God Helps Those Who Help Themselves Is Not In The Bible

[Jesus excited to see how you’re managing to pull yourself out of the mire without any help from him.]

You probably need some motivation to get yourself up and going this morning. I know I do. Let’s head over to twitter, that great rushing stream of human wisdom and understanding, and see what we can find. Wait, what’s that? You don’t want to go near twitter for any reason? Oh well, I’ll pick up my cross and do it for you. Here are three fresh #thursdaythoughts to cheer and restore you for your difficult day.

Tweet Number One
A motivational twitter presence of some kind offers this to get you off your feet even before you’ve had a single cup of coffee or one of those energy drinks made out of sugar and the hearts of unicorns. There’s no graphic so you’ll just have to imagine a mountain climber cresting the summit, looking out over the valley, and realizing that it was all a stupid waste of time.

7 POWERFUL WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE:
1. Be kind.
2. Always do what’s right.
3. Stay open-never stop learning.
4. Organize your life.
5. Surround yourself with positive
people.
6. Nurture your mind, body, and
soul.
7. Practice gratitude.

Oh, is that all?
What is it about lists? I mean, I know God makes lists, and his are just as impossible.
Don’t lie
Don’t steal
Don’t worship yourself and other false gods
Don’t covet
These can all be gathered up under our tweeter’s #2 “Always do what’s right.” Really? That’s your helpful ThursdayThought? That and “Organize your life” would mean that, truly, the world can easily be transformed into a shiny golden place where nothing ever goes wrong for any reason. Organize your life forsooth. This must be akin to the Just Be Rich solution to all life’s little problems. This one is Just Be Perfect. Oh wait, Jesus literally said that and then pushed along swiftly to the cross to die in the place of all us rubes who were desperately trying since it is literally humanly impossible to “Always do what’s right.” Gah.

I don’t have the heart to go through the rest of the list. Let’s find another tweet.

Tweet Number Two

Well, this is a nice twist on ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ That’s quite the word, “ONLY.” Wow. Well, that should get you up and moving. God will only help you if you first help yourself. And so you better get cracking if you want any help from God. Why are you crying? Oh…you don’t know how to help yourself? You tried that already and you still can’t get out of bed? Oh no! You are sick and can’t even get out of bed…and you could die? Goodness. Well, too bad God won’t help you because you haven’t been helping yourself.

No. That’s not how it works. God helps those who cannot help themselves and most especially desperately cry out to him for help because they tried and then realized they were going to die anyway and there was no way to avoid both temporal defeat and eternal darkness. What is it that guy in the Bible said? Something about the waters rising up to his neck, the cords of Sheol entangling him, but then he cried out and the Lord heard his cry and rescued him and brought him out of many waters and then even gave him eternal life? It’s in there somewhere.

God helps those who throw themselves on his merciful goodness in panicked desperation, having tried everything and realized that everything was fruitless and there was no way out. There they are, lying in the puddle of personal ruin and fear and he pours out his favor and goodness and grace to rescue them from sin, death, darkness, and all the other stuff that is keeping them from getting out of bed on this fine Thursday morning. As I said before, Gah.

Tweet Number Three

Oh, that’s rich. Hope you even have feet. And the desire to even go anywhere. God is sitting there in his comfortable armchair watching you and waiting for you to get it together so that he can guide you. If you don’t get up out of your chair onto your feet he won’t do anything for you. Poor sucker. Maybe you should go back up through Tweet Number Two and Tweet Number One to try and get some direction in your life.

You know what I wish God would guide more people to do? Except that he probably won’t because he’s probably not using twitter as his primary mode of communicating with the human community. I wish he would guide people to do the small, inconsequential, unseen, unselfish things that make life normal and decent. I wish God would guide all people to get out of bed and face suffering, and do honest narrow work, and be kind to others. Because I know, no matter what Tweet Number One says, that it is those small things that are so hard. One because we all want to be bigger and grander and more important than we are, and Two because we generally lack real power to do ordinary but difficult things.

Funny though, because when you ask for something that you lack, God gives more grace. He gives everything that you need. If you’re lying there in a hospital bed, not able to get on your feet without a crushing measure of pain, and you ask and say, ‘Help Me,’ he moves in your spirit to make that moment bearable. He lifts the weight of it off of you and on to himself. If you, like me, are lying in bed cursing not the darkness but the tepid, gray, cold March sky, crushed by a week of failure, all you have to do is beg, “Help me.” And he does. He relieves the despair, he gives strength to get up and face the laundry or whatever it is.

Oh, I know, begging is the worst. No one wants to beg. Better to try again one more time on your own rather than begging for God’s mercy. No one wants to be boil encrusted Lazarus lying at the gate of the rich man, begging for what falls from his gorgeous table. I’d rather be hangry, complaining that he has a table and I don’t, trying to shift around so that I can have a better angle to scrape my spiritual sores with my potshard. I don’t want to humiliate myself to ask for help until I’ve already exhausted all other avenues—even twitter.

Too bad that ‘God helps those who help themselves’ is not in the Bible. God helps those who, out of deep need, go crying, humiliated and weak, to him for help. #ThursdayThoughts