Our world is so full of depressing news right now. It seems like every day something else bad happens. 2022 has been a rough year! Here are just some of the things that have happened:
- War in Ukraine
- School shootings
- Parade shootings
- Mass shootings all over
- Higher inflation
- Higher food and gas prices
- Ongoing political division
- Supreme Court decisions that have either caused celebration or anger
- A mother killing her three young children and then herself after her husband committed suicide.
You wonder when it will end and what can you do to stop it. It seems like our world is getting more divided and all we are doing is shouting at each other. Our elected officials are working to pass laws and regulations to fix the symptoms of our problems, but the reality is we have a heart issue. Laws and regulations may impact behaviors, especially for those who are rule followers, but they do not change the heart. Yes, people are making bad decisions and doing bad things, but when you hear their stories, they are almost all loners, outcasts, come from abusive backgrounds or have been victims of trauma somewhere in their past. That does not excuse their actions, but it does give us things to think about. As I have been thinking about these tragedies, I feel there are three things we can do to make an impact:
PRAY
When Nehemiah was made aware of the hardships and difficulties his people faced in Jerusalem, his first action was to pray. He prayed for the people who were impacted. He prayed for wisdom on what to do and then he acted.
When Daniel was threatened with death because no one could tell Nebuchadnezzar his dream, Daniel’s first response was to pray that God would show him what the dream was, and then he went to the king.
When Jesus was facing his arrest, trial, and execution, He first went into the garden and prayed. He prayed that the upcoming burden would be taken away from Him, if that was God’s will, but then prayed for strength for Himself and His followers.
I know that far too often when I experience bad things, my first reaction is to get mad or express my emotional reaction, but I am trying to learn to first take it to God in prayer. Let it break my heart. Allow myself to be empathetic to those impacted and to pray for them first and then pray about what my response should be.
LISTEN
How different would our world be if we spent more time listening and seeking to understand other people’s point of view rather than working hard to make sure that people hear our opinion? It seems like we have lost our ability to listen first and try to understand the other person. Now if somebody doesn’t agree with an opinion, we just try to shut them down and exclude them.
I also think that is true in our communication with God. We tell God what we want, but our busy schedules and addiction to social media keep us from listening to the quiet voice of God trying to tell us what we should do for His glory, not ours. We have our agenda, and we want God to bless our plans, but we often don’t slow down enough to ask God if these are His plans and listen for His promptings and guiding.
I have struggled with this throughout my life. I have been one to act and then ask God to bless my plans, but over the past 10 years, God has taught me the importance of listening to Him and waiting for His direction. Often it is not what I thought I should do but looking back I could see it was God plan at work.
ACT
The third thing we need to do after praying and listening is to act on what we hear God asking us to do. When we pause to listen to the needs of others, we hear ways that we can be an encouragement or helpful to them. We hear about the challenges others have and we ask ourselves what we have that we can use to help that other person. When we listen to the news and hear all the things happening, we can feel like the problems are too big to help, and the reality is that we cannot solve all the world’s problems. We will always have difficult times and bad things happening because we live in a fallen and broken world. But we can make an impact in the lives of at least one person. Our actions to help someone else may be just the encouragement that person needs to change the direction of their life.
You may ask, why should we do this? It gets back to the cause of the problems in the first place. We have issues with the heart. Our world is missing the love of Jesus. If we want to change hearts, we need to show people the love of Jesus which is unconditional love. Love is what will change the heart, which then will change the behaviors we want to fix. When we show unconditional love to others, we should be prepared to share why we are able to this – which is because of what Jesus did for us. Our greatest testimony of a changed life is not our words, but our actions and whether we are able to show love to others, especially those that are not like us or who have different beliefs than we have.
When I was young, I was taught the saying “hate the sin but love the sinner”. And while that statement may be true, I have often been more focused on judging the actions and less on loving the person. The reality is that the faith that I have is only contagious and interesting to others if people see that my life reflects the love that Jesus showed to me and that I can be accepting of others, even when their actions reflect values I do not agree with for my life. But in the end, God will hold me accountable for what I have done in my life and the love that I have showed to others, not for the actions that others do with their life.
In closing, let me encourage you to do the following:
PRAY for those who have been impacted by tragedies. Pray that God will put people in your life that you can show love to.
LISTEN to the needs of the people that God brings into your life and listen to what God wants to you do to be an encouragement to them.
ACT by showing God’s love to at least one person that God brings into your life. We can’t impact everybody, but if each person could impact one other person, we could make an impact!