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The cry of “Help God” is often a desperate plea we may find ourselves in when facing a predicament but it is frequently short lived as we relapse into a sense of complacency once the dilemma passes or subsides. These crisis conversions sometimes are not sincere and are just a desperate attempt to relieve us of undesirable circumstances. Sometimes we see God as a Monty Hall in a “Lets Make a Deal” type of mentality thinking that somehow we are doing God a favor by being a willing contestant in His game of life. Yet when we realize that it is God’s intent to give us the gift of salvation instead of our own self interests then we treat Him as if He Zonked us with some kind of booby prize.

In reality sometimes being in a pickle is an act of grace and mercy by which we are confronted with a state of helplessness of which perhaps even our close associates are unable or unwilling to bail us out. At times these situations are a barometer of reality when going through the storms of life in which we find ourselves drowning in a sea of shock and panic. It’s in moments like these that we are most susceptible to being honest with ourselves and God by seeing the limitations of our own mortality much like the Apostle Peter did in reaching out his hand to God in order to seek the safety and the refuge of the boat or perhaps the calming of the storm.

However we are often conflicted in our actions by which we have at times held out our fist in rebellion to God only to extend our arms to be picked up and held when our world comes crashing down around us.

We must ask ourselves when seeking God what is our motivation and is it just a deception of disguise to appease God until we can get ourselves out of this fix?

Now for those who oppose God’s help maybe they have looked critically at religion and God as a crutch and now faced with a hardship of their own they come to realize that they are mortal invalids propped up on the feeble limbs of human pride as they are toppled over by the fragility of human experience.

Instead of resorting to God in the midst of their problems they resolve to fix or heal themselves in order to try to get back up after they have been bucked off or knocked down. They may dabble in religion and troubleshoot their way through the gamut of disaster by approaching it by means of  meditation in blocking negative energies by attempting to extinguish pain or they may take the other extreme of fatalism by accepting their circumstances  as some kind of cosmic retribution or Karmic debt. Still others see this matter as just illusory in which they disassociate themselves through some hypnotic state of escapism. Some may even flirt with the self help programs by taking a Bob the builder kind of approach with a “Yes, we can fix it “ attitude or maybe they are like the little steam engine who gets up enough courage and steam through their mantra of thinking in which they visualize that they “think they can” to advancing to “they thought they could” only to run out of steam at the end of life realizing that they had come up short in making it to their final destination. Other secular avenues of relief may come  through pop psychology by relieving the symptoms of pain which comes with human trauma as looking to medication and techniques as a way of coping with the trouble in life and like the dysfunctional lion of Oz they only need to see the Wizard.

This sense of control or invincibility is a facade until they are faced with their own mortality and like the foxhole conversion of atheists they tend to see their life differently when faced with the inevitable.

God is often a last resort for people and they only temporarily seek or want Him to be a Cosmic parent much in the same way a teenager at times only selfishly needs mom and dad to rescue them once again. This plea for help is an act of desperation, a last minute ditch effort to solicit the Almighty for a temporal favor while play acting in hopes of tricking God by pretending to be sincere.

The real reason why we avoid God at all costs is because of who He really is and this  problem far outweighs the circumstances in which we find ourselves in. Our most real or  significant problem is with God to begin with and sometimes it is only after we are in danger of falling off the roller coaster of life that we finally come to our senses by asking the more relevant or deeper questions which are of eternal significance. Prior to this we may have sloughed off God as being subliminal and superficial in preference to our independent thinking regarding our personal desires and needs. Some people would prefer to remain in this state of unresponsiveness as long as things are going their way and then when they aren’t then as a last resort they dust off their bibles.

The scripture bears out this animosity, hostility and estrangement by stating that our sinful nature does not sincerely seek after Him and that according to God’s standard of righteousness all have sinned and fallen short which leaves a person with a sense of  guilt and shame which in this respect only adds to their problems. Of course the good news is that God desires to “help” us and not abandon or leave us in the quagmire of His wrath and fury if we would just let Him.

Anyway there are many who have been left out in the cold of life and they just want to come close enough to God to benefit from the shelter and warmth that He provides in hopes of averting the flames. They may think of God as a one night stand in desiring the heat and comfort of divine intervention without a commitment.

Furthermore some have just opted to avoid or distance themselves entirely from God by justifying their defiance in blaming Him for the mess that we and our world are in and I addresses this further in another post that I written about regarding pain and suffering.

jesusandjews.com/wordpress/2009/05/17/pain-suffering-and-evil/

However on the flip side of this equation I believe that there are authentically genuine people of whom God’s allows them to be trapped in this maze of trouble as a means to seek and find Him.

