From Anxiety to Peace: The Power of Prayer in Life’s Struggles

(audience laughing)
Dr. Sam Ayers: Bienvenidos a todos, welcome everybody.
If you are not in the education building,
you probably don't have a clue who I am.
So I'll give you a quick intro.
Coming from education, I taught elementary school
in San Antonio, taught elementary school in East Lubbock,
served as a principal at Hardwick Elementary,
served as a principal at Roscoe Wilson Elementary School,
served as the principal at Hutch Junior High,
which then became Hutchison Middle School,
served as the principal at Estacada High School.
I had the opportunity to start teaching here
in 1990 part-time.
Usually I'm wearing a bow tie.
I don't know what happened that particular day.
I have a thing about taking selfies with my students,
whether they're current or whether they are coming back
for visits, and so who else am I?
I am the oldest of three boys.
I am the husband of one, Carla, from Lubbock.
I am the father of two, one who lives here, Amy,
one who lives in Portland, Oregon, Deanne.
I am the Sampa of six grandkids
who range in age from five to 21.
Something else about me.
I started keeping a sketchbook or journal, notebook in 2004.
I now have 73 of these, so when you see me
walking around with these, it's not really a Bible.
It's my sketchbook.
Sometimes I'm drawing things that I see outdoors
as I'm out and about.
Sometimes I am drawing things that I see or hear indoors.
Sometimes I'm just drawing things that appeal to me
when I'm out and about.
Sometimes I'm drawing things that just make me smile.
The other thing I enjoy is photography,
and I started that in high school,
continued taking pictures of my students as a principal,
and I can't go to an LCU event without taking photos,
especially if it's sports-related,
so I enjoy the volleyball.
It'd be nice to start having home games again.
Of course, I enjoy the softball and catching them
as they're playing, as well as our baseball team.
I was not a tennis player,
but I've come to really appreciate tennis,
and it doesn't matter whether it's the men's team
or the women's team.
Enjoy watching both of them play and represent us.
Enjoy the basketball over at the Rip,
both the guys' and the girls' game.
Looking forward to those.
As a former track person, I enjoy indoor
as well as outdoor track, and I enjoy watching them compete.
Soccer was not my thing.
We didn't have soccer at my school at the time,
but I've come to really appreciate soccer,
catching our students playing here on the field,
and of course, we have a little bit of cross-country
that's currently going, so I can't help myself.
I gotta take pictures.
And who else am I?
I am a child of the living God.
I grew up with a knowledge of who God was.
Our family was very much a faith family,
but my faith became very personal to me
when I was in high school.
And that said, what I wanna talk to you about today
is out of Philippians 4: 6 and 7.
So bear with me just a minute, and let's read that.
I'll read it aloud.
You can just follow along silently.
But do not be anxious about anything,
but in every situation, every single situation,
large or small, by prayer and petition,
with thanksgiving, present your request to God,
and the peace of God which transcends all understanding
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
And I don't know if you caught it,
but it was talking about anxiety,
and that's something that all of us experience.
And sometimes it's big things,
and sometimes it's little things,
but we really don't like to experience anxiety.
We'd rather experience the opposite,
which it also mentioned in that scripture,
and that is peace.
We want the calm.
We want the serenity.
We want the harmony.
We want the contentment.
We want the joy.
But how do we get it?
And in case you weren't paying attention,
it's sandwiched right between the two.
It mentions being anxious.
It mentions peace.
And how do you get it?
With prayer, prayer to God, the one who created you,
the one that knows you by name.
Whatever is causing you anxiety, large or small,
prayer is the answer.
So I got to thinking,
what was my earliest memory of an anxious moment?
And my wife gives me a hard time
because I have an incredible memory,
but for me, it was age five.
And yes, I was in a gang.
(audience laughing)
We cleared the neighborhood of Ritz crackers
and Bugle corn chips.
They weren't anywhere.
But we lived in a very humble home,
and two houses over, there was a creek.
Whenever it flooded in San Antonio,
all went into the creek,
and eventually ended up in the San Antonio River,
but sometimes the rain was so much
that it would flood the neighborhood.
And so the city decided to take out the corner house,
widen the creek area for drainage,
and they thought that would be a good answer.
And I think for the most part, it was.
And I have this picture here just to remind you
of what five looks like.
Five is little.
And I'm afraid that when I wasn't playing outside
or playing inside,
I was sometimes across the alley
at Roger and Roland's house.
And these two boys, they were brothers.
