When I think about the way we forge our own trails or the ways in which we might feel helpless and stuck, I think about how often we need help but aren’t willing to ask for it.
Do you ask for help? If so, what kind of help do you ask for?
Are you looking for others to change or are you willing to explore the possibilities of change within yourself?
Are you looking for circumstances to simply get better, or are you exploring what God has for you in the midst of the challenging times?
In yesterday’s post (Day 2 of 31 Choices We Can All Make When We Feel Stuck), I referred to a woman who sounded helpless and most likely she believed she was. She referred to needing help when her car wouldn’t start, or when she wanted a different Bible study time which worked for her.
She wanted help by way of changed circumstances and other people doing what she expected.
What she didn’t request, which is something many of us neglect asking for, is help where she needed it most. Even when brought to her attention, she struggled to acknowledge needing help in dealing with her feelings of hurt and helplessness.
She needed to be empowered to act on her own behalf, she needed comfort, and she needed community. The counselors heard her unspoken cry for help. They addressed her need to be seen, heard, and known. The lovingly exhorted this exploration with her.
It’s a need we all have and it lives in the core of our being. Yet, how often do we shove aside our desire to be seen, loved, and known by others, thinking we can fix it all ourselves?
We simply can’t find fulfillment in the areas most desperately longed for if we refuse to notice our need for help from God and others.
I empathized with this woman because I’ve felt the depth of pain which comes when depression weighs heavily and you desperately need rescue. I know what it’s like to live with the loop of negativity which reiterates to your heart over and over again that no one cares.
It sucks.
The more you think you can’t do anything, the more you start to believe it. On the other hand, the more you think you have to do it all, the more you believe that too. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
God doesn’t ask us to do everything, but we can do something. Asking for help is a powerful something.
In all things, we need help. While we, as Christ followers, have great power available to us by the Holy Spirit, we will miss out on the fruits of this power if we don’t choose it.
Sometimes, the way the Spirit guides us through tough situations is to get help from others around us. This may be friends, neighbors, family, community, or even professional help at times.
Choose to ask the Holy Spirit for help and choose to receive God’s way of providing it.
God is our help and provider. He also uses others to bring about his ways. His help is varied and plentiful. His way of helping looks different to different people and even to ourselves in different seasons. Let’s never assume we know what his help looks like or what it should be. Rather, let us choose today to seek His help and to be willing to receive it when it comes.
Today, I leave you with the reminder of a little story you may have heard many times before. The gist is that a man asked God to save him from the flood waters which kept rising into his home. He had several offers for help which he declined. In the end he perished in the flood. When in heaven, he asked God why he didn’t save him. God’s reply was that he had sent many options for help, but the man refused them all.
You can read one version of this widely circulated tale here.
God does indeed offer us many means of help, and sometimes those means can seem scary, unpleasant, or downright painful. Yet, they are the way God has for us and He will not leave us alone in the challenge.
We may be tested, but in the end we find a God who’s help is far better than what we could have even known to ask for.
When the waters are rising in your circumstances, and you feel more stuck than ever. Ask for help. Ask God. Ask others.
May our pride not get in the way of recognizing the uncompromising ways of God to accomplish his best purpose in us.
[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@theJoleneU”]God doesn’t ask us to do everything, but we can do something. Ask for help.[/tweetthis]
[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@”]Choose to ask the Holy Spirit for help and choose to receive God’s way of providing it.[/tweetthis]
[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@theJoleneU”]Are you waiting for your circumstances to change when God wants something else? Choose help.[/tweetthis]
