A Helpless Cry

November 08 2011, 10:16 am | Clara Jones

“Mommy, I wanna hold ya!” Dawson would say when his little legs got too tired to walk anymore.  It always made me smile as I would reach down and pick up my little toddler and begin to carry him in my arms.  He really meant he wanted to be held, of course, and there was no way I could refuse his adorable little plea!

I cannot help but feel that our helpless cries must have the same effect on our Heavenly Father.  God knows that we are destitute sinners, unable to please Him, and totally self-centered, with hearts that are desperately wicked.  But if we cry out to Him to save us out of our sinfulness, in the same way that I had compassion on my little son who was incapable of keeping up with me, God reaches down to us in compassion and carries us.

Psalm 103:13-14 says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” 

God knows that “as dust,” we are incapable of doing anything good, and His heart goes out to us.  So why don’t we cry out to Him—especially those of us who are Christians?  I believe that there are two main reasons.

 

The first reason we don’t call out for help is because we don’t even realize our sinfulness or complete helplessness to do anything good.  We don’t really believe what Jeremiah 17:9 says:

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” 

Nor do we really believe that Romans 3, verses 12 and following could be talking about us when it says,

“All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.  Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.  The poison of vipers is on their lips…” 

We think we are not all that bad, that our hearts are not really desperately wicked!  We are blind to our sin because we are not intently looking into God’s Word, which, like a mirror, shows us who we really are (James 1:22-25).  If we are not willing to accept what God’s Word says about the human heart, we will not cry out to the only One who can pull us away from the sin we are so destructively drawn to, and we will certainly fall into it!

 

The second reason we silently struggle on is because, though we recognize our sinfulness, we believe that God is displeased with us for having these sinful desires, and therefore, we must get rid of them before He will accept us.  I lived with this belief for years as a Christian, and it was exactly what Satan wanted me to believe so that I would not turn to the only One who could help me.  However, the Bible makes it clear that God will not turn away anyone who comes to Him for help. 

Isaiah 30:15, 18-19 says, “This is what the sovereign Lord, the holy One of Israel, says: ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it…Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.  For the Lord is a God of justice.  Blessed are all who wait for him!  O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more.  How gracious he will be when you cry for help!  As soon as he hears, he will answer you.”

The truth is that God understands our incapability of doing anything good and sympathizes with us when we are struggling with sinful desires.  Hebrews 4:15-16 says that

“we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.  Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

So next time you find yourself being drawn into sin, try crying out to God:  “I wanna hold Ya!”  You just might be surprised what will happen!

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus