So may times we hear this cry from someone after a crisis or accident has taken place. Every one of us will respond to that request when faced with an urgent need in someone"s life we know. The needs of our friends and our family are always on our hearts and minds. When we see the needs we respond and HELP.
As you enter this new year, look at those people around you who are your friends and family to assist and HELP. However, can you also ask the Lord to show the needs of those around you that you do not see so easily? The needs around us are enormous. The desperate lives that cross our paths everyday are more numerous than we can actually count. The Lord is intentionally bringing people into our paths regularly for the purpose of our lives impacting theirs. Do you see these opportunities for ministry or are the things of this world or the busyness of the daily grind hindering you from seeing them?
We have all been in a place of need in our lives. I recall January 29, 2005 watching our house go up in flames and being completely helpless. There was nothing I could do to save the house or the things in the house. I simply had to trust God's sovereign plan and say "Blessed be the name of the Lord." However, this helplessness extended beyond the event of the fire itself. The following hours were a blur. The real need in our lives was not even something we could determine on our own. This was an hour of need in our lives. HELP was what we needed. HELP is what we got!
The hours and days that followed our fire were times of trusting others to HELP us in many ways we were not prepared to allow people to HELP. We needed so much HELP and had to depend on others for so many things. The work the Lord had to do on my heart to allow so much HELP to be accepted was a huge challenge for me.
Often times when others are in need of HELP, they will struggle with allowing others to offer assistance to them. Yet, many times the circumstances are such that they must accept the HELP when it is offered simply to make it through the struggle. How many times do people around us wrestle with the overwhelming needs in their lives and struggle through difficult times of need simply because we do not offer to HELP?
This year, we as the Body of Christ need to look around us more often for the needs. We need to pay closer attention to the people who cross our paths and their needs to see the ways that we can HELP. We need to be focused on the needs of others around us and be the community of faith to those struggling, hurting, over-burdened and weighed down with the desperate need for HELP. We need to become known for being the first to HELP!
Will you ask the Lord to increase your sensitivity to those around you this year? Will you seek to know and understand the needs of those people who cross your path? Will you strive to become a person known for responding to need with HELP? This year you can start RIGHT by RENEWing your commitment to Him, INVESTing your time, resources and energy, GOing to those people and places the Lord directs you to serve and share and show the Gospel and you can HELP those around you as a real expression of the Body of Christ loving the community you have been planted within. How will the Lord use you this year? What are you willing to adjust in your life in order that your ways will match His ways? How will you Reach the world and Teach the Word this year?
In His Grip,
JT
