HELP!
Pt. 1 – The Help Prayer
by Steve Ely

• Introduction: 

(Help by the Beatles)

Help, I need somebody,
Help, not just anybody,
Help, you know I need someone, help.

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody’s help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I’m not so self-assured,
Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Help me if you can, I’m feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won’t you please, please help me?

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways,
My independence seems to vanish in the haze.
But every now and then I feel so insecure,
I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before.

Have you ever been there . . . In need of help? When I was younger, I never needed anybody’s help in any way and then I realized that help was essential. Do you remember when you were young and thought you knew it all and could do it all? The Beatles had this awakening and encapsulated the cry that we all utter at some point. . . “Help!” However, I think the word “Help” is so overused that we underestimate its power! David used this word on at least 9 different occasions in the Psalms and each time it was part of a simple and yet profound prayer. Here are a couple of examples.

1. Text

Psalm 18:6
In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.

Psalm 109:26 – Help me, oh help me, God, my God, save me through your wonderful love.

Simple prayers – HELP! Nothing eloquent or impressive about these prayers they are simple desperate calls for God’s assistance. These prayers offer great hope to us because they teach us several things. 

•  The Help Prayer

1. It is the perfect prayer!
   The simple prayer of help needs no elaboration or explanation. It is simply perfect because with one word it sums up the need, the emotion, the desperation, and the expectation! It is suitable and applicable for every situation. It is appropriate for good days and bad days. It can be prayed in life-or-death situations or in moments of simple resistance. It covers catastrophes as well as a common bad day. Its power isn’t diminished by the situation. The scope of the word grows/shrinks to match your need.
2. It fits any person.
   It not only fits any situation, it also fits any person. Sinner or saint. Well-spoken or simpleton. Regardless of education, station in life, learned or unlearned, saved or unsaved. It is a universal prayer. We have all and will all pray this prayer at some point in our life. King or fugitive it works. Hero of the faith or forgotten sideliner it still fits. That is important because some of you feel inadequate when you are addressing God, the Maker of the Universe! You hear others with all of their rhythmic rhymes and eloquent words and the temptation is avoid praying because you can’t match their prayers. May I teach you how to pray? HELP!!!!
3. It is the most answered prayer!
   There is unexpected help, which we will discuss next week. However, most help comes as a direct result of a request. In fact, I would submit that many of us don’t get help because we have failed to request it. 

All you have to do is go back and examine the life of Christ and consider all of the miracles (divine intervention or help) and think about how many of those moments of help took place as direct result of a prayer/request for help. He turned water into wine due to request from His mother. He healed the blind as a direct result of request. He healed the lepers due to a petition to help. He calmed a storm because disciples cried out for help. He fed the 5,000 because they let it be known that they were hungry. He heals Jairus’ daughter because he asked Him to do so.

We have not because we ask not! Perhaps you haven’t received the help you desire because you have failed to request the specific help you need! If you need help request it today! 

There are 4 very important things we need to know about receiving help from God.

•  Getting Help

1. God still wants to help!
   We hear David cry for help, but we must also see that God responds with assistance. He testifies of this in Psalms 118:12, “I was pushed back and about to fall, but the LORD helped me.”

We read the multiplied account of God’s intervention into the lives of the Children of Israel. We read occasion after occasion of parted seas, food on the ground, victories in the face of impossible odds, healing from sickness and then we turn to the New Testament. Everywhere Jesus went He helped. In fact, in one passage it says Jesus healed all their sick. He helped with healing. He helped with taxes. He helped defend the defenseless (woman caught in adultery). He healed bodies. He healed minds. He healed souls. He healed families. He healed finances. He met every need found in the human condition. He helped!  

Some of you have forgotten that He still wants to help you today! We quote the passage of Scripture that teaches us that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. However, we fail to apply that truth to the help equation. God helped Moses so He will help you. He came to David’s rescue; He will come to yours. He backed up the 3 Hebrew Children; He will come to your aid as well. He healed the sick. He will heal you. He provided for the hungry, He will provide for you! You have to not only know this truth, but embrace, believe, trust, depend on, and have faith in the fact that God still wants to help today! His help didn’t come to an end at the end of Revelation. He still looks for ways to get involved in and intervene in your life today! Don’t give up. Don’t discount God’s ability or desire to come to your rescue!

