Posted Prayers

When we are confronted by struggles and we are desperate to find peace, we can stand on the reassurance that Jesus is near to us. We can read in Matthew 11:
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

He is our Prince of Peace, and His Word promises that we can have the peace that passes all understanding as we present our requests to Him. We have the access to His presence, to come before His throne, and we can be confident, as we come before Him with pure hearts, cleansed by the blood of Jesus, that He hears our prayers and that He will act according to His will, able to do so much more than we can even comprehend.  We can make sure we are coming before Him in prayer rather than try to work things out according to our human wisdom.

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When we face the challenges in life, when we feel powerless in the face of an onslaught of despair and discouragement, Jesus calls us to come before Him. Hebrews 4 contains these words:
15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

A high school student in Kentucky is aware of mental health struggles that her classmates have experienced - in fact, she herself has had her own struggles.  Suicide is an issue for students in Whitley County.

So, according to a Faithwire article, this student decided to do something about it.  The article relates:

“Our school, along with the middle school, has struggled with suicide,” Sophy Jones told WKYT-TV, referring to her school, Whitley County High. “And, a lot of people struggle with their mental health.”

The article goes on to say:

After seeing a popular trend on TikTok, the teenager decided to start a prayer wall in her high school. The walls, she said, were created to “help spread God’s Word” to those who need encouragement.

Many of the Bible verses scrawled on sticky notes lining the girls’ bathroom walls are passages that made a huge difference in Jones’ own life.

“God saved me,” the faith-filled student told the local news outlet.

Jones went on to say, “People can just write down a Bible verse or, like, ‘Jesus loves you,’ for example, and you can either take it with you if you want to keep it as a note; you can repost other ones,” adding, “They could take that verse and say they want to read it, or we do have Chromebooks at school, so they can Google the verse.” 

Another student, Evelyn Philpot, was involved in staring the prayer walls. She says, “The other day, I had seen a young female student who had one of the yellow sticky notes with a Bible verse on it that we had wrote, and it just really like made my day to know that this is something that people are loving and it’s actually helping them..."

The students participate in First Priority, an organization at Whitley County High. Todd Lawson is the director, and noted, “With prayer and God, that’s the only answer we got — that’s our only hope...I may feel not important at home, I may not feel important to a teacher, I may not feel important to somebody, but God loves us and ain’t nothing more important than that.”  The television station's article reported that Lawson mentioned a suicide prevention emphasis at the school.

There are all sorts of creative ways to do prayer - and this is something that these students have implemented in their school.  They saw a need and they realized that prayer could have an impact on students in their struggles.  We can respond to the needs about which we become aware by coming before the throne of grace, as well - admission has been granted through Jesus, and He invites us to come before His presence and bring our requests.

This school district had been adversely affected by suicide and mental health concerns. It is no different in cities and towns, in rural and urban areas. Because we live in a fallen world, and our young people especially are in peril. But, we can be diligent to call upon His name, and realize that we should go to God first with the challenges we face. No wonder there is a move of God in the hearts of younger people today - their generation has been bombarded with messages that there is no hope, and the true hope is found through a knowledge of Jesus.