I remember reading in a concluding part of a book once that “even when we cannot see Gods hand, we must trust His heart”.

At first, I thought it was ironic cause I would think that if we trusted His heart, we will seek His hand, but just a few days ago, it made even more sense to me.

Two days ago, in western Nigeria, there was a massacre in a Catholic Church where people gathered for worship. It was very bloody and sickening and it left the entire country devastated.

I really struggled hearing the news, because amidst my personal daily prayers for Nigeria, a few days before that, a friend of mine left me a message after receiving direct instruction to pray against bloodshed in Nigeria, it was almost like the Holy Spirit prompting us more through Him to intercede, even if we didn’t know Sunday will be what it was.

The Friday before that, I also spent time with my friends praying for Nigeria like we do every month, and you know the assurance we get when we pray? That God hears us.

So we left that alter confident that every pending evil was averted.

Sunday was a rude shock to me. I remember texting two of my friends, “what is happening?”.

I asked the one who had received a word to pray against bloodshed if we didn’t pray enough or well and His response reminded me that “even when I cannot see Abbas hand I must trust His heart”.

He said “the enemy has worse things and further plans that Gods power has thwarted, we must pray more”.

As soon as I read that, light bulbs went off in my head and I responded saying “yes, it would’ve been worse, much were preserved”.

I know it might seem like just comforting words to stop anyone from doubting, but really, it is a reality of the Heavenly Father we have, that He hears us and He answers.

I became convinced that while Sunday happened the way it did, much more that we didn’t even know of was averted and terminated. The question as to why wasn’t all the evil terminated is one I honestly cannot answer.

I think we will always judge God through the lens of our understanding of Him. If we do not understand His heart and nature, we will ascribe evil to Him and say that because we didn’t see His hand, then He was not present, or He did not hear us.

But the Word of God tells us Otherwise. Jesus even declared in John 11:41-42 that “Father I thank you that you have heard me, and that you always hear me”.

This is the reality of every son of God, the guarantee that our Father hears us always. If we really believe this as the heart of the Father, we would not think His hand to be absent because things ended contrary to what we expected.

This knowledge must not now encourage us to leave an allowance for a lesser evil to happen because God has thwarted the greater evil. Our God is much too powerful and mighty for that. All evil bows to Him and we must pray with that awareness and assurance.

These last days will give us more reason to question Gods nature and heart because things will not look like His hand is present, but we must feed our hearts with His word until we’re fully convinced of His heart, so that even in trying situations like the occurrences of Sunday, we can be assured that God heard us.

In all, we must stay praying; aligning the reality of this earth to the reality of heaven.