Lee Ielpi is a retired firefighter, a New York City firefighter. He gave 26 years to the city. But on September 11th, 2001, he gave much more. He gave his son, Jonathan. His son was a firefighter as well. When the Twin Towers fell, Jonathan was there. Firefighters are a loyal clan. When one perishes in the line of duty, the body is left where it is until a firefighter who knows the person can come and quite literally picks it up. Lee made the discovery of his son’s body his personal mission. He dug daily with dozens of others at the sixteen-acre graveyard. On Tuesday, December 11, three months after the disaster, his son was found. And Lee was there to carry him out.”

Your Father has made it His personal mission to care for, carry, uncover, and dig out, His son’s body. He won’t give up. He won’t quit. He will dig through your collapsed and crushed world to find you and bring you assistance. Hang on! Believe! Trust! Hope. 

Some of you right now don’t believe that or are unsure about this because you are saying in your mind “I have asked Him to help me and He hasn’t.”  Some of you are thinking, “I have depended on Him and He has failed me so I don’t know if I believe that God will help me or not.” So why doesn’t God help? In order to receive help you must learn the next two things.

2. We must come to the place where Jesus in our only option rather than only one option!
   Many of us don’t see God’s hand at work in our life is because we treat Him as one option rather than as the only option! We don’t really rely on Him. We don’t really live our life as if He is the only way out. We say we depend on Him for provision, but we live as if we are our hope and answer, so we trust our job more than we trust God. We refuse to tithe because we really aren’t sure the God option works. I can figure out this thing better than you can God. I can manage my 100% better than He can manage the 90%. We have more faith in our 401K than we do in Him. We seek His healing power only as an afterthought. We seek counsel from every other source and then ask Him at the end if He has any ideas or thoughts on our stuff. 

Jesus always responds to the cry of desperation. Go ahead, search Scripture and find one time where Jesus responds to someone who had other options.  You won’t find one. The woman with the issue of blood, the lepers, the lame, the dead . . . they had no other options. Doctors had tried everything, the family had lost hope, and all possible solutions were spent. Likewise, search Scripture and find one example of Jesus turning a deaf ear or ignoring the cry of a desperate person. You can’t find one. Jesus always stopped in His tracks when He heard the cry of desperation! Could it be that the reason that we aren’t receiving help is because He hasn’t really heard a cry of desperation, but a cry that says, “If you can help me fine and if not fine, I will find another solution to this issue or problem?” I will come to you and hope for answer but make plans in case I don’t get one. Could it be that our lack of desperation results in a lack of deliverance? Maybe all of our contingency plans reveal a lack of genuine trust, faith and reliance.  Jesus comes through when He is our only hope!

Maybe if we would get really desperate for financial health Jesus would show up and teach us how to find it. Maybe if some of us would get desperate for our marriage to be healthy we would get the assistance we need. Jesus never responds well to “Oh by the way . . .” Some of you need to recognize this morning that unless Jesus shows up, your situation is hopeless. There is no other option! Maybe if some of us were desperate enough we could stop Jesus in His tracks with our cry!

3. Recognize and accept His help!
   Maybe, just maybe our issue isn’t that God hasn’t helped. Perhaps our issue is that He has already done so and we have just failed to recognize or accept the method of His help! Maybe the reason you feel like He isn’t responding to your cry for help is because God hears your cry and shakes His head in frustration because He has already sent the answer and you have snubbed your nose at the answer He has given.

There is at least one illustration in the Bible when this happened. Naaman gets the remedy that he desperately needs for his leprosy and gets angry and left to his own hard headedness would have failed to get healed just because He disliked the means of the solution. Dirty river no way! That seems crazy. Would you take that trade any day? A little dip in dirty water for clean skin. A little dirty water to get rid of my day’s AIDS disease. The truth is we are a lot like Him.

