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.