A Call to Arms
The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped; Psalm 28:7 NASB
Helped – So you’re up against it. That old feeling of helplessness, abandonment, anxiety, fear, worthlessness is back again. You thought you’d overcome it, but then something happened. Something you didn’t expect, weren’t prepared for. And suddenly you’re that little child again, afraid. It’s no use trying to convince yourself that you shouldn’t feel like this. You do! End of story. At this point the mind can’t talk the rest of you out of how you feel. When you try, discouragement and disappointment set in.
You must STOP trying to talk yourself out of this. You need rescue. You need help. You need the army to show up and defeat the bad guys for you. You need a God of ʿāzar. “Used approximately eighty times in the ot, ʿāzar generally indicates military assistance.”[1] That’s right. Military! Big guns and lots of ammo. Shock and awe. Rockets. Grenades. A nice .50 caliber wouldn’t be bad. All the stuff you aren’t allowed to have as a civilian, but just what God brings to the battle.
Just one thing. God brings reinforcements, not escape. You aren’t getting out of this fight. You are just going to participate in the victory. “It is absolutely pointless to ask God for something which we ourselves are not prepared to do.”[2] So, if you’re prepared to die to win your freedom, then God will show up and make sure you don’t. Otherwise He will probably leave you alone to fight by yourself until you come to the place where you know you cannot win (OR CONTROL) the battle without Him.
For some of us, especially those of us who are practiced in controlling life, we find it incredibly difficult to get to the place where we give up trying to win on our own. We usually think, “Well, I’ve made it this far. I can overcome (we hear sounds of the song in the background). I just need more __________ (you fill in the blank).” We have not yet come to die. We are not true patriots for the Kingdom. We are not prepared to be martyrs in the cause of our own freedom. So, God leaves us alone. And slowly we discover that we don’t have what it takes.
“Rescue me!” is not a cry for retreat. It is a cry for spiritual howitzers. God has them, close at hand, waiting for your call.
Topical Index: help, ʿāzar, rescue, Psalm 28:7
Tomorrow is Rosanne’s birthday. We will have some cake on the Sognefjord.
[1] Schultz, C. (1999). 1598 עָזַר. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 660). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray, p. 64.
Thank you,
I needed this words.
Please give Rosanne my greetings on her birthday tomorrow. May your day and the cake be great.
We either help ourselves to sin.
Or ask God’s help to remove us from it.
If we ask for His help, we have to realize who He sends to our aid: Himself!
For many, that’s way too much information to assimilate. For the few there be
that who find Him, there is no larger discovery or revelation in life.
Nothing possibly outweighs His presence which stays with us and interplays
with us in and through every big or minutia moment of our lives.
How well we tune into Him is how well we’ve learned to tune ourselves out.
Either sin wins or He does.
There’s no gray.
Rich, this is fabulous!!! Thank you for this concise, clear, deep, practical and useful truth.
Happy Birthday Rosanne. It only happens once a year so please enjoy it greatly.
Skip, you wrote, “So, if you’re prepared to die to win your freedom, then God will show up and make sure you don’t. Otherwise He will probably leave you alone to fight by yourself until you come to the place where you know you cannot win (OR CONTROL) the battle without Him.” I don’t want to hear this… but I have to. After 17 years of crippling chronic Lyme disease (misdiagnosed as “fibromyalgia” with no treatment until very recently), I’m so tired of this suffering… of being in this beaten-up body. I’ve prayed so very many times for YHVH to take me… but then I remember Job. Tho He slay me, I will trust in Him. That’s not giving up. That’s giving in to make room for azar.
This illness that has most definitely re-defined “life as I knew it” for my husband, Ric and me, is allowed by my Maker in order to refine me/us to His pleasure. Most of the time, I don’t have enough working brain, eye site or concentration/comprehension to enjoy my Bible… but His Voice is inside of the very depths of myself.
My experience is that after you understand and accept the tutor, receive the lesson you get the release into a bigger sphere of understanding=wisdom and discernment. Game changers are never easy to accept but then that’s just the way it really works.
Daria, please email me @ Jeffandlesli88@gmail.com
Again the hard stuff. “Nothing befalls us that is not common to man” an apostle reminds us so I’ll share one of the more painful lessons of my time on the cross. I’ve been getting really good a staying on my cross, going through the death of the yetzer ha’ra. The resurrection life that follows the death of to the false self is so worth it. Yet the hardest part of the cross I have found is the judgment from the brethren. We can be judged for the very nails used to hold us on our crosses by those who do not care or take the time to understand. Skip enjoy the Fjord, the cake and your lovely Rosanne! Rosanne enjoy it all! Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday Rosanne, I look forward to meeting you in person one day!
Be encouraged Daria, chronic illness & pain is so often misunderstood. You are not alone and you are loved. All of it fits into His purpose. Please pray for my family also. We are trying to get a correct diagnosis and treatment for our son.
Sending a thank you and a prayer for a Happy Birthday to the special lady who adds beauty to Skip’s days.
An early happy b day to Mrs, Moen!!
A Very Happy Birthday to you, Rosanne!
Happy birthday, Rosanne!
“We have not yet come to die.”
I fought the world, and the world won.
I fought myself, and I lost.
I fought God, and He disappeared.
“Dying to sin” means just that. “Crucifying the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal. 5:24) means I DIE!
I am the problem. Sin agrees, and accordingly is set to wipe me out. Why would we rather die along with our flesh than face this in the spirit? Pride. The story of Job is the story of a man who slowly lets his pride go. Job learned what life really is all about. So must we.
It always comes as a total shock to the flesh that life is not about it. To the extent we think we ARE our flesh, we share that shock. Only life can teach us this, now, post Tree. We all have to experience what Job did to see it.
Leviathan has us all by the throat in a death grip, but if (or when) we wake up from that nightmare, we find our own hands around our own throats. Those “big guns” we all need? Um, that would be the heavy curses convincing us to let go of our own throats. Everything else has already been done. We are always the last ones to show up to our own release party. Thank you, Yeshua!