ALL DAY, EVERY DAY! By Shawn Smith

I  woke up this morning to many ‘Happy New Year’ text messages, as I’m sure most of us did. Then, I noticed that some of the messages didn’t have a name attached to the phone number. It looked as if some of my contacts were missing. I turned the phone off, then back on again. That didn’t help. I panicked. I started reading through the conversations of some of the messages to figure out who the text was from. I looked through my group texts to see if anyone’s name was missing from the group. I found about 8 numbers that I didn’t recognize, including 3 family members that were listed in my Favorites. I was so confused at how this could’ve happened. I was nervous that I had lost some important contacts and wouldn’t even know. I had to stop, take a deep breath and say to myself, “Girl, it is not that serious! You’ll figure out!” After I calmed down I thought, everything happens for a reason. 

I started looking into the 8 missing numbers to see if they had anything in common but they didn’t. Some were iPhone users, some were Android users. One was a college friend listed in my HU group chat (shout out to Howard University, the best HBCU in the world). 3 were family members listed under My Favorites and 4 were my prayer partners/marriage ministry partners listed under HeartLife Ministries. So, they seemed to be random. Then, the Holy Spirit told me to pray for them, individually. So, I asked God to tell me what specifically to pray for, for each person. Then, the whole situation with my phone made sense. 

How many times do we encounter a problem, panic and try to fix things or figure things out which in turn makes the situation worse? How many times do we act before really thinking things through? I know many of us who are parents or leaders believe that we are natural born problem solvers, that it’s in our nature to try to fix what’s broken asap. Many times all we need to do is stop, take a deep breath, then talk to God about it. Ask Him, what do you want me to do, Father?  The problem may not be for you to fix. That’s actually HIS nature. GOD is the Problem Solver, the Fixer, the Waymaker, the Miracle Worker. LET HIM DO HIS THING! The Bible says, 

Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. Our God is a God who saves; from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death. Psalms 68:19-20 NIV

I  don’t know about you but I don’t want to mess up anything that God has for me. Neither do I  want to be stressed out and worried, eventually leading to my physical and mental demise. So from now on, I vow to talk to my Father first before I go and try to fix something because He may tell me to give it to Him. Think about it. One less thing that we have to worry about will lessen the amount of stress, anxiety, panic, etc, that we carry because we simply gave it to God.

And the scripture says “daily”  did y’all catch that? It doesn’t say montly, yearly or sometimes. It says every single day. That’s Sunday through Saturday, 365 days a year! That is a load off of my back. I tell you, that Jesus is alright with me.

Happy New Year everyone!

Shawn