HELP Me, God! LORD, help me!
Three words spoken out of the honesty of my heart, like a man in deep despair.
A bit of background that brought me to this prayer. This prayer was working silently in my thoughts for some weeks, perhaps even some months before I verbalized it. During this period, I was like a traveling salesman working for a resource recovery firm out of Phoenix AZ. I started this job back around 1993 as a regional sales manager, covering 14 continuous western states. After experiencing much success, I was promoted in a national sales manager role, with an emphasis of expanding direct accounts with the power utility sector.
The firm gained major marketing ground and direct accounts and I was financially rewarded. However, in my spirit, although an active member of a local Christian church for 15+ years, it seemed I could not control and power over certain lustful thoughts. During those moments, I’d reason, for why these thoughts had such power over me, if I had truly experienced salvation and partaken of eternal life. Was it that I had a wrong perception and interpretations of the writings of the Bible? I truly believed that the scriptures are divinely inspired. But the how-to, put on the works of Christ in motion and in application of the mind, was simply beyond my grasp.
I then found myself on my knees in a hotel room in the fall of 1998 (I was now in my mid 30’s) in a suburb of Chicago, telling God that even though I believed the scriptures, something was still missing within me. The born again experience was somebody else’s, but seemingly not a conscience work within me. Just because I said I believed and followed after the commandments and teachings of the Bible, in its sacraments, water baptism and taking holy communion, this alone had not changed my heart and mind into a new frame of mind (the mind of Christ). My pattern of thought remained in same corrupt way. So, as I’m speaking this aloud, I took the Gideon Bible in my hands, I squeezed it and shook it as I’m saying, “GOD, I know something is not right in me, for the works of regeneration of a new conscience is not being formed and created in me. Is prophesy of the scriptures a total joke? These stories of God appearing to Moses, Abraham, Issac and Jacob, are they just out of mans imagination, or is it that I’ve just not understood its meaning”?
I continued, saying “God, even if it means I have to throw out everything I thought the bible is, I’m willing to do so if it means I gain Christ; just want to know the real truth, to know the real meaning so that what I’m reading, is actually coming to pass in me. Show me the way, I desire to have my own and personal testimony of Jesus Christ”.
No answer came to me that night, not even a scripture reference. I stayed in my hotel room, didn’t even go out to dinner, went to bed early and cried myself to sleep.
Psalm 4 To the chief Musician on Neginoth, A Psalm of David.
1. Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.
2. O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? Selah.
THIS POOR MAN CRIED!
Psalm 34
4. I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.
5. They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed.
6. This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.