Text- 1 Peter 5:6-7 – “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.”
Increasingly today, people are beginning to talk about taking responsibility and taking actions. There is an increased outcry against those who pray and never take reasonable actions to deal with whatever issues are on ground. I personally think this is a good course.
The problem with many of these campaigns however is that they implicitly suggest that prayer is a sign of cowardice. They make it seem like it is the lazy ones who resort to praying.
When Jesus said “Man shall not eat by bread alone…”, He did not imply that “Man shall not eat by bread at all…”. Those are two different things entirely! The word, “alone” shows that bread is one of the things we live by, but is not enough to live by.
If a man works a lot to put food on the table but has no time for his family, he has not done well. The same is true for a man that gives all the time and attention but is lazy and can't put food on the table. So also, a person who prays and does not take action has not done well. The same is true for the one that takes all necessary actions but refuses to acknowledge God.
Prayer is by no means cowardice. On the contrary, refusal to pray is refusal to acknowledge God, and that is pride and arrogance. You see, when there was a threat against Jerusalem, what did Nehemiah and the Israelites do?
"But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat." (Nehemiah 4:9)
1. They prayed to God
2. They posted a guard
They knew they had to post a guard, but they didn’t put their confidence in the guard they posted; they humbled themselves under the mighty hand of God… they prayed to God!
Let’s see another example in the Bible:
“And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians. And Asa slept with his fathers, and died…” (2 Chronicles 16:12-13)
Here, we see how King Asa put his trust in the physicians and refused to humble himself under the mighty hand of God. The end result… he died!
God cares deeply for you and he desires to exalt you in due time. All He wants you to do is to humble yourself under His mighty hand and to cast all your cares on Him.
Beloved, let's not buy into the demonic propaganda that prayer is a sign of cowardice. The real signs of cowardice are complacency and inactivity… and we must denounce them. But then, while we are taking reasonable steps, acting wisely and working hard, prayers must not be left undone. We must humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.
PRAYER
Father, I humble myself under your mighty hand today. I choose to acknowledge you in all my ways. Help me to always put my trust in you, and never to rely on my own efforts alone in Jesus Name.
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