Help! I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up!

H.G. Wells said, "If you fell down yesterday, stand up today." Those words may seem rather simple, as we all know the 'action' of 'standing up' once you have fallen down is a little more difficult than we might imagine. I have fallen more than a couple of times in my lifetime, banging up my knees or elbows, but when I was younger, I bounced back from those falls a whole lot quicker than I do in my sixth decade of life! Just because we are 'growing up in Christ' doesn't mean we won't fall, and it certainly doesn't mean a fall will result in us getting up 'easier' just because we 'know Jesus' a little better than we did in our earlier years of following him. Sometimes we just need to cry out for help to get up! It isn't a bad thing to admit we need help, although some may think it is a sign of weakness to admit it. 

If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open. (James 1:5)

Some of the reason we fall is that we aren't 'aware' of what we are doing, and we don't take the time to ask God for clarity. We just trudge ahead into the 'unknown' and then wonder why we are flat on our face in just a short time. If you have already moved ahead of Jesus, don't despair! He stands ready to help you stand when you aren't able to do it on your own, but you do need to ask for his help. There is just something about admitting we need help that breaks down some of the stubborn pride and self-sufficiency that caused us to fall in the first place. Sometimes we want 'all our options open' when we pray - like a 'blanket covering' over all the 'possible options' for how we could get out of the situation we find ourselves facing. God doesn't want us to limit him to the 'options' we can imagine as much as he wants us to trust him to reveal the 'one way up' that he has designed.

God loves to help, but we have to allow him to help. It would be far better that we never find ourselves 'falling' and 'unable to get up', but when we find ourselves in those circumstances, it is far wiser to ask for his help than it is to struggle to find our way up! We all fall. Don't be afraid to admit you need his help. He stands ready to help. Just sayin!

New Beginnings Start Here

Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?” ...God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next. May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. (Romans 15:1-6) 

We are to live strong - robust, able to stand up to the tests of life. Strength can be mental power, physical ability, and even moral firmness. It is something developed over time - not something which comes as a matter of inheritance. You can desire to be strong, but what brings strength is the exercise of the strength you possess until you begin to reveal you possess an even greater strength. Strength is sometimes not used the way God would intend for it to be used. When we possess mental, physical, and even spiritual strength, God wants us to use it as he would intend for us to use it - not in any manner which causes harm, destroys others, or leaves emotional scarring.

Strength is for service, not for status - true enough statement, but how do we put this into practice in our lives? We are to look after the good of the people around us - asking ourselves how it is we may help them in their time of both need and plenty. We find it easy to help when someone is at their strongest, but how about when they are at their weakest? Do we see them as a "drain" on us? Do their problems seem like too much of a bother for us to get involved in? Do we see their struggle as something they just need to "get over"? If we are to use our strength for service (as Jesus did), then we need to be operating as Christ did - not in avoidance mode, but in embrace mode! Jesus didn't avoid your troubles any more than he avoided mine. He took them to the cross with him and dealt with them there.

You may never know when the strength you possess is the strength prepared in you for the purpose of meeting the needs of another. We possess strength so we can use it to help one another out wherever the need presents itself. People who are strong in the Lord are involved in the lives of others. They don't pull back, isolate, and run from those times when things might get a little messier than they'd like. Jesus got right in the middle of the messes of our lives. It is "in the middle" that we are most effective - for strength is meant for the "middle" moments!

Jesus is all about "beginnings, middles, and new beginnings" in our lives and he wants us to be involved in the middle of people's lives, so they have the hope and potential of new beginnings! 

What matters most to Jesus is that his children are drawn closer to him, deeper into relationship with each other, and away from the messes of their past. Our part is in this is quite simple - to be in the middle of the mess, offering our strength in their weakness, and affording the help needed to see their "middle" become the launching pad for a new beginning in life. Just sayin!

Okay, now you are being obnoxious!

Zig Zigler is credited with the thought of "every obnoxious act being a cry to help." He is definitely onto something there, for some of us who "act out" or "pull in" when we are hurting somewhere on the inside and really don't know what to do with the pain we are feeling. We strike out with words, because words are easy and they seem to inflict just the right amount of venomous pain back at the one we believe has the "right" to feel a little of our pain. We forget the terrible lasting effect of these words, though. We pull in, hunkering down in our place of pouting just because we think if we pull away and nurse our wounds, maybe that will make us feel better. We forget that nursed wounds often don't get the real treatment they require and fester a little bit more than we might like. I'd have to ask us today what our actions might be telling us about where it is or what it is that we need help with today in our lives. Those "obnoxious" actions are probably a silent plea for help!

Despite all your many offenses, He forgives and releases you. More than any doctor, He heals your diseases. He reaches deep into the pit to deliver you from death. He crowns you with unfailing love and compassion like a king. When your soul is famished and withering, He fills you with good and beautiful things, satisfying you as long as you live. He makes you strong like an eagle, restoring your youth.  (Psalm 103:3-5 VOICE)

Look up the meaning of obnoxious in Webster's and you will see it means something that is highly offensive. These actions on our part, though they may seem small to us at the moment, mount up in the eyes of God. They are "many" or "large" - despite their "small size" in our own eyes - mostly because they have a "multiplied effect" when spoken. In using words to hurt another, we are either using this "highly offensive" way to bring pain to another because we either want to justify our own pain, or we want transfer it to another.  I often found myself using words in a sarcastic manner - words that really seemed "funny" as they were spoken, but which carried just enough "venom" in them to point out someone's failures, shortcomings, or weak spots. Even when words aren't spoken in a bantering of angry rage, they can carry enough "venom" in them to leave quite a lasting sting! Words are indeed one of the obnoxious actions we might just want to begin to see as "secret weapons" we don't really want to have in our "arsenal"!

There are also those times when we just find it easier to retreat into some hiding hole - having our own little pity party and reminding ourselves just how awful things are for us and that no one really understands what we are going through. You are right - they don't have your same vantage point, but maybe it is that very vantage point that is making you feel the way you are feeling. Rather than retreating, you might just need to pull yourself up by the boot-straps, dust yourself off, go out there and deal with whatever it is you aren't willing to face! You don't have to do it alone because when you refuse to retreat you open the door to allowing Jesus to give you another vantage point from which to view your present circumstances and issues. You are opening yourself up to see it through the eyes of another - someone other than yourself - someone who hasn't been nursing that hurt or anxiety way too long!

Despite our best attempts at hiding behind some "obnoxious actions", God often "calls us out"! He isn't going to let us go on forever, continuing in that place of painful misery - either because we have been the one being obnoxious, or because we have been the subject of someone else's obnoxious actions. In fact, he delivers from the pit - that is his plan - not for us to dig it deeper! He can get us out of even the deepest pits that we have dug, but in order to do so, we might just have to admit that we have been engaging in some pretty obnoxious actions that haven't yielded us that many "good results" in return. Instead of us seeing every obnoxious act of another as an offense to us, maybe it is our chance to see that as their cry for help. Just sayin!