Sunday MattersSample

Corporate worship is designed to encourage you to cry for help to the one who always knows exactly what you need and who will meet you with boundless love, infinite wisdom, incalculable power, and inexhaustible grace.

All too often we find it hard to reach out for help. Yes, we know we weren’t designed to go it alone and we know we are less than perfect, but we still hesitate to say, “I’m not doing well, and I need help.” Often pride props up an external veneer that keeps those around us thinking we’re doing just fine, when we are not fine. Pride makes us want to project that we are mature, wise, and capable. So when asked how we’re doing, we’ll give platitudinous non-answers like “Things have been tough, but the Lord is good.” Or we’ll give situational answers to personal questions. Someone asks us how we are, and we say, “It’s been a rough week.” Notice that there is no personal information there. You have talked about the situation, but not about how you are doing in dealing with it. All this keeps us from getting the help that we all need.

The reality is that each one of us is unfinished, still in the middle of God’s lifelong work of maturing and transforming grace. We all live in a broken world that is groaning, waiting for redemption (Rom. 8:22–23). We all face things that God has brought into our lives that we would have never chosen or planned for ourselves. So we all face moments when we feel unprepared, confused, inadequate, disappointed, grieved, or fearful, and we’re not sure how to think about or respond to what is now on our plate. We all know that we fall short of God’s holy standard. We all know that there is more for us to learn and understand about God’s will and plan for us. We all know that we still need to do a better job of living in light of what we say we believe.

Perhaps your marriage is more of a struggle that you thought it would ever be. Maybe you’re overwhelmed at the task of making sure your disabled child has every resource he needs. Or maybe there’s a heartbreaking conflict in your extended family. Perhaps things in your life have caused you to silently doubt the goodness of God. Maybe as a Christian in a secular university you are tired of being misjudged, misunderstood, and mocked for your faith. Maybe you’ve been hurt by your church, and you don’t know what to do next. Or you may be living with the sting of the disloyalty of someone you thought was your best friend. Maybe you’re confronting the physical and relational trials of old age. The reality is that all of us need help all of the time.

To be human is to need help. Think of Adam and Eve. God created them with no physical or spiritual flaws; they were perfect. Not only that, but they lived in a completely perfect world where everything was in its right place, doing what God created it to do. And to top it all off, they were living in a perfect relationship with God. You would think they couldn’t possibly be needy, but they were, because God did not design them to live independently of him or of one another. Healthy independent living is a delusion. So, immediately upon creating Adam and Eve, God talked to them because they did not understand who they were and how they were designed to live.

Only in a life of submission to, fellowship with, and dependence upon their Creator would Adam and Eve be what they were supposed to be and do what they were designed to do. They were perfect people in a perfect world and in perfect relationship with God, but they still needed help. We need help not just because we are sinners or failures in some way, but because we are beings designed by a wise, loving, and good God for dependent living. You don’t have to regret your need for help. It should not make you feel guilty. You shouldn’t let shame keep you from seeking the help you need. You shouldn’t let pride, the fear of what people will think, or how others will respond keep you from seeking the help that not only you need, but that everyone around you needs as well.

Here’s the good news. The best help ever is available to you as a child of God. It’s not a help that comes from your spouse, neighbor, friend, pastor, coworker, parent, or counselor. No, there is someone who always knows exactly what you need, when you need it, and how it is best delivered. This means that you are never caught in a situation where you are completely without help. One of the purposes of the weekly gatherings of the community of faith is to encourage us to confront our fear and pride and to comfort us with the fact that we have a Father who knows just what we need and who has lovingly committed himself to meet those needs. The gathering of the church is not an assembly of religiously independent people celebrating our successes, all dressed up, parading ourselves before one another and before God. No, the church is the gathering of the needy, the weak, the broken, and the confused. But we are eternally loved and accepted by the one we worship and entrust ourselves to. We gather because we are not okay and we need to remember that God is for us, in us, and with us and, because He is, we have glorious hope and help in our time of need.

The words of Philippians 4:19 get me up in the morning: “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Consider, too, what Peter says as he writes to suffering people: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3). God promised to supply everything we need not only for eternal life but for godliness. What is godliness? It is a God-honoring life between the “already” of our conversion and the “not yet” of our homegoing. Peter is talking about God’s ready supply of divine resources to meet our need for help right here, right now in the place where we are living and with regard to the challenges we are facing.

Reflect also on what Paul writes near the end of his treatise on suffering in Romans 8: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (8:31–32). The cross of Jesus Christ is our guarantee that the one who met us at our greatest point of need (our sin) will continue to supply what we need. If He went to this extent to meet the need of needs, would it make any sense for him to abandon us now?

The regular gathering of the church is the assembly of God’s needy children. This gathering is a welcome to lay down our pride, our self-sufficiency, our delusions of independent strength, our fear of what others will think, and our self-righteousness, and to humbly open our hearts, confessing our need once again to the one who has the power and willingness to help. We gather once again to be reminded of how this willing God meets us.

God meets us with mercies that are always new.

God meets us with boundless love.

God meets us with infinite wisdom.

God meets us with incalculable power.

God meets us with inexhaustible grace.

And because He does, we do not need to let fear, guilt, or shame paralyze us. I know that I need that reminder again and again. So, this Sunday, gather with your needy brothers and sisters. Lift up your hands in faith and reach out for your Father’s help and drink in all the reminders in song and word that He is good, kind, loving, and faithful. And with a joyful heart remember once more that He cares about his children and will never turn his back on their needs.

Reflections:

In a culture that encourages independence and even isolation, how can we begin to practice humble dependence upon God?