A Very Present Help in Time of Trouble

Lack of prayer in the life of a believer is a great sin, indeed, as we have seen. So, what, typically, rises up in our flesh as our first response to the conviction of any great sin? ‘I must strive to do better! I must work at getting victory over it. I must pull myself up by my bootstraps and do this thing.’ But is that the correct response? No, it is not.

The Psalmist says, “Cease striving and know that I am God!” The same psalmist who said this said in the very same psalm: ‘God is our refuge and strength, a VERY PRESENT HELP IN TROUBLE.’ As a Christian who understands the malignancy of sin, I believe I am in no deeper trouble than when I have sinned against my holy Father. Listen, if I am spending five minutes in prayer a day, I’m in trouble!

Is there something, then, I must do when I find myself in any kind of trouble? Yes! I must run to my Father. I must abide in Him. You say, ‘But it is I who must do the praying, right?” Yes. But our efforts are futile unless we first learn how to abide in Christ by a simple faith. This alone is the key to victorious living. To understand this fully, we must understand this battle that is raging inside every believer between the flesh and the Spirit.

I’ll give you two examples of what I’m trying to say. First, we must understand the story of Sarah and Hagar that Paul uses to illustrate for us the life of the flesh versus the life of the Spirit in Galatians 4. The question is, ‘Who are the true sons of Abraham?” That’s what the Galatians needed to understand because the Judaizers were trying to tell the church at Galatia that the law and circumcision had to be added to Christianity in order for it to be of God. Paul’s argument was, ‘No, it is the sons who believe, the sons who have the same faith as Abraham, who are truly his sons. They are the ones who will receive the promises of the covenant made to him and his seed.” By the way, the Judaizers, so active in the early church, are just as active today in the church and Paul would say, “No, you don’t need to add Tradition or Papal dogmas, indulgences and confession, etc.” The whole story of Sarah and Hagar is a picture of what happens when we try to do things in our own flesh rather than to obey God and have faith that He will accomplish His purpose in us.

Just like Hagar started persecuting Sarah, the Hagar religion will always persecute the Sarah religion. The flesh will always try to rise up against the Spirit and try to convince us that there must be something more we must do to be right with God. We can live according to the flesh and do things according to the law out of a cold, adherence to rules, rituals and regulations or we can live according to the Spirit which is true life, hot, passionate zeal, delight and joy in worship. We can only worship Him truly in spirit and truth. Now, if we understand that everything we do is worship as a Christian, we will either do things in the flesh or in the Spirit.

My second illustration is a simple one. When I was a very small child, whenever I was in trouble, perhaps I fell and skinned my knee, at the first glimpse of blood I fearfully ran immediately to mother or father. If mommy or daddy were not in sight, I screamed bloody murder for them. No one else could stand in their place.

I didn’t stop and whip out my first aid kit or my list of first-aid rules and say, “Wait, I can fix this! All I have to do is so and so.”

I was watching ‘Cops’ awhile back, (I know, right? I’m the only one I know who can start crying while watching ‘Cops’) and this father was driving around recklessly with his two very small children in the car. He had, apparently, ‘kidnapped’ them from their mother. I guess he didn’t have custody of them. The whole situation still makes me so sad. Oh, how sin destroys lives!

The cops (and there was a really compassionate woman cop involved) yanked this guy out of the car and threw him on the ground, the kids were screaming for him, and then the woman asks him if he is okay. Once inside the house with the kids and the mom, you could see this little, adorable brother and sister – she was probably 3 or 3 ½ and he was probably 2. Wide-eyed, they’re sitting on a couch while the cop is talking to the mom. The little girl is trying to be so brave and the little boy is petrified. He sits there with his little lip quivering the whole time trying to blink back tears (as I am trying to do once again), and when his mom puts out her arms, he just completely loses it and jumps into her arms and holds on so tightly for dear life. Confused and terrified, the arms of love are the only safe refuge he knows for sure.

THIS is what our Father wants from us. We are to respond in situations as we would as children, with childlike faith. Complete trust that all will be well as long as we are safe in our Father’s arms.

Why do we trust Him? Because we know Him through His Word and spending time alone with Him in prayer. We are saved by faith, but we must learn to live moment by moment by that same type of faith.