Join us this Sunday! In-Person 9:00am & 10:45am, Online 9:00am, 10:45am & 5:00pm

Join us this Sunday! In-Person 9:00am & 10:45am, Online 9:00am, 10:45am & 5:00pm

Join us at the next Sunday worship service:
In-Person
9:00am & 10:45am,
Online 9:00am, 10:45am & 5:00pm

Heaven Help Me

This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.” – Hebrews 4:15-15. 

This week we looked at the story of King Jehoshaphat, who trusted God and won a God sized victory over his enemies. The story is found in 2 Chronicles 20. In the Old Testament, God took the people of Israel through miraculous event after miraculous event. In the New Testament, those who watched the ministry of Jesus were seized with amazement at the miracles He performed. (Luke 5:25) And the apostles in the early church regularly performed signs and wonders among the people (Acts 5:12).  Today, however, such miraculous events seem rare. God is not helping us fight the armies that are aligned against us as He did with Jehoshaphat.

At the very least, we feel there’s something different about the way God worked in the Old and New Testament periods and the way He works today.

Even if we don’t frequently see extraordinary miraculous events, God is active. He is active in the regular (natural) processes we see every day. He is miraculously calling people to himself as His church grows and expands. He is active in miraculous ways among people we don’t know around the world. God has intervened repeatedly in miraculous ways in my life, but there have also been struggles in my life.

But through it all, I have learned that God’s help is always available. It may not be the help we wanted, but it will always be the help we need. More often than not, the help we are looking for is to remedy the problem, just as God did with Jehoshaphat. God may be using conflicts and my efforts to work through them in order to help make me a better husband or parent or maturing Christian. 

Our prayer may be, “God, change this person’s perspective…change my spouse/child. boss, etc.”  Instead, God wants to change us. We may want to hold a grudge and pray that the person who wronged us see the error of their way. God on the other hand wants to help us forgive. As we let go of demanding that God help us our way, you will begin to see amazing changes God has worked in our heart and in our lives.

Because when we remember that God’s ways are above our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9), our perspective changes. We stop expecting God to help in ways we prescribe and we will begin to lose that “God isn’t helping me” feeling. 

Discussion Questions:

  1. In what ways have you experienced God’s help in your life?
  2. How do you react when God does not answer your prayers in the manner you want Him to?
  3. Do we need God’s help more in changing others or changing ourselves? 

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