The One who cares

Life can be overwhelming.


At work, the boss just isn't making himself clear, his lack of communication is bugging you.
Or you are the boss and you have been faced with impossible tasks and business decisions that will affect the lives of others, there is so much pressure to make sure you keep everyone happy yet turn a profit or stay afloat.


You have been hit with a number of awful occurrences, a broken marriage, debts which are now out of control, a victim of abuse. Your job is on the line.
You're facing a long and difficult illness and you worry about your children. What happens to them if you succumb to this illness? What about if you survive but you've had to take alot of time from work and now your employers regret that they will have to let you go? What about the bills coming in still?
Your parents are elderly, health failing and, as they get older, they get harder to take care of. You are trying to take care of them but you have your own family demands too, children at school who need your attention.
Life just gets so busy and it doesn't even have to be some of the more drastic ones above, it can just be the day to day tasks but everything seems to come at once and you can't split yourself into enough pieces


We all have this, its part of the human experience where we just don't know which way is up or down.
This may sound simplistic but, if you are a Christian, you can go to Someone in prayer. You can cry out to God. He may not actually remove any of these factors. That's a whole other post. But you can still go to God. He is the one Person whom you can just spill it all out at. He won't tell you to pull yourself together. He won't say there there never mind


The fact of just being able to talk to God about it is a form of release. Even if, initially, we don't actually feel any better for it (and I know because I have had those times), the very fact of opening that part of our lives to God gives the option for change, for allowing His Spirit into that situation.
Sometimes God will remove the thorn that causes pain or anger or irritation, even all three. Other times He wont. But in every case, God cares for us and wants us to go to Him


1 Peter 5 v7 says "⁷ Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."
Ps 94 v 18 says "And when I was burdened with worries,you comforted me and made me feel secure."


So why am I telling you this? 


Well, my husband, who isn't a Christian, is going through tough times at work. He is under a lot of stress. In addition to that, two other family members are experiencing disappointment, stress, anxiety about finances, future of children. There are worries about harmful recent experiences and how this will affect them in the future, there is broken relationship. Neither of these other family members are Christians.
As I've spoken to them, listened to their worries, I have silently prayed for them, pleading with God on their behalf (no, I'm not all that as a Christian so please don't think this is me congratulating myself).
What has occurred to me is that, as a Christian, I believe that God my Father does actually give a stuff about me. The Bible tells me this is also true (see the above verses). David frequently spoke of his troubles and trials to God. Just read the Psalms. But people who have no belief, who do they turn to?


Well, yes, they can turn to family members, they can turn to friends. But as we all have our own issues to deal with, one can be reluctant to burden others with our own problems. There may be reasons why we can't involve others. This can make us feel isolated, alone in a morass of problems which no-one can rescue us from. Depression can also shut us in a room in our mind where no-one can reach us. Either way, it's very lonely there.
As I have prayed for these dear ones (no, I'm not congratulating myself on being Super Christian, I'm so not), I've had a revelation.
1) I am so blessed. God loved me so much that He sent someone to take time out to tell me about Jesus, to talk me through salvation and what it means and then God's Spirit prompted me to accept this gift of salvation and ask Jesus into my life. As a result, even when things are bad, I can turn to God always. I might rant and rail Him like David did. Our God is big enough to take this. But always, I know that He is there and that He does care. He knows the number of hairs on my head, He has all my tears collected and He values me more than the sparrows He provides for. What a privilege and a blessing to know God and to know I can cast my burdens on Him. I am never alone.
2) What about those who don't know God? Where do they go when the chips are down? When they lay in bed at night, worrying about those financial reports to be made, when they worry about how the next electricity bill will be met, when they are angry and feel that their trust has been irreparably broken and that no-one believes them or the hurt they've suffered? Who do they turn to? If they don't believe in a God that cares it doesn't leave them much.



That's what we have to do, be His hands and feet practically but also be ready to  speak up and point Him out so that they too might have the opportunity of being able to go to the God that cares about them.


Do you need to help someone today? To be God's hands and feet? Are you feeling lonely in your world of problems that just won't go away? Call on Him, please. He wants hear from you. He does care.

"It's good to talk!"



If you are from the UK, you will recognize this as being the strap line for BT (British Telecoms) and Bob Hoskins, an famous actor, used to speak this line at the end of the televised advert.

So why am I blogging about this?

