How Christians Get Help From God
The Lord God works through the prayers of His people
I was browsing for a gift. Nothing specific was coming to mind, but I wanted to get a gift for someone that would be specific to them, and not get just a generic gift card.
Sometimes it’s easy. You’re cruising along and see it. “Oh, this would be perfect,” you exclaim. Other times you look and shop and browse, with nothing jumping out.
That was me. I’d wandered in to a specialty shop for a quick look. I knew there was a family game they liked, but couldn’t remember the name.
“May I help you?” asked a clerk. I wasn’t really looking for help, but since she asked, I tried to describe the game and after a bit of searching, she found it. That made getting the gift much easier.
How many times do we need help but just don’t ask for it? If you’re like me, all the time! That stubborn refusal to ask for help is often pride. But I’m realizing there is no shame in asking for assistance with most anything we cannot do as well ourselves.
And the Lord wants to ask for His help to break us of that pride.
We Christians must never forget that God the Almighty rules overs all His creation. He is the maker — and sustainer, of heaven and earth; He rules over the world, and even the wind and waves obey Him.
As He rules the earth, He rules over us, by prayer. Our prayers enlist His help, aid, and assistance, and His grace, favor and blessings. These truth lessons need to be emphasized again and again in our present day. And we need to remind those in this generation who have no vision for the eternal things of God.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’
Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD;
And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth,
And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
Isaiah 58:9, 14
Prayer is Essential to God
Nothing is more important to God than prayer in dealing with mankind. But it is likewise all-important to man to pray. Failure to pray is failure along the whole line of life.
E. M. Bounds
We must understand that God helps us by prayer, that is, we get our help from God by our praying — our asking, supplications, requests, pleadings, and so on. Those who do not or will not pray are simply robbing themselves of God’s help.
According to Bounds, prayer concerns God, whose purposes and plans are conditioned on prayer. His will and His glory are bound up in prayer. God’s great activity and actions in the world have been conditioned on, continued, and fashioned by our praying.
Think of the Lord’s working to bring Israel from slavery in Egypt. It had it’s beginning in prayer, and thus praying became part of the working of God upon the world. Hannah’s petition for a son began a great movement of prayer to God. And the list goes on. The movements of God’s helping through the whole of Scripture can find it’s roots in prayer.
Be refreshed in faith this day by the fact that — as Bounds puts it, “God holds His church for the entire world, and that God’s purposes will be fulfilled.” Be certain the prayers of God’s saints are a great factor, a supreme factor, in carrying forward God’s work.
The Lord works through the prayers of His people, and when we fail Him along this line, we see chaos, decay, falling away, and all manner of compromise and worldliness seep into our lives and the world around us.
God’s praying saints are agents on earth for carrying on His work; praying agents are always the forerunners of spiritual prosperity. “Prayer carries us back to God,” says Bounds, and recognizes the Lord and brings His help into the world. It must not be relegated to a sometimes activity, or a secondary ministry, or attended to by a few only—it is essential for the proper carrying on of the Lord’s work!
May we not be too busy or too prideful to pray. May we give ourselves to the ministry of praying, so that we might recognize that the working of the Almighty in the Church and upon the world is dependent upon a praying people.
Notes taken from The Weapon Of Prayer, by E. M. Bounds, Chapter 1, Prayer Essential To God, p 9, reprinted by Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, copyright 1931 by Fleming H Revell Company