All about the faith.

This has been a particularly tough week for me. I have been so weighed down by the burden of all the mishaps going on in my country Nigeria and in particular with the missing 200+ girls from Chibok. Every time I listened to the radio, it was one piece of sad news after another. TV was just as bad, and international news even worse. When I met with friends, we ended up just getting depressed by the situation in Nigeria.

After an emotionally distorted week, I went to God not in prayer but with questions. Why would a just, loving God allow such evil to happen to people who love him? No doubt a couple of the missing girls could have been Christian who love God, serve him, and obey his commands. So why would he allow that to happen to them? And even if they weren’t, what about their parents? Surely some of them could be tithe-paying tongue-speaking Christians who should have been under the covenant of protection we all believe in? Has God turned away from us completely, or has he gone back on his word? I spent some time in prayer assailing God with all manners of why questions and eventually was directed to read Luke 18. 

The chapter started with a very interesting statement: 

“Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.”

Something about the phrase “pray and not give up” stuck with me. Of all the bible prophets, Jesus was one that lived in a time that was similar in many ways to ours. He foresaw a lot of the trouble that was going to come to mankind as a whole so he spent a significant amount of his time telling parables and preparing his followers for the dark times to come and how to handle it.

He opened this parable by telling them to remember to always pray and not to give up. Then he went on to tell a story about a widow and a King:

^3 “And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

⁴ For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

So this widow was known for her continuous request. She never gave up—no matter how harsh the king was to her, no matter how much he ignored her. She would always return each day and ask the king for help until the king realized he had better help her before she wore him out with her request. Jesus then went on to make an interesting comparison. He said:

⁶ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says.⁷ And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?”

This is a nice illustration showing that if a man would listen to the cries of a widow, God will definitely listen to his own. Which brings me back to my opening statement, we all need to continue to pray and not to give up. No matter how long it takes, no matter how much time it requires, no matter the sacrifice it demands. We can’t give up on our country, our families, or our people. We need to continue to ask until we get what we want. So why is it so important that we continue to pray? Why is praying and asking God for help so important? Read what Jesus closed with in this story:

⁸ “I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Jesus asks us to keep praying because he knows that God will answer, but more importantly, if you stop, you’d lose your faith in God, and all these troubles are about your faith. God keeps his word and he always will. No matter how much time passes, his word will come to pass. However, Jesus throws a question at us; I rephrase it as “when I come back, will you still believe in me?” 

The last currency that will remain after everything on earth has been destroyed is faith, and God wants us to hold onto that no matter what. Keep your faith, hold fast to what you believe. When it’s all said and done, the troubles you face are just to test your faith in God and the confidence you have in him.

Jesus reassures us that God will answer and we should keep asking until he does. But more importantly, he challenges us, and I sincerely pray that we will all rise to the challenge—When Jesus does come back make sure he finds faith in you.

Keep the faith. Keep praying.

I join millions of others around the world praying for our missing Chibok girls that they will come home quickly and safely. #bringbackourgirls