It started a few weeks back. A loved one and I just seemed to be guessing what was going on in the other's life. Because we didn't want to upset the other, we stopped talking. No, I don't mean cease all communication. I mean we stopped talking about the things that matter to us. We would talk about the news, the weather, the shopping but not about what was going on inside of us. In particular, I was worrying about a number of issues including Christmas, whether I could invite my family for Christmas Day lunch, financial worries and bills to be paid, a sweet young family member's recent trauma and, finally, relationship issues, all of which were tormenting me. I grew very distant and this made my loved one very concerned. When asked what was wrong, I would just deny anything was wrong then carry on moping around the house or the office.

So not only was I increasing the worry of this family member but I was also isolating myself and increasing my stress levels too. I was feeling increasingly swamped by these worries. Did I pray about them?
Nope, God got shut out too. When I close down, I shut everyone out, close friends, God, family, work colleagues.

Who exactly was being helped by this, by my shutting down? No-one!
No-one was benefitting from my largesse to "not burden people with my problems". Instead it seemed far better to burden them with my silence, my hangdog expression and the cloud that grew bigger over my head (yes, this is sarcasm).

Finally, after much prodding and poking and, nearly 3 weeks later, I opened up. It wasn't done in a relieved way but rather resentfully, as though people had intruded on my personal pity party which, if I'm totally honest, this had now become. I had gone from having genuine worries to allowing this to escalate into a "Oh poor me, the world hates me and it's all so unfair" fest of self-pity.

But, fortunately for me, the one listening to me understood what was going on and let me rumble on then, when I had finished, proceeded to go through my worries, one by one, addressing them with either a solution or atleast putting them into some perspective.

The following day, I felt lighter in my being, I was relieved and could actually smile again. I realised that, had I just talked to my beloved, to a friend, to God, to someone, it would have helped, not necessarily with the actual issues but to atleast talk about it and get it off my chest, so to speak. This is how women tend to process things in their lives, through conversation.

Now with men, it seems slightly different. They don't necessarily want to talk through problems, they prefer to ponder it themselves, coming up with a solution in time (I realise this could be a crass generalization but I'm going by all the chaps I've either spent time with (father, husband, stepson, work colleagues) or heard about from friends (their husbands, fathers etc etc).

But even when this is the case, when my husband worries about things, he generally stops communicating with me. This puts a strain on the relationship and I can start imagining things that aren't there because we aren't talking. When we have finally touched on what is going on with him, the air is cleared and, whilst the problem may still exist, the relationship itself is restored because there is finally understanding as to what is going on and what support can be given.

In a worst case scenario, problems can spiral out of hand when communication ceases between people, be they husbands and wives, employee and employer, friends, relatives.
Communication is essential.

It's the same with God. I think we get hung up on prayer sometimes because we think of it as "PRAYER", this lofty subject in capital letters which is breathed in hushed reverant tones and that only special people can really master. To employ a quaint English exclamation, poppycock!

Prayer is talking to God. In the same was that our conversations vary with different people and in different circumstances, there are times when we will be reverant in our conversations with God as we address His Majesty, as King and Master of the universe. But then other times we can talk stutteringly, in between sobs, as we pour out our sorrows to Daddy in Heaven. Yet other times we will speak to Him with great excitement, loudly even boisterously as we either praise Him or thank Him for Himself, for answered prayer or in praying for people or events. But, like I did recently, we can forget that God wants relationship with us and that includes all the crappy parts of our lives so stopping talking to Him because we don't want to bother Him is a bit pathetic, to be honest. He is the one Person who will never judge us, will never hold any of what we say against us and will give us His appropriate response - correction, comfort, knowledge, wisdom, boldness, encouragement, sometimes even silence when it's what we need.

This is what a relationship is. It's the hard times as well as the good times. A truly great relationship is found when you can talk about all the aspects of your life and know that the person you are sharing this with will keep it private when the topic requires it, will honour the trust you are placing in them and will try to help when they can.

I have realised that I need to talk to God more. I get very caught up in other things, some of which are equally important but can stop me from doing that one thing that I need to do above all others, communicate daily with my Father, share with Him all the aspects of my life, my sins, my worries, my happiness, everything. I want to grow in my relationship with God, I want to talk to Him more and open up to Him so He can do more in my life, share His thoughts with me and change me from the inside out. This will happen, can't help but happen, if I communicate with, talk to Him daily.