We desperately cry out to God to help with our finances and yet we won’t sell the new car even though the monthly payments are absolutely killing us. All because we have wrapped our identity up in that vehicle. God says, “Here is your answer. I have provided a means for rescue.” And we turn down the dirty water.

We desperately cry out to God to help us in our dysfunctional marriage and then an opportunity comes for counseling or accountability and we snub our nose and treat the answers as dirty water. That’s too hard, takes too much effort and then we continue to cry out and for some weird reason God seems to be deaf.

We cry out for healing and God gives us the opportunity to change whatever it is in our lifestyle that is feeding the sickness and we keep puffing away, or eating away, or drinking away and wonder why the God of healing refuses to restore our health!  

We cry out to get closer to God and our boyfriend/girlfriend or friend cut off relationship with us and we are so wrapped up in them that we miss the very answer to our prayer. They distracted us and God intervenes and we miss His intervention.

If you don’t think that happens, remember the instance in the New Testament where a group of desperate people gather to passionately cry out for God to help their highly esteemed brother in the faith, Peter. He has been wrongly incarcerated and they need God to intervene. God does. Peter miraculously walks out of jail free. Peter shows up at the house where they are desperately praying. He knocks on the door. Rhoda answers the door, sees the answer to their prayers literally standing there and then proceeds to slam the door in his face!

How many of us are at this very moment slamming the door in the face of God’s answer to our cry because we don’t like the form, fashion, shape, cost, flavor, taste, pain, or discipline it would take to access the answer? Some of you to quit praying, quit fasting, quit crying out and open your eyes, heart, and mind to the answer that God has already sent your way. 

I will tell you that God is unlikely to send another answer until you accept the one He has already sent. He sent Jesus as the answer to man’s sin problem. Most men didn’t recognize or embrace Him as the Messiah. Their lack of acceptance didn’t cause God to come up with another plan or send another solution. God doesn’t have many back up plans. He hears our cry, sends a solution, and it is up to us to accept that solution!

Some of you are so busy praising and praying that you can’t even recognize the answer to your prayer. Get off the floor and open the door. Some of you have so boxed God into your idea of how the answer should come that you are missing the answer that has come! Some of you have so boxed God into an instantaneous miracle that you won’t even clue into the gradual process He is providing for your rescue. We want help, but too many of us dictate that help be given on our terms.

What if His help comes in an unexpected or unwanted form? What if you want help and He spits! What if you want sight and His solution is Spit Therapy? We have got to come to the place where if there is power in the spit then let it rain on me!

Recognize and embrace His answer! 

4. You may be someone’s help!
   You may very well be God’s help wrapped up in flesh. We hear people cry for help and then sit back and wait for God to do His deal. His deal may already be done in you. Find a need and fill it. Become someone’s answered prayer today! I think too many of us underestimate our role in God’s ability to answer prayers. He sends us! He uses us! Someone’s help is contained in you. If you don’t respond they will blame God. They should blame you . . . God responded. Don’t let someone go without God’s help because you were unwilling to be God wrapped in flesh!

HELP!
Pt. 2 – The Help Place
by Steve Ely

• Introduction: 

(Help by the Beatles)

Help, I need somebody,
Help, not just anybody,
Help, you know I need someone, help.

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody’s help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I’m not so self-assured,
Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Help me if you can, I’m feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won’t you please, please help me?

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways,
My independence seems to vanish in the haze.
But every now and then I feel so insecure,
I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before.

It seems the older we get the more we realize that we all need assistance. So, we talked about the Help prayer. It is perfect for any situation, any person, and is the most answered prayer. Jesus was constantly giving assistance to those who requested it. He turned water into wine due to request from His mother. He healed the blind as a direct result of request. He healed the lepers due to a petition to help. He calmed a storm because disciples cried out for help. He fed the 5,000 because they let it be known that they were hungry. He heals Jairus’ daughter because he asked Him to do so. We need to request that assistance.

There were instances where no one asked for assistance and Jesus showed up and helped. 