This is accomplished as someone may find themselves hopelessly stranded in this hostile world of which we have been betrayed and hurt and therefore we initially respond by retreating to seek refuge with an omnipotent being which we think can readily defend us from the tsunamis of life by attending to our felt needs. The  humility that comes with this kind of awareness and responsiveness has led many down the path of repentance in realizing their true spiritual state or condition and instead of putting on a masquerade in hiding or pretending that they have it all together they realize life’s own shortcomings including their own. Now for others who arrogantly remain in a state of psychosis as being a self made person they succumb to the delusion of over estimating the human prodigy by viewing themselves as god and yet one day this will prove to be fatal as their vanity mirror becomes broken and shattered.

Finally the real tragedy to our life is not the temporal and earthly afflictions we find ourselves in but rather it is the weightier measure of eternity regarding our moral aptitude towards a holy God of which we must give an account. In saying this I don’t mean to be insensitive to your situation by underestimating the gravity of the problem because it is God who also helps us in our time of need in that “He is our refuge and our strength; an ever present help in trouble.” After all there were many people in the bible who asked for God’s help and the book of Psalms is full of such passages. Yet the greatest “help” God can ever give us is the gift of eternal life through the person and work of Jesus.

In conclusion some may only see God or Jesus as just a temporary advantage in providing them “help” such as He did when He fed the hungry bellies of the multitudes or like the Samaritan woman at the well who initially wanted Jesus to “help” quench her need for thirst. Both parties had legitimate and immediate needs but they failed to discern Jesus as the “Bread of Life” and the “Living Water” the likes of who alone could only really satiate the perpetual urgency of their souls.

In closing I really hope you find your source of “help” which is in God alone.

How to know God

Atheist and Agnostic Resources

English Articles on Atheism and Agnosticism

Some may ask the question ”Where is God” in retrospect to some cataclysmic disaster or calamity of which I have already written about in respect to the subject of evil in association with pain and suffering.

jesusandjews.com/wordpress/2009/05/17/pain-suffering-and-evil/

Others may view this matter in regards to the ontology of God which deals with His nature as pure being. This views depicts God as omnipresent with a disembodied spirit in which He is everywhere and is not subjected to the same limitations we have to time and space. This isn’t to be confused with the belief of pantheism which sees divinity as a part of the whole universe but rather God necessarily exists as a separate and distinct  being apart from the contingency of naturalistic or physical objects. He fills the world with His presence but in essence He is not the world.

I think more specifically what people are really wanting to know in regards to this question is does God really exist and is He a personal being? This matter can be approached philosophically but for the sake of  practically I am discussing this matter from a experiential level.

To begin there are several different ways in which God reveals Himself of which the first or primary one is universal or general in that God makes Himself know to all through the created order of the universe and also through a rational moral conscious.

Romans 1: 18-20

¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Psalms 19:1-4

¹The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

²Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they display knowledge.

³There is no speech or language

where their voice is not heard.

⁴Their voice goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world.

Romans 2:14-16

¹⁴ (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, ¹⁵ since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) ¹⁶ This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

Secondly there are those unique moments or less conventional methods in which there are special revelations as seen through a physical manifestation of God such as with an epiphany and this is something I have experienced once in a dream when I was a young child and others have also witnessed through their dreams. This phenomena of dreams is so powerful that religious Muslims have to come to faith in Jesus as a result of these dynamic encounters.

morethandreams.org/

Also I had a Jewish friend who wanted nothing to do with Jesus but in the final months of her life she actually had several visitations while she was in the hospital.

jesusandjews.com/wordpress/a-testimony-from-a-jewish-friend/

There have also been people who have experienced heaven and hell when undergoing a near death experience in which God was revealed to them as explained by a medical doctor in this video.

Near Death Experiences 

Additionally I have two close friends who had a NDE and described to me this very reality.

