God Often Brings Answers Prayers for His Help by Bringing People for Us to Give Help To.

the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive'” (Acts 20:35, NIV).

I have not been posting much lately because I have been focusing my time and energy on my doctoral thesis. I can see the end now…I feel like I am on the home stretch—at least as far as the writing and researching part goes. I have had to get rather regimented with my time so that the hours of the day when I am at my thinking best, I am working on it.

It doesn’t always go that way of course. One needs to be learning that planning is ok but flexible planning is better. As my friend Charlie Jones used to say, “My plan is that anything that can go wrong will go wrong…so when someone comes and tells me something went wrong, I can tell them ‘That’s my plan!'”

Lately, I have been putting in a lot of late nights. By God’s grace they have been very productive nights, but—as you might imagine—I am very tired. Recently, when I was getting ready to hunker down into “thesis mode” (thankful that it was during my planned time) I got a voice mail from someone needing help, pastoral help.

I left my last church at the end of the year in large part so that I could focus on finishing my PhD. This person didn’t know that. I had officiated a funeral for a family member for his person a while back. All this person knew was that they were in a really bad way and did not know what to do or who else to turn to.

I’ll be very honest here and tell you I was feeling very drained. I was not looking for someone to help. I wasn’t feeling very gracious. In fact, I had been praying about how emotionally and spiritually tanked I was feeling being so tired. I resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to get to work on my thesis as I had planned and dialed back.

Long story short—we talked for several hours. We talked about the nature of grief and the grieving process, God, forgiveness, grace, family, and how to keep going when you don’t know how to keep going. When I got off the phone, I realized two things: first, that God had done a lot of great work over that call. The person felt much better after talking. I knew it couldn’t have been me, because I did not have anything in my tank to give. I knew the Spirit had been working to help this person. Second, I realized I was not feeling so graceless anymore. Was I still tired? Sure was! Was I emotionally tired? Absolutely. But it was a different kind of tired; it was a good tired. A happy tired. God’s Spirit has been working in me as well.

What I have been learning is that oftentimes when we feel tired, done, or in need of God’s help, He often responds by sending that help in the form of someone who needs help themselves. That old saying that God helps those who help themselves is a bunch of baloney. The truth is that God helps those who know they can’t help themselves by sending people to you to help. That gives a whole new perspective to the whole “it’s more blessed to give than to receive” thing doesn’t it?