“The LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?”
Hebrews 13:6
I get really frustrated when I lose things. It can be my car keys, my wallet, or something I just had in my hand five minutes ago. I throw things around trying to find it, and I can’t do anything else until it is found.
Lately, my son Jeremy has had the audacity to interrupt me while I was melting down to ask, “Have you prayed about it?”
Actually, I found the question to be quite offensive. After all, I’m the preacher! I’m the spiritual one! I don’t want to bother the Lord of the Universe with anything so trivial as lost keys. If the truth were known, I do eventually pray for my lost keys, but that’s long after I’ve also lost my temper, my peace of mind, and my sanctification.
The worst part of my son’s advice is that he is right. I tried it and it worked! I’ve found my stuff sometimes in a matter of minutes and other times before I could finish the prayer. The time lapse is so ridiculously short that it is obvious that God is trying to teach me a lesson. I can almost hear Him say to me, “Of course, you’d rather spend hours of fruitless frustration and bad attitudes than ask Me for help!” I’ve been humbled not only before my son, but also before my God.
Christ wants to be our Helper, but He also wants us to ask Him for help. When we tell Him that we can do something by ourselves and don’t need His help, He just sighs and backs off. Joseph Scriven nailed it in his hymn What a Friend we have in Jesus when he said, “Oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!”
“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). In other words, if Jesus wanted to die on the cross to be our Savior, what makes us think that He doesn’t want to be our Helper?
September 8
