God Is The One Who Will Help You! by Pastor Tim Burt

Luke 18:7-8 “And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off? I tell you, He will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

I was with a group of friends recently and we were telling and laughing at parenting stories. At one point we all discovered that we shared a common pet peeve. None of us as parents liked it when our children had false perceptions of us in various areas.

For example, I remember a time when I had been for a conference that I was the main speaker at. I had been working for over a month on a number of messages I would be sharing. The week before the event I spent almost the entire week putting all my notes together and continuing to pray about what I would minister. I teach and preach those things which seem to be most passionately burning in me that I believe God would have me touch on. I am working and praying up till the last minute to be sure that what I have to give is what the Lord wants me to minister.

On the way out of town, I stopped at my daughter’s to pick up something. She asked me how my preparation went and then jokingly commented about procrastinating and scrambling at the end to get my messaged done. It hit me like a hammer. “What? You think I’ve been procrastinating? Where did you get that idea?” The funny thing was, one of my messages was about praying and planning ahead in preparation for things we know we are go give ourselves to. I was shocked that she had this perception that some how I had been procrastinating and couldn’t figure out where she got it. But, kids do this. Maybe we all do this. Maybe we get a thought that a person is a certain way from some isolated incident and it’s a wrong perception; even a bothersome one.

I know people do this with God all the time. They have a wrong perception of Him. It’s because they don’t know Him through the knowledge of His Word. They might not know God except through what they “have figured out.” No offence but “figuring out God for yourself” is creating your own god. God reveals Himself to those that love and seek to know Him. Jer 29:13 says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” That best happens through prayer, the study of the Word of God, and through sitting under sound teaching. God does not want to be figured out. God can’t be figured out with the human mind. That is what false religion and cults are born out of – figuring out with the mind who and what God is. How prideful and vain that is! God is only known to those to whom He reveals Himself to by His Spirit. 1 Cor 2:14 says, “But the man who has not received Christ and does not have God’s Holy Spirit within him, does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are taught to us by the Holy Spirit.”

When you haven’t come to know God’s love, His character, His mercy, and His grace, you form false ideas and perceptions of who He is. It may even pervert your faith to fear.

Some believe God is mad at them -that He wants to strike them down or punish them with judgment or destruction because of something they’ve done wrong. In stead of drawing close to God in faith because of knowing His mercy and love, they are deceived into thinking every little thing going wrong in their life is God’s doing because He is mad at them. They fear Him and pull back from Him. Some believe that God made them sick to teach them a lesson or as a judgment for their sin. They have taken Satan’s attacks and destruction and attributed it to God. Now that’s a false and wrong perception. It will affect their faith. If they think God wants them sick, then they surely won’t look to Him for help or to minister healing to them.

Is a wrong perception of God stealing your faith? When you are going through a hard time, do you begin to wonder or doubt if God even cares or loves you, and wants to help you?

Today’s Fresh Manna verse says, “And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones who cry out to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off? I tell you, He will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” God makes it clear. The problem is not with Him. It boils down to this. Do we really know Him? Have we taken the time to know and become intimate with Him so that we do know of His mercy and goodness? Does that intimacy propel our faith? Or, has a wrong perception because of a lack of seeking and getting to know Him for who He really is stolen our faith? Seek Him! He loves you! He is with you! He wants to help you! As Heb 13:6 says, “So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”

In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt
http://readfreshmanna.blogspot.com/