They were six and seven,
and they were constantly talking me
into doing things I shouldn't do.
And my mom thought we were playing at their house,
and I guess that's where we started,
but they found a flashlight,
and I didn't know what they were gonna do with it,
and they said, "Let's go over to the drainage area."
Now, this is what it looks like today,
but when they first created it,
it was just bulldozed earth,
and it was a lot deeper,
and the slopes were a lot steeper.
But you can see the drainage pipe where it comes out.
I went back, speaking of bicycles, on my bicycle,
and it's still there.
It's the same drainage pipe that was there.
But their great idea that they shamed me into following
was, "Let's go explore."
So Roland got the flashlight,
Roger followed behind him,
and I was the runt in the back.
I can't imagine going into that today.
I'm not sure what possessed me to do it then,
but I had to hunch over, even as a five-year-old,
and we went into the pipe.
And we joked as we went, mostly they joked,
I kind of listened,
and I held onto the kid in front of me,
and we went further and further,
and we took a left turn and a right turn
and a left turn and a right turn.
Before you know it, we were lost,
and we didn't know the way out.
And we finally found a little bit of daylight,
and you've probably seen these little drainage things.
When you're five, you can see out it,
but you can't reach to it.
And we could hear the cars going by,
but we couldn't get our hand out to wave and shout
and have people know we were there.
So then we just continued further into the pipes,
hoping that we'd come to another place
where we could get out.
Eventually, we did.
About a half mile into the pipes,
we came to this manhole,
and there was a little ladder there.
But the problem is, we're five, we're six, we're seven,
and we don't have the strength to open it.
And I should have been terrified, and I was anxious,
but I was also calm, because while I was following them,
I was just talking to God, just conversation.
And when we got there,
I remember saying a little, "Hope we get out."
I have no idea how this man happened to be there,
how he heard us through the manhole.
I really think that's the first time
that God sent an angel to help me out.
But the man opened that up, and he let us out,
and then I walked a half mile back to my house,
and never mentioned it to my parents until last year.
But I got to thinking about anxiety,
and you have all experienced anxiety.
And we could probably share a whole list
of things that have caused us to be anxious,
and so I decided to, again, go back into my memory
of maybe situations you can think of,
mostly middle school, high school, and college,
where you are today.
And so one of those, we were having a very cold,
and usually cold winter in San Antonio,
and the heat went out.
My dad didn't believe in credit cards,
and I don't know if the problem was
not being able to pay for the repair,
or if it was waiting on the repair, but it was cold.
And that was the first time I watched a Super Bowl.
That one's for you, Jerry Jerabek.
I went to a big high school.
Prayer was the answer, and peace is what made the difference.
And that new high school I was going to had 2,600 students,
and I knew that I was anxious.
I was intimidated.
But fortunately, I had a friend from Scouts who was in band,
and he kind of helped, but prayer and peace
made the difference.
I had a motorcycle from an early age,
and I happened to wreck it on the loop one day in the rain,
tore my jeans and my arm to shreds,
and all I could think about was my motorcycle's totaled,
and how are mom and dad going to react?
Prayer led to peace.
I had a paper route.
It may seem like a minor thing, but when we're gone
for a week or two on a vacation,
we've got to find somebody to cover it,
and I couldn't find anybody to cover my route.
They were all saying no, but prayer led to peace.
We went to Mexico, specifically Monterey,
to visit with cousins, and all I could think about
was I'm going to miss this leadership training that's
required for the editor of the yearbook to be there,
but we're going on this trip, and how's
that going to affect me being editor next year?
Prayer led to peace, not PE.
I had buddies on the track team that
made some poor choices one night at a party,
and the police were going to be involved,
and all I could think about was that is going to really mess
them up, but it's also going to affect our track team,
but prayer led to peace.
Unfortunately, during senior cross-country season,
I ripped up my hip, tendons and muscle,
and consequently got knocked off of the varsity track team
that spring, and all the scholarships were gone,
and I was a little bit anxious, but prayer led to peace.
I had a couple of guys that were going to go with me
to college, a little college up in a little Moni, Iowa,
and then they backed out, and they
decided that they wanted to go into the military instead,
and I had nobody to go with me.
It's like, what am I going to do now?
Prayer led to peace.
I had lots of cousins in San Antonio,
and by this point, I realized that some of them
had some addiction issues.
I was old enough to now recognize it,
and I realized this is messing them up.
It's messing up their family, and indirectly, it
ends up affecting us.
