Psalm
107:13 - Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from
their distress.
Our daughter grew up with a little stubborn streak in her (I told her she gets it from her mother!). Even as a little girl she wanted to prove she "could do it herself" on just about everything. There was a constant pattern in those younger years of her taking on something, us trying to help her, her rejecting our help, then her getting frustrated and angry and finally giving up, crying out to us and mad we didn't "help her". It would have been comical had it not been our process at times too.
The only way out of our pit of sin is to find the bottom of hopelessness. It's when we stop thinking that we will get away with it or that someone will rescue us from the consequences that we give up our pride and cry out for help.
We see crying out for help as weakness and failure, but God sees it as humility and cooperation. He doesn't love us less for it, just like we didn't love our daughter less when she couldn't do something. It is part of development to need help.
Hopelessness is about realizing the answer is not in me. It is the moment when we can no longer manufacture the solution and must own up to the truth. Then we give up trying, and cry out to someone else for help. It is the bottom of the pit.
This Psalm shows how God is patient enough to let us hit bottom before He acts to help. But then He is faithful at saving us when we do finally hit bottom. And He knows when we are faking a bottom...so He waits until we get there.
Our sin will eventually take us to the bottom of the pit. In fact, sin and guilt drive us down there, and you know it is happening when we try to fix the problem ourselves, or run from our situation, or expect someone else to fix it for us, or blame everyone else for our situation. Expecting to be saved is not hopelessness.
Crying out to God is no about how many tears I shed or how whiny my voice gets. It is when I drop my expectations and let God have total control of what happens. It's not about helplessness but hopelessness---I am no longer living for my dreams but choosing to let God accomplish His dreams for me, including being in a pit. That's the moment God is looking for, when we stop living for our own expectations and are ready to know His.
But the day you cry out is the day He starts the rescue effort! It takes some work & change to come out of the pit, and He continues to work on us. Buy the salvation has begun. People may see us as being in the pit still, but we already know something has changed on the inside. Our hopelessness has led to a relationship. We are being saved from the pit of our own self.
So don't be afraid to get hopeless. Don't resist the humility of crying out to God. And know that the day we give up our expectations is the day the pit changes into a mountain to climb. Trust the God in this Psalm to be there when you are ready to finally get hopeless.
Our daughter grew up with a little stubborn streak in her (I told her she gets it from her mother!). Even as a little girl she wanted to prove she "could do it herself" on just about everything. There was a constant pattern in those younger years of her taking on something, us trying to help her, her rejecting our help, then her getting frustrated and angry and finally giving up, crying out to us and mad we didn't "help her". It would have been comical had it not been our process at times too.
The only way out of our pit of sin is to find the bottom of hopelessness. It's when we stop thinking that we will get away with it or that someone will rescue us from the consequences that we give up our pride and cry out for help.
We see crying out for help as weakness and failure, but God sees it as humility and cooperation. He doesn't love us less for it, just like we didn't love our daughter less when she couldn't do something. It is part of development to need help.
Hopelessness is about realizing the answer is not in me. It is the moment when we can no longer manufacture the solution and must own up to the truth. Then we give up trying, and cry out to someone else for help. It is the bottom of the pit.
This Psalm shows how God is patient enough to let us hit bottom before He acts to help. But then He is faithful at saving us when we do finally hit bottom. And He knows when we are faking a bottom...so He waits until we get there.
Our sin will eventually take us to the bottom of the pit. In fact, sin and guilt drive us down there, and you know it is happening when we try to fix the problem ourselves, or run from our situation, or expect someone else to fix it for us, or blame everyone else for our situation. Expecting to be saved is not hopelessness.
Crying out to God is no about how many tears I shed or how whiny my voice gets. It is when I drop my expectations and let God have total control of what happens. It's not about helplessness but hopelessness---I am no longer living for my dreams but choosing to let God accomplish His dreams for me, including being in a pit. That's the moment God is looking for, when we stop living for our own expectations and are ready to know His.
But the day you cry out is the day He starts the rescue effort! It takes some work & change to come out of the pit, and He continues to work on us. Buy the salvation has begun. People may see us as being in the pit still, but we already know something has changed on the inside. Our hopelessness has led to a relationship. We are being saved from the pit of our own self.
So don't be afraid to get hopeless. Don't resist the humility of crying out to God. And know that the day we give up our expectations is the day the pit changes into a mountain to climb. Trust the God in this Psalm to be there when you are ready to finally get hopeless.
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