If you do not have a prayer life, you will
not be able to rejoice. Rejoicing is not an experience that emanates from a
life of
orderly circumstances. It is a spiritual
state obtained by whose joy is not confined to their having a neatly packaged life.
“And yet” means that in spite of what I am going through, I can still have the
fullness of joy.
There are times in the life of every
Christian believer when the fig tree simply does not blossom. Times when no
matter how hard we work or how many times we try, we seem to produce nothing.
When this happens, we have a tendency to become despondent, and a spirit of
gloom hovers over us. Our journey is filled with disappointments that can and
will cause us to doubt ourselves and to question God. We find that these
unexplainable, unwanted interruptions throw us off balance.
They bruise our already fragile hearts and
disorient us. We are tempted to give up. Instead of surrendering to that
temptation, we should allow these times to become moments of prayer. The
efficacy of prayer is found in having the need to pray.
When the barren places in this life catapult
us toward confusion
and anguish, we need to pray. Now we have an urgent need to commune with God. Be encouraged: God is plenteous in mercy and abounds in love for us. Although we come to the Lord out of desperation, God is always ready to receive our prayer petitions. As you relax in God’s comforting presence, the very
situation that had you living in a state of
turmoil will begin to yield to the calming presence of an almighty God.
You can “rejoice always” if you learn to “pray anyhow.” We speak not of
some self-induced psychological escape from our present realities, but of a
spiritual truth that does not allow our rejoicing to come from what we have.
Instead, it comes in knowing who has us.