Finally there is another method of which God openly reveals Himself and that is through the person of Jesus Christ who is confirmed in the lives of His covenant people the church and Christians from all walks of life have a personal testimony which affirms their belief rather than mindlessly announcing and accepting some religious creed. I am including the testimonies of my family along with others which helps to establish the credibility of this claim.

jesusandjews.com/wordpress/my-personal-testimony-with-jesus/

jesusandjews.com/wordpress/my-wifes-personal-testimony-of-jesus/

www.cbn.com/700club/features/Amazing/

Another testable way in which Jesus is substantiated and that is through    the witness of prophecy of which God does nothing with out first revealing it to His prophets. The works of Jesus as found in the bible were spoken hundreds of years before He tread the sole of His foot on Israeli soil. What is interesting is that some of these scriptures could not be manipulated to be self fulfilling as these texts though congruent do not coincide as being simultaneous in time. Therefore the nature of His life and death including His healing and miracles could not be fabricated to fit His life story. So God uses the reasoning and intellect of prophetic revelation to help establish and confirm Jesus’ identity as divine apart from mere proclamation. So this isn’t just about some abstract concept of a mysterious faith but there is some concrete evidence which testifies to the reality of belief.

www.bibleprobe.com/365messianicprophecies.htm

Again Jesus did nothing in a corner and His miracles were evidenced by many but not always received and therefore the skeptics of that day are like some of the scientists of our age who were never converted but were always looking for new signs or explanations never being convinced by the empirical evidence they already had. Amazingly enough even ancient Jewish writings as found in the Talmud which is not sympathetic towards the historical Jesus gives Him credit for these undeniable acts even though they wrongly identify His inspiration as being under the control of sorcery.

Another matter when referring to the question about God displaying Himself it is not done in a way so as to merely satisfy our curiosity but He generally reveals Himself more specifically for a purpose so as to accept and  receive Him. This partial hiddenness of God is His prerogative and if you are acquainted with the gospel narratives of Jesus He spoke many times in parables which depicted a story that had a spiritual reality taken from a familiar or natural truth or setting and this was His chief way of teaching or communicating divine revelation regarding the illumination of His gospel and at the same time it served the purpose of concealing the message from the unbeliever.

In the same way that this message of truth was relayed by Jesus is very similar to how God reveals Himself which is mostly by being intuitively receptive to these various revelations in discerning the mysteries of His kingdom which otherwise would land on deaf ears. This is accomplished  as  we are divinely enabled by God to respond to His revelation through the eyes of faith by means of His own direct intervention as is symbolic of Peters famous confession “Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God” in which Jesus responded “that flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father who art in heaven.” This is characteristic of God who exposes Himself by drawing us to Him through the convincing and  convicting work of the Holy Spirit to facilitate belief apart from our own initiative.

Now regarding other corporate demonstrations from God another biblical example is when the children of Israel saw the miracles of Egypt and the providential care of God during their wilderness journey but nevertheless were given over to complaining and idolatry. This great exodus of people who originally came out of the land of Egypt never laid hold of the promises of God in the Holy land except for 2 members of this vast community. This is also true today as witnessed through the rebirth of modern Israel which is the fulfillment of the ancient vision of the dry bones of which Ezekiel saw and is now starting to come to pass through contemporary miraculous intervention of which ironically many of the people who have heard these stories continue to be secular. Thus “seeing” is not always “believing” and therefore does not necessitate faith by following after God.

www.bibleprobe.com/angelinlebanon.htm

In closing it could be that your questioning about “Where is God”  is coming from a defiant attitude towards Him in demanding a “show and tell” appearance as a smokescreen to somehow justify your unbelief? After all if God were to succumb to your appeal and appear to you today would you honestly be willing or prepared to accept Him as Lord and Savior? An honest answer towards your motivation may reveal the truth about why you think it is necessary for  God to meet your requirements or expectations and in turn this  may be the very hindrance which has kept you from knowing Him in a very real and personal way. The problem isn’t so much with our ability to be able to see and know because God is talking and revealing to some degree therefore the question is are we tuned in or are we listening to the static of anti-god rhetoric or being influenced by our societal or personal presuppositions and biased beliefs which interfere with a clean receptivity to the message?

If we were as attentive to God as we were to looking for Waldo when we were kids it wouldn’t  be that difficult to find God. Like Waldo He’s in the picture it just were not interested in discovering Him.

Lastly If you are not ready to make a commitment to God today then would you at least consider  the probabilities of my statements and be willing to investigate more according to some of the previous blogs which I have wrote?

Atheist /Agnostic/ Non-Theist

In conclusion God has revealed Himself rationally through nature, conscious, fulfilled prophecy and also experientially through the supernatural realms of modern day healings, miracles, visions and dreams yet more importantly or precisely He has made Himself known personally and intimately through Jesus who became flesh and dwelt among us who in turn has given the comforter or the Holy Spirit to indwell those who believe. So what more can we ask for besides just being directly translated to heaven?

Finally I would encourage you to pray in your own simple words for God to open you heart and reveal to you His truth concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ.

How to know God

Atheist and Agnostic Resources

English Articles on Atheism and Agnosticism