• Text

Mark 16:9
Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven devils.

Luke 8:26-31
They sailed on to the country of the Gerasenes, directly opposite Galilee. As he stepped out onto land, a madman from town met him; he was a victim of demons. He hadn’t worn clothes for a long time, nor lived at home; he lived in the cemetery. When he saw Jesus he screamed, fell before him, and bellowed, “What business do you have messing with me? You’re Jesus, Son of the High God, but don’t give me a hard time!” (The man said this because Jesus had started to order the unclean spirit out of him.) Time after time the demon threw the man into convulsions. He had been placed under constant guard and tied with chains and shackles, but crazed and driven wild by the demon, he would shatter the bonds. Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “Mob. My name is Mob,” he said, because many demons afflicted him. And they begged Jesus desperately not to order them to the bottomless pit. 

Luke 22:47-51
While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.

III. The Help Place

1.  Help came to the unlikely/unexpected place.

Her name was Mary and she came from the town of Magdala, hence the term Magdalene. This Mary was the victim of a terrible, terrible evil. Possession by one devil would be bad enough, but her body had become the home of seven. We are not told what happened in her past that caused her to open herself up to demon possession. All we know is that her life had been arrested by evil. Mary Magdalene was living a helpless life, a hopeless life; she was a woman in terrible shape, a horrible case. Obviously, she was bound with something stronger than chains, for the iron that bound her was the powerful arms of hellish demon spirits that wrapped Mary of Magdala in their invisible grip.  Mary could not help herself; she could not defend herself. She was enslaved.

Mary’s condition is an important element of the story and certainly the most prominent feature of this account. However, there is a secondary feature of this story that is also worthy of our focus. Although Mary’s situation was terrible, we must look past her condition to see her location. The Great Physician, wearing a peasant’s robe, at some point visited Magdala incognito. The little village was positioned on the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee. It was a totally inconspicuous place. It commanded no strategic importance to Rome or to Jerusalem. It was a forgotten town. It was a proverbial little, one traffic light, blip on the map. It certainly wasn’t a destination for sight seers and most definitely not for a Savior. Jesus came to Magdala. It was an unlikely place to find the King of Glory! He went to an out of the way place. It was an unexpected place to find the Light of the world. He arrived there unsought. It is probably true that no one in Magdala was looking for Him. I’m convinced Jesus went to Magdala for one purpose and one purpose only, to look up a woman named Mary – and He found her. Please note that He found her; she did not find Him.

This should encourage you. You find yourself in an out of the way place. You are in a condition spiritually that you don’t expect to find God. You are so far from Him that you feel like it would be unlikely for Him to show up. You find yourself isolated and don’t think He can find you. You may not even be looking for Him, and you probably haven’t asked Him to show up, but guess who is coming to dinner? Jesus will travel to out of the way and unlikely places. He will walk in unexpected and unrequested to help you! Right when you least expect Him . . . expect Him to show up. 

He will go out of His way! I want that to sink into your spirit. He will change His travel plans. He will detour from His normal travel patterns to come to your rescue! 

Some of you feel forgotten, overlooked, unnoticed, unwanted, your chains grow tighter, your sickness grows stronger, your condition deteriorates daily and Jesus will pack a sack lunch and reroute to get to you! If you are in an unlikely or unexpected place keep an eye pealed for an uninvited, unsought, unexpected visitor who will bring freedom and healing! Help is in your village. Help has come looking for you! He can and will find you! And not only will He find you He will change you! The Lord had visited her little town uninvited, looked her up, freed her from Satan’s grip, and 18 months later gave her the high honor of being the first witness of His resurrection. Unexpected grace came to an unexpected place!

• Help came to the impossible place.

Luke paints the portrait of an impossible place. Darkness so black that a cemetery is the canvas of choice. Bondage so severe that it can’t be bound. If there was ever an impossible situation it was this one. Can you fathom the depth of the evil that must have invaded this man’s soul? In Mary’s case, we know the number of demons that lived in her . . . 7. In this man’s case, the number is so high that when asked his name he responds, “Mob” or “Legion”. If you take the typical meaning of the word “Legion” it would indicate that there were anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 demons residing in this man. This may be the worst case of bondage and torment recorded in Scripture. 