Prayer led to peace.
I'd been saving up for college, and I
was going to an expensive college, Trinity University
in San Antonio, and I spent my entire savings
on my freshman semester.
I had two part-time jobs lined up,
and I was already worried about, am I
going to be able to finish there?
Prayer led to peace.
If you don't know anything about Trinity,
the parking lot was filled with expensive cars
that the students drove.
They drove Jags, and BMWs, and Audis, and Mercedes,
and when was I driving the family station
wagon or a Ford Pinto?
But hey, it had stripes.
Doesn't that look cool?
Prayer led to peace.
During my freshman semester, my grandmother, my abuelita,
she passed away, and it really hit me
that she's not going to be there to see me
be the first member of our family graduate from college.
She's not going to be there to see me get married.
She's not going to be there to see my kids.
Prayer led to peace.
While I was there, I also realized
that freshman year, all my scholarships
were going away because they were one-year scholarships.
And I was really stressed about keeping up my grades
and how much work could I do on the side.
Prayer led to peace.
I didn't have very good advisors.
Unfortunately, I'd signed up for the wrong biology class.
I was in pre-med biology instead of biology
for non-science majors, and I had to get a WF.
A semester later, I decided I would approach the professor
and see if he'd show a little grace and change it to a WP
because it was killing my GPA and keeping me out
of various activities.
Prayer led to peace, and there's more to that story.
I was playing football.
If you know Rudy, I was a human practice dummy,
but we did beat Lubbock Christian College twice
that season.
But it wasn't fun anymore.
I didn't want to do this anymore.
Prayer led to peace.
I was dating this girl, and the speed limit was 55 miles
an hour, and I drove from San Antonio to Lubbock
to meet her parents, and then 55 miles an hour all the way back.
And the visit with her parents didn't go all that well.
Prayer led to peace.
By this point, I was a setter on our USVBA team,
and we qualified for the regional tournament in Austin.
But unfortunately, the university
decided they weren't going to pay for our way there,
so we had to get ourselves there and figure out
our own hotel expenses.
Prayer led to peace.
I kind of set the road for my brother,
so he ended up coming to Trinity.
He was a little bigger than me, and he would make it
to football practice, but he couldn't
seem to make it to our tutoring sessions
or to our brother's Bible study.
I was worried about the choices he was making.
It was creating some anxiety in me.
But prayer led to peace.
I never had more than a four-day weekend to go do things.
I really wanted to see my other grandparents in Illinois,
but it was a 20-plus hour drive if you go straight through.
And I needed to get there and get back,
and that'd leave me with a day and a half with them.
Wasn't really worth it.
Prayer led to peace.
And right before I graduated, my senior year,
spring student teaching, my appendix ruptured.
And so consequently, all I could think about
was needing to get things done, needing
to get assignments finished, and being able to graduate.
Prayer led to peace.
A few weeks ago, you got to hear Keegan Stewart,
and he shared a message with you.
And something that I wrote in my sketchbook
that he said was, what is our understanding of peace?
Peace is not the absence of something.
It is the presence of someone.
Peace is God in your life.
We have anxiety.
We want peace.
How do we get there?
The scripture in Philippians told us through prayer.
You have professors and staff on this campus
who've experienced all the things you've experienced.
And if you're experiencing anxiety,
whether it's a small thing or a large thing,
it's important to you.
We might be able to guide you in the right direction.
We may be able to offer prayer on your behalf.
We may be able to provide support.
And you may be thinking that God only cares if it's a big thing,
but I'll remind you that he is your heavenly father.
And if you have loving parents, they
want to hear from you on a regular basis.
Those are my parents.
I still call them four times a week.
I don't have a whole lot of news between each call,
but they just want to hear from me,
just like your parents want to get a text.
They want to see a phone call.
They want an opportunity to see your image,
and they love the opportunity to visit with you.
It's the same with our God.
He wants to hear from you.
And it doesn't matter whether it's
sharing good things that are happening or sharing concerns.
And we all know that no matter what you do,
he's going to care.
He's going to listen.
And we remind our five-year-old that even for him,
he experiences some anxiety.
But we remind him every night at bedtime, you are strong,
you are loved, and you matter to God.
You matter to God, and so do you all.
So with that, we know you're going to be anxious.
We know you want peace.
Call on your heavenly father.
Visit with him.
Prayer is just conversation with the God of the universe
who knows you by name.
Via con Dios.
Go with God.
You are dismissed.
: [APPLAUSE]