Daily Jewel

by Pastor Carnell, McAlester, OK

“Finding God When You Need Him”
"...when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and troubles overwhelm you…then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me." – Proverbs 1:27, 28

Don’t you hate calling someone and getting an answering machine? Or worse yet, those annoying voice messages that give you every option except the one you really need? By the time they go through all the options you have forgotten why you called! By the way, do you have an answering machine attached to your phone? (I thought I would get that in!)
From casual observation I do not think that God is saying that He will be unavailable...but when those (the “they” in this verse) who choose to forsake and overlook the right and wise things; when their world crashes in around them they will not find the answers they need!
I, as do many others, suffer from a very common disorder: “I-can-do-it-on-my-own-itis.” The symptoms are stubbornness followed by a persistent arrogance, which can lead to making one (or everyone) either very lost and then very late.
For most of the first chapter of Proverbs, Solomon has been urging us to seek God’s wisdom and to stay far away from those who have forsaken His Holy ways. They not only destroy themselves but in the process seek to destroy those around them. There is also something more that I see at work here.
I have been given talents and abilities. The one I appreciate the most is the ability to think and have rational thought (most of the time), to assess the situations around me. And yet there comes a time when all of my abilities do not serve me and only the strength of the Heavenly Father will see me through. That is when He will make Himself available to me to serve my needs. There is a word that we use to describe this action…it is called “Faith!”
John G. Paton (1824-1907) was a Christian missionary to the natives of the New Hebrides . He was born on a small farm near Dumbries , Scotland . The eldest of eleven children, he was led to Christ as a child by his godly father, James Paton. Among John’s early memories was the mental picture of his father going three times a day into the “prayer closet” at home and later coming out with a shining face “as of one who had been on the Mount of Transfiguration.” As a youth he remembered the voice of the Lord saying, “Go across the seas as the messenger of My love; and lo, I am with you.” He obeyed.
Years later—as a pioneer missionary to the New Hebrides —part of his work was translating the Scriptures into the language of the people of that distant place. He struggled with finding a word for “faith” in their language; there seemed to be no equivalent. One day a native worker came in from a hard day’s work and said, “Oh, I’m so tired. I feel I must lean my whole weight on this chair.” Paton said at that moment, “Praise God, I’ve got my word.” He thus translated John 3:16 to read, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever leaneth his whole weight on him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”
We live our lives daily, trusting on man-made things—roads, bridges, overpasses, sidewalks, ladders—to do what they were built to do, and to keep us safe. We seldom ask, “Is this sidewalk safe?” We just step on it, trusting that whoever poured the concrete did it right. Jesus wants us to do that with Him. He wants us to lean our whole weight on him in everything we do, important and unimportant. He wants to engage with us in everything that goes on.
Do you have the symptoms of “icandoitonmyownitis?” Do you find yourself believing that you have all of the answers to your situations? What happens when you run out of answers? What do you do or where do you go when there is no one left to ask or no place left to go? God is available…especially to those who are not on “self-destruct” mode.
Pastor J. T. Carnell.