New Church Life March/April 2017 | Page 87

      ,   next three days wandering around his farm looking for it. Finally, he asked the Lord to help him find it, and he walked directly to the tool which was hidden in tall grass. He knew that he never would have found it on his own before driving over it and wrecking his tractor or mower. Every fall when it was time to sell cattle at the local auction mart so he could earn an income for the family, he would ask the Lord to help him get a fair price so he could pay off his debt to the bank and not lose the farm, leaving his family homeless. He told us that many times he watched the cattle price spike when he sold his cattle, and he would make enough to pay his loan to the bank with a little bit extra to spare. I remember being with my Dad as a teen during a cattle auction when this happened and the auctioneer asked him publicly what he was feeding his cattle to make the prices go up. Perhaps it was from situations like these that my father learned not to waste time trying to do things without the Lord’s help. He and my mother taught us to ask the Lord directly for help whenever we needed it. They also stressed the idea that we needed to obey everything that the Lord asks of us, so that the Lord could work in our lives. Living with this attitude of trusting the Lord was normal for me because I grew up with this idea. Did my Dad learn this idea from the New Church? It would be nice if I could say yes, but he didn’t grow up in the New Church. His family was not particularly religious, but he did have one aunt who was religious and she made sure she taught him to pray to the Lord directly with any and all of his concerns. What if my Dad chose not to listen to his aunt who consistently taught him to pray directly to the Lord for help? What if he did not teach this idea to family? What if we had lived our lives without the knowledge that we can pray to the Lord and He can help us in times of distress? What if any of us had faced difficulties that felt bigger than we can handle? What tools would we have to face these troubles? If we chose to rule out asking the Lord to help us with the specific problems in our lives and we had not met others who knew enough to remind us to do this, then we could easily become overwhelmed with the problems that we face and have nothing to help us face them. We could easily feel unstable, empty, hopeless and full of despair. But if we have the tools to deal with life’s problems, then we can feel stable, peaceful, grateful and hopeful, even if we don’t have everything we want. So how can we go from feeling overwhelmed and that we do not have what it takes to deal with a big problem to feeling like we can handle it? I think the solution comes down to acknowledging that the Lord already knows the solution to the problem and if we ask for His help through prayer He can help us discover a solution, even if the problem feels huge and unsolvable. The Lord 153