This man had been offered assistance. Others had tried to control him. They had tried to watch over him. However, on every occasion guards had been lost or perhaps driven off as they ran for their lives. Chains had been shattered and clothes had been abandoned. This was an impossible situation. 

Some of you are facing mountains of financial challenges. You have tried everything the experts have said. You have utilized every Dave Ramsey trick in the book. Some of you are facing physical issues that have the doctors scratching their heads and you ducking yours. No remedy seems to be available. No solution seems to be the final prognosis. Some of you are in a relationship that seems damned. No amount of counseling seems to help. Adjustments have been made and nothing has changed. Hearts are hard. Hope is gone. Hands have been thrown up and vows thrown out. It may seem like it is over. 

How impossible is your place? Has all assistance been given that man can give? Has every stone been overturned? Has every logical effort been made? Good news! You are in the perfect place to meet the God who not only can but loves to walk into and overturn the impossible!  This account is the worst-case scenario. It was a bad environment. The surroundings weren’t ripe for redemption. There was no chance! And that is the powerful news . . . Jesus’ help isn’t limited by or weakened by the environment you live in or work in or by the impossibility of your situation. The impossible bowed its knee instantly to the presence of Jesus on that day and can do so again on this day! And once again He didn’t seek help . . . help sought him!

1. Help came to the touchy or tense place!

If there was ever a scene that was fraught with tension this, is it. The disciples are on edge and ready to fight. The soldiers are armed to the teeth and ready to exert force if necessary. It was dark, hard to see, adrenaline was flowing, fists were clenched, and weapons were grasped. One wrong move and a full-on street fight would erupt. And the wrong move was made. Peter snaps and snips. You could tell he was a fisherman and not a solider because if he had been trained in the art of hand to hand combat the blow would have been better placed and he would have killed the servant rather than just slicing off his ear. Do you really think he was just trying to wound him? It was a touchy place. It was a tense place. Blood had been spilled. Pain had been caused.

Ever been in this place? Some of you are there now. Every word must be measured. Eggshells have become your carpet of choice. Tension in every look. One wrong word could end it all. Job could be lost. Love may be abandoned. One wrong glance could cause everything to spiral out of control. One wrong decision and everything could come crashing down. Maybe you didn’t cause the tension or the touchiness, but now its web engulfs your thoughts and your life.

Uninvited and perhaps even unwanted Jesus walks into the touchy and tense place with tenderness and healing and disarms the situation. He helps and heals what was severed or cut off. Some of you are tense because of what has been cut off from your life and Jesus is about to walk into that situation and restore what was severed. Was peace cut off? Was hope snipped away? Was your heart spliced in two? Was your joy surgically removed by a misplaced blow? Jesus is about to walk in and with one touch restore what was lost! He will walk in and remove the tension!

What place are you in? You may feel like you are living in an unlikely place. You may feel forgotten and overlooked. You may feel isolated or ostracized. Perhaps you are in an impossible place. Maybe every solution has been sought and failed miserably. It may appear that your lot in life is bondage, life spinning out of control, totally unreachable! You are so beyond help that you would even welcome chains because that would at least give some boundary to your misery and pain. Perhaps you find yourself living in a tense or touchy place? Every nerve on edge. Every word scrutinized. Blows have been struck. Wounds have been inflicted. Regardless of where you find yourself Jesus has walked into your place today. You may not even be able to ask for help anymore. You may have asked and been disappointed so many times that you have given up hope. But hope is here because He is here. He is in this place. His presence can change hell to heaven. His presence can put your place on the map. He can make a cemetery a dressing room. You are in the Help Place! 

David, who knew how to pray the “Help Prayer”, would shout to us about the “Help Place” in Psalms 46:1, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” He is ever-present right in the middle of your trouble! There isn’t a day that goes by that His presence isn’t on sight and on the scene to bring help!