It’s Ok To Get Help
Psalm 51: 1-4 & 6-7
JOHN 15: 18-27
October 24, 2021
Since we were little children it has been ingrained into our very souls in the culture we live in … that if you ask for help … you are showing a sign of weakness. If you admit that you can’t make it on your own somehow you are a failure and who amongst us wants to be classified as the one who didn’t succeed?
Walt Whitman in his majestic poem, ‘Leaves of Green,’ reflects the societal expectations that I believe has pulled people away from each other as well as from God, “Not, I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”
You must go for it on your own … on water and land. Right? No one else … pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, right?
Today, we are continuing to consider holiness and the importance of you and I getting closer to God. I want us to begin to understand that one of the very essential elements of human nature is our need to seek help, to embrace those who help us, and never again to attempt to get through the storms of life alone. We need to focus on our relationship with God and once again raise God to God’s proper level as a power we cannot understand but need to worship and love … The One who created the universe down to the finite details of each living creature, which is something that continues to go beyond human comprehension.
Friends, God in God’s grace … God through God’s love has called out to humanity, which is lost in our sinfulness and self-created chaotic storms to turn back to Jehovah … to recognize God … “Turn your eyes upon Jesus,, look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim … in the light of His glory and grace.”
As people of faith, we need to be in alignment with God. As people of faith, it is easy to declare God loves us … Jesus loves us but somehow we have allowed the universe around us to create a chasm between the relationship God longs for and the one we embrace.
In the 4th century, Saint Augustine wrote, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” Martin Luther shared these thoughts, “We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves us is never alone.” You see, God is with us at each step of our journey … Scripture teaches us that God “knows every bird in the mountains” … so if he knows the birds why is it hard to understand that God has the power and capability of loving each of us as if there were only one of us? A personal relationship God and you, God and me. TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS, right?
James writes, “Come close to God and God will come close to you.” However the challenge is making the active decision to come close to God … prayer, reading God’s Word, worship, Communion, mission, solitude, getting along the still waters, and more.
Jerry Bridges in his book The Chase writes, [1]“You have to trust God with the way he works. If you really want to experience holiness in your everyday life, you have to accept the fact that God, in his infinite wisdom, allows a daily battle to go on within you. But, he doesn’t leave the fighting to you alone.”
“Help I need somebody; not just anybody. Help you know I need someone Help!” John Lennon who wrote the lyrics to the Beatles’ 1965 hit song admitted to the world, “I never needed anybody’s help in any way … Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the door. Help me if you can!”
Every single one of us … every human who has ever breathed the air needs God’s help. The psalmist in our reading for today makes it very clear, “Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love! Wash me completely clean of my guilt; purify me from my sin. Because I KNOW MY WRONGDOINGS … my sin is always right in front of me.” Now, I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the door to You God, HELP ME IF YOU CAN!
And, friends … of course God can … God will … we just have to ask and believe.
The door we need to open in our faith life is intentionally connecting to God’s holiness. To be ready to pray without ceasing when we need to. To find quiet spots amidst the chaos where we can pause and pay attention to God’s reply to us. We need to revert back to the first moments of our faith walk when we absolutely and truly believed in God and Christ not diverted by the world’s debates about politics or fashion distracted by all of the things we want to do for us but instead being in tune with the process of being the Light of Christ in this world.
Most of us know the story of Paul who was Saul. His experience on the road to Damascus where God reached out to this leader of the hate crowd turning him around and using Paul to teach the early churches as well as teaching us about faith. Paul endured actual prison but also struggles in life but he found his focus on the prize of eternal life while also knowing joy in this life. “Rejoice in the Lord always! Again I say rejoice!!”
It was in his letter to the church in Philippi that Paul truly reveals to us the value of getting close to God’s holiness. He does this through an evaluation of who he was and who God calls him to be. It was in this letter that my faith was returned to me when I had given up on God.
In the fourth chapter Paul writes, “Actually I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.”
HELP ME … I need someone but when we consider that we are created in God’s Holy Image. That we are engaged in our faith through our baptism as children but then allowed to grow in faith through Sunday School, Confirmation, and into adulthood … we should be finding comfort as well as a remarkable closeness to the holy by opening up the door and calling HELP to our God. To become humble in recognizing who we are not individuals who have to go searching for boot straps so we can pull ourselves up by this purely human creation but instead the children of God knowing we need God’s help and also through the church we can find the help of the faithful.
Jesus in our Gospel lesson says the world might actually hate us but then he points out the world hated Him. The world frankly still hates the Son of God especially the teachings of Jesus … just listen to your radio’s or check out your social media to discover the daily rants against everything that Jesus stands for … against everything that Jesus taught. He said, “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. “. And, friends then there is the BUT or in this case the however as Jesus continues, “However, I have chosen YOU out of the world and you don’t belong to the world. This is why the world will hate you.” TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS …
Remember the first Scripture reading that I asked you to read in this sermon series. Not just one time but every day for a week? Did the words from Hebrews 12 verses 12 through 14 remain with you? “Take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong. Seek to live a clean and holy life.”
Peter writes, “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares for you.” Paul writes to the church in Corinth, “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed but not driven to despair. We are hunted down BUT NEVER ABANDONED BY GOD!”
And, God gives us a guide … but friends we have to accept this companion. We cannot be out embracing the world and denying that we need to be asking for God’s help and guidance each day and then expect God’s Holy Spirit to rescue us. To get closer to God … to get in align with God’s holiness we need to admit who we are … our failures .. our need for God’s forgiveness but we also need to pray that we sense God’s gift … Jesus declared it and at Pentecost the early church vividly received it. A gift from God that the church of the 21st century desperately needs to admit we need … we are in such need of God’s help today because we can’t get through another day without God.
Jesus declared, “When the Companion comes, whom I will send from the Father — the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father — He will testify about me.” And, then friends Jesus reveals what will happen when we listen … when we follow … when we love God … when we trust God … “You will testify too, because you have been with me from the beginning.”
The Holy Spirit helps bring us back to God. When you go home today or if you are watching online when the service ends read the Psalm of the day again … ask God to help you get purified from your sins. HELP from the HOLY; wouldn’t that be something but help takes action on our part.
Paul writes in Philippians, “It is God who works in you enabling you to want and to actually live our God’s good purpose.”
So, today I want to leave you with two proposals that cannot happen until you are ready to admit that you need God’s help with your life. And, it’s ok to get help from God and it definitely is part of our relationship with God to admit we need God’s help.
The first proposal is nothing new from me. We each need to consistently and prayerfully read God’s Word. We have to admit with need God’s help through God’s world because as Bridges writes, [2]“It is hypocritical to pray for victory over your sins yet totally neglect your intake of God’s Word, God’s basic means of communicating with you.” We need to come to the Word of God knowing why we need God.
The second is to pray for holiness. This does not mean we are praying for some super power but that we are regularly asking God to give us an understanding of what God wants to do through our lives. In Colossians, Paul refers to this as our “learning to know God better and better.” In Thessalonians Paul writes, “May the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together —spirit, soul, and body — to keep fit for the coming of our Master Jesus Christ. May the Lord make your love grow and overflow to each other and to everyone else. As a result, Christ will make your hearts strong, blameless, and holy when you stand before God our Father.”
Bridges says, [3]“You can’t do this thing called Christian life on your own.”
We know we need to love … Love God and Love all our neighbors but we need the courage friends to push aside the human instructions to try to get through life on our own and instead choose the faith walk trusting in God … loving God … turning to God for help … accepting the Holy Spirit and each day TURN OUR EYES UPON JESUS.
AMEN
[1] THE CHASE by Jerry Bridges published by NavPress
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid