HELP!

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed somebody else’s help to get out of the mess you were in?  Not long ago, I was riding my motorcycle on some country roads between Spartanburg and Anderson.  The sun was shining, the birds were singing – what could possibly go wrong?  Well, out in the middle of nowhere, on those beautiful back roads of South Carolina, miles from anything, my gear shifting lever was loose and I couldn’t change the gears.  No problem I thought, I’ll just pull out my tool bag and fix the problem.

Well, that’s where the problem began.  As I went into my bags to get my hand-dandy tool Kit, I realized I had taken them out to clean the bike and forgot to put them back in the bike.  So, after I spent all the time I could trying to adjust the shifting lever by hand, and realizing how futile that was – and after realizing that no matter how long I looked at the gears, they simply were not going to fix themselves.  It was at that point, I realized, no matter how much I tried with my hands, and no matter how long I stared it, if somebody didn’t stop to help me, I was going to have a very long afternoon.

You know what?  We all have those times in our Spiritual lives.  Those times where one minute everything is going great, and out of nowhere, things go very wrong and we realize that we are powerless to do anything about it on our own – we need somebody to help us.

Sadly, too often we turn to everyone around us for help, when we should have turned to Jesus for help.  Too often, it’s not until we are put in a place that we have no control over, a place where we have nowhere else to turn, that we “turn to Jesus and look full in His Wonderful Face,” to get the help that we need.

When the fiery furnace seems to be heated seven times hotter, when that fire seems to be burning longer than usual, and no matter what you do, you realize you are in a situation beyond your control, be thankful that you can look “unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”