   I don’t know for sure, but I think that my friend meant to write “prayer warriors” instead of “prayer worriers”.     This mistake in a choice of  words got me to thinking about a connection between prayer and worry.    

Are you a “prayer worrier”?    Are you a person that will pray to God about something putting the person, circumstance, or need in God’s hand and then you turn around a few minutes, hours, or days later  to take it out of God’s hands and start worrying about it again?   A related thing that “prayer worriers” might do is to take a person, need, or circumstance before God  in prayer and then tell God what He should do to “make it all better”.

I have been a “prayer worrier” at times in my life.  There have been times when I have prayed about something close to my heart  (e.g. need, person, circumstance, etc.) and then continued to worry about it.    Sometimes, I have found myself putting the need in God’s hand and then worrying again when God does not work it out in MY TIME AND MY WAY.     In Matthew 6, I read these words:

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[e]? 

These are not just any words in the Bible, but they are Jesus’ words.   When Jesus speaks, I know I need to listen.   Worry  does not add a single hour to life.  A matter of fact, mental health studies say that it might diminish the quality of life.   In this new year of 2020,  I am going to work on being more of a “prayer warrior” and less of a “prayer worrier”.   How about you?  Have a joy-filled week.-  Pastor Randy Wall  

Prayer:   God,  forgive me for the times I fail to trust in you.  Help me to trust you more fully and completely;  through Jesus Christ our Lord.   Amen.