No, my Lord will save me!

So today I wanted to start off with a joke I heard…

So there is this man who lives in a house near the coast.  There is a big storm coming and they are afraid that the storm will cause severe flooding.  City officials begin to evacuate the city in hopes of saving as many people as possible.

When they get to the man to evacuate him, he says, “No, I am not going anywhere.  My Lord will save me.”

So the officials are like, uh, ok, whatever and leave him.

So the storm comes and the man’s house begins to flood.  He goes up the roof to get out of the water and waits.

As he is on his roof, another man in a boat comes up to his house and tells him to hop on.

Again the man says, “No, my Lord will save me!”

The guy in the boat says, uh, yea whatever, and leaves.

The flood water rises even more and it is almost up to the roof.  Another person in a boat who is looking for stranded people comes up to him and tells him to hop in the boat.

Again the man responds, “No, my Lord will save me.”

The flood water rises even more and now the man is standing on the top of chimney.  His house is fully submerged under water.  Just then a rescue helicopter comes and the call out for the man to grab the rope so they can haul him to safety.

Again, the man responds, “No, my Lord will save me!”

So then the man dies.

When the man gets to heaven he is so angry and goes right up to God and is all like, “Why didn’t you save me?!”

God goes, “I gave you a warning, sent 2 boats and a helicopter!  What else do you want from me?”

Granted, this joke my not be the best to tell at social gatherings or to get a great laugh, but I think it can teach us a lot about our relationship with God.

Many times in our lives we may feel very busy are completely consumed with stress.  It is almost like you drowning and you don’t know which way is up.  You take inventory of everything that you have to get done and you feel so…helpless.

A lot of times in these situations, we all may do the same thing. 

“Oh, Lord!  Please just help me get through this!”

How many times have you said something like that?

There is nothing wrong with saying things like this, as long as it doesn’t stop there.

Many times I think we get caught with thinking that our relationship with God is one sided.  We are in trouble, we turn to God, and our problems should sort themselves out, right?

I will admit that so far this year, I have felt the pressure of many things.  Work, life in general, whatever it was, I was feeling the stress just piling up.  There were times were I felt so helpless and no matter how hard I worked or tried, nothing was getting finished and more was piling up…I just wanted to stop and forget it all.

Let go and let God, right!

Well…no.

Luckily, I did what many people do in this situation would do, I talked to my friends.  They reminded  me to pray about it.  But they also said, hey, just figure out what you need to do and get to work. 

The reason I thought of this “joke” today is because I think it summarizes how we want to deal with our problems a lot of the time.  Just pray about it, say that our Lord will take care of it, because that is easier than taking care of it yourself.

I do not believe that is the way that our relationship with God should be.  You can not simple pray your problems away.  You also must work towards. 

Let go and let God, yes, but you also have to give God the opportunity to work.

Also, I think we all need to be reminded sometimes is that we are not in this alone.  Like in the story, the man received help 4 different times but was unable to see that sometimes it is the people in our lives that can be the answer to our prayers. 

I think we forget that sometimes and when we pray for help we expect some huge superhuman response.  When in reality the answer to our prayer may simple be a friend offering a helping hand or someone to listen to you just vent about what’s going on.

Why can’t that be an answer to a prayer? 

So today, as we go through all of the “stuff” we have to deal with day in and day out, remember this…

1. Pray.  God is listening.
2. Work.  Give God a chance to happen.
3. Look.  You don’t know in what beautiful amazing way God will be there.
4. Repeat.  It is not a one and done kind of thing with prayer.  Keep at it!