Psalm 146:1-5
1)
Praise ye
the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
2)
While I live will I praise
the LORD: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.
3)
Put not your trust in
princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no
help.
4)
His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his
earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.
5)
Happy is he that hath the
God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God:
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s with most
things, "experience is the best teacher." Unfortunately, most of us
do not understand the importance of knowing that we have a present help in
trouble unless we are in trouble. As we advance "from faith to
faith," we are to understand more of the Lord and His benefits.
However, where
there is an unwillingness to "go through” things, there will be no
experience. Consequently, there will be no testimony. We have all heard and
understood that in order to appreciate the light, we
have to have some "dark" times. Everybody, at some point in time,
whether saint or sinner, is going to need the help of the Lord. Learning to
appreciate one's need of and leaning on Him means that we must submit ourselves
to staying in our tests every time they present themselves. Waiting for our
time to be accomplished is what gives us a testimony of and experience in what
God can and will do.
When it is time
for us to be delivered, we are told to Whom to look.
But it seems as if we choose when to look for the help of the Lord. Some
situations with which we are faced, we will readily turn over to the Lord.
Others, we hesitate giving to Him. The fact is that often, we do not trust
Him—despite the fact He has never failed us and promises us that He never will.
You see, we allow
the devil to make first-class fools of us. He plants doubt in us—doubt that our
faith or confidence is as well-placed in the Lord as it would be in something
or someone else. So, what do we do? We show by our actions that we agree with
him. In that this is exactly what Satan wants, we play right into his hands,
making it almost impossible for the Lord to show us that indeed, we could trust
none better than He. So, what we need to see we assure for ourselves that we
cannot.
If it is left up
to the devil, we will never come to depend on the Lord. All that he and his World
System promotes is designed to keep us from just that.
We are taught to solve our own problems and manufacture our own solutions. This
is so deeply ingrained in us that the mind not renewed upon salvation is
destined to drift aimlessly outside of spiritual understanding in the murky
world of the flesh.
Contributing to
the confusion in the minds of many of the people of God today is their
particular vulnerability to deception. In an age when more people of all kinds
are more educated than ever before, it seems as if "good common
sense" is at an all-time low. Meaning what? Even those who have been
redeemed do not seem to realize that there is nothing better than salvation. If
this is true, what possibly is the common man thinking.
Man suffers most
from believing that the God who created him, created him with a mind for any
reason other than to serve Him. Despite the fact that we were molded and shaped
by Another other than ourselves, we reserve the right
to use our minds for ourselves. Until we understand that our only real help
comes from Him and not within ourselves, we will continue on the same dead-end
merry-go-round.
What will it take
for the Lord to get us to understand the message that there are too many people
in trouble, in need of salvation, for us to be concerned with ourselves in any
way, shape or form? People are dying and we have the magic
"elixir"—Jesus Christ. If our closet relatives and favorite friends
could be saved only by antidote that we possessed, would we refuse anyone? This
issue is just as serious.
Have you ever
wondered how you would feel if you were drowning and the one sent to rescue you
stood on the bank telling you what he was going to do, yet never doing it? If
you have then maybe you can understand how a soul in need of salvation feels
upon confronting those (individuals, religions, churches) without the truth.
When a man realizes he is in trouble and needs to make a change, he wants help
with immediate results—not rhetoric. Jesus Christ is the Immediate Help that we
received and the only help we have to give. He is so immediate that He does not
wait for us to call His name before He comes to our aid. We open our mouths
with His name on our breath, and He is there.
It is time for us
who have known and have accepted the truth to stop worrying and consequently,
bringing about trouble needlessly. The Lord our God is a "present help
in trouble." As He was in the days of the prophets and patriarchs, so
will He be for us, today. All we have to do is decided if that is what we
want Him to be. Or, is the "arm of flesh” good enough for us.