God is With You and For You!

When you were a little child did you sometimes not ask for help in some things because you thought people would laugh at you? It would make you look silly, stupid even?

Does this feeling even happen now as you are older? You don’t want people to think you are weird, incapable, un-educated……

You don’t want to even have the possibility of embarrassment if people think your thoughts or way of thinking is strange.

Do we take this mindset with us when we ask for God’s help?

Maybe He will laugh at us? Roll His eyes and think we are so incapable.

Ahah No! That is NOT the way God is or thinks.

As we close the year and enter a new one may we approach the Lord with confidence and call upon Him for our every need. He likes that we ask Him, acknowledge our need for Him.

In the book of Hebrews God’s mindset about us and our needs is described so well.

So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.

Hebrews 4:16 NLT

Solomon, a King in the Old Testament who was given the gift of wisdom, put his thoughts down in the Book of Kings.

 “But will God really live on earth? Why, even the highest heavens cannot contain you. How much less this Temple I have built! Nevertheless, listen to my prayer and my plea, O Lord my God. Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is making to you today. May you watch over this Temple night and day, this place where you have said, ‘My name will be there.’ May you always hear the prayers I make toward this place. May you hear the humble and earnest requests from me and your people Israel when we pray toward this place. Yes, hear us from heaven where you live, and when you hear, forgive.

1 Kings 8:27-30 NLT

He had just built the temple and was praying a Prayer of dedication of this temple/Church to God. He questioned first that God would even come and dwell in a man-made temple and then called upon God’s mercy to hear his prayers.

God wants us, with no timidity or indignity, to boldly share our weaknesses with Him and know that God will reach down and bless us with mercy and love.

So, know this…

He is with you and is for you!

Take this wonderful truth into the closing and opening of another year.

May God Bless all of you with His abundant love and show you Himself more into 2024.

May these jottings from my journal inspire you to believe in and fall in love with Christ- the hope of the world, as stated in Jeremiah 17:7, ‘Blessed is the man who believes and trusts in and relies on the Lord and whose hope and confident expectation is the Lord!’

Love

Rosemary

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Have you found it difficult to ask for help in the past? If so, why?

As we close one year and enter a new one, how will you approach God with your needs?