Our Rescuing God

The Inescapable God
God Reveals
 
2 Corinthians 1:8-11 (The Message)
 ^8-11We don't want you in the dark, friends, about how hard it was when all this came down on us in Asia province. It was so bad we didn't think we were going to make it. We felt like we'd been sent to death row, that it was all over for us. As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally—not a bad idea since he's the God who raises the dead! And he did it, rescued us from certain doom. And he'll do it again, rescuing us as many times as we need rescuing. You and your prayers are part of the rescue operation—I don't want you in the dark about that either. I can see your faces even now, lifted in praise for God's deliverance of us, a rescue in which your prayers played such a crucial part.


For Reflection
Americans pride themselves in being self-made.  We honor those who have "pulled themselves up from their own boot straps."  Maybe it is because that idea is so well embedded in our culture that we have difficult trusting God to get us out of the messes in which we become mired.  Certainly, it is by our action that we unstuck ourselves.  But, it is God that helps us when we have nowhere to turn.

Those who are afflicted with an addiction do not seek and cannot respond to help until they hit rock bottom.  There, in the darkest times of their lives, when frustrated by the fact that they have no other alternatives, they reach for help and can accept it.

Where do you place your trust?  To what are you addicted?  When will you ask for help?

Ask and God will provide.

Pray
for all of us who are addicted.  Pray that we will see the folly of continuing a path that always ends in the same unsatisfying result.  Pray that you will see that to which you are addicted, that which is keeping you from placing full trust in God.   Ask and listen quietly, God is answering you.