My Help Comes From _______

“My Help Comes From ________”

By Zach Wood

Psalm 121:1-2 NIV

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

We all long to receive wisdom through our lives.  As we grow up through childhood, our parents and other family members help to teach us things we need to learn.  We also receive instructions and learning from teachers at school.  As we continue to grow through our lives, we learn valuable lessons from various people that we come into contact with.

Some people we meet give us bad advice, while others give us great advice.  We are always searching for insight and direction in life.  It is wonderful to gain insight and wisdom from people who care enough to love on us and share with us valuable life experiences to help us avoid the same pain and mistakes. 

We not only look to people for wisdom and insight, but often we end up looking to worldly things for insight and direction.  We often turn to many things for help, other than God, when times get tough.  We turn so often to temporary happiness through worldly promises that end up becoming an epic fail.  This often brings pain, and sometimes tragedy, into our lives.  We are desperate to grab onto something that brings temporary help.  So often these things just provide a band-aid solution to our problems and don’t give us the long-term help we need.

I am so guilty of turning to earthly sources of wisdom instead of turning to what God tells me and how He wants to directs me.  We need to be honest and examine our lives and fill in this blank, “My help comes from __________.”  Where does our help come from?  What are we putting our hope in?  Where are we turning to?  Who are we going to?  What are we going to?  What do we rely on most?  What instant satisfaction do we turn to when stressful times come?

The answers may make us cringe.  Is God really our true source of help in all times of need?  We often answer “Yes” right away, but if we’re completely honest, He is often not Who we go to first.  We have so many opportunities and temptations at our disposal to turn to when we need help.  However, the only true and wisest source we can go to is God.  We shouldn’t rely on our own ideas and what we know.  We must turn to Almighty God.  Most of us are fortunate to have good and trusting family and friends who will share Godly insight and advice to us suggesting that we pray and ask God for complete wisdom. 

Who or what is your true source of help?  Every day, I am praying that God will be my only source of help.  I want to listen and be attentive to Him and not turn to the worldly ways of temporary help. 

Wisdom and advice from others is beneficial, but our main source needs to always be God.

Hold Tight And Trust In Him

“Hold Tight And Trust In Him”

By Zach Wood

Hebrews 10:23 NLT

Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.

We hold tightly onto many things.  Some things we hold onto a little tighter than others because of how important they are.  We hold tight to our kids when surrounded by a large crowd and when there is a lot of traffic so that they don’t get lost or hurt.  We hold tight to something fragile if we are surrounded by moving objects or other people that could bump into us causing them to fall. 

Kids certainly hold tight to parents when something scary is surrounding them or they feel a certain fear of their surroundings.  They don’t want to let go.  They feel secure as long as the parent is holding on.  We like to be secure and we like to feel secure about things we hold close.  We want to protect and keep from harm. 

In this passage, we see a call to persevere.  We are told to hold close to the hope and faith we have in Christ because He can be trusted.  There are a lot of things in this life that offer promises, but we know that only Christ can truly be trusted to keep His promise.  We can trust Him especially because He died for us on the Cross, was buried and then rose from the dead to conquer death!  He is alive and fully worthy of being trusted.

Now, let me be clear that trusting in Christ is not to say that we will have a trouble-free or pain-free life.  Holding onto Him and trusting in Him does not mean there will not be times in life when our faith and trust in Him is not tested.  It sure will be!  I have heard so many stories and examples of people who have trusted in Christ, but then when hard times come, they give up and lose faith claiming that God does not love them or is not with them. 

God never once said “In this life, you will never have problems and life will be filled with easy times. “  God never said this and never will.  We are guaranteed there will be troubles and problems.  However, just as Christ has overcome troubles, we also can over come through Him. 

Out of all the years I have been a Christian, I am so very thankful I have God in my life because I know I would have given up on life long before now if I did not have God to trust.  I have gone through some pretty tough times where I doubted and my faith was really put to the test.  Even recent times in my life, I have had those tests and it became hard.  However, all that God has done in my past taught me to hold on and stay faithful.  It is hard when things do not make any sense and to keep going.  But, stay faithful and hold tight to Him, no matter what! 

Let us hold tight to the hope we have in God because He truly can be trusted.