Why is God ALWAYS the Last Resort?

This is a good question, don’t you think?

Whenever we find ourselves in “a situation”, whether it be small or significant, we typically have multiple choices insofar as a resolution is concerned. We can reach out to Dad or Mom, to another trusted relation, to casual or trusted friends or even strangers; we can pick up one or more of a literally eye-popping variety of self-help books/tapes, we can write our thoughts in a diary or blog, consult a psychologist, talk to a minister, rabbi, imam, priest, swami, minister or reverend, use scream therapy or other self-realization/self-awareness/there-is-nobody-like-me techniques, indulge in sex, practice yoga, participate in all manner of strenuous exercise, use drugs and/or alcohol, overeat or starve ourselves, go shopping, clam up or confess our souls to anyone who will listen, drown ourselves in sports, arts, traveling, or invoke a time-tested method of laziness known as doing nothing…

You get the picture.

Do you want to know why we are conflicted with choices when we are confronted with situations crying out for resolution? The short answer is that we have too many, too meaningless, choices. The definitive answer is this:

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. (James 4:1-2)

Take a hard and long look at that last sentence.

Holy Scripture exemplifies God as humanity’s “help”. The word “help” occurs 51 times in the Psalms alone, and no Psalm better describes God as help than Psalm 51:

I lift up my eyes to the hills –
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip –
he who watches over you will not slumber;
Indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD watches over you –
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all harm –
he will watch over your life;
the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

Holy Scripture has multiple examples of God meeting our needs:

Our barns will be filled with every kind of provision. Our sheep will increase by thousands, by tens of thousands in our fields; (Psalms 144:13)

The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. (Isaiah 58:11)

“Why should I forgive you? Your children have forsaken me and sworn by gods that are not gods. I supplied all their needs, yet they committed adultery and thronged to the houses of prostitutes. (Jeremiah 5:7)

Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:8)

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:31-33)

Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. (2 Peter 1:3)

Something that we hear all the time in this day and age is people saying ‘I wish someone would listen to me!’ Be aware that God hears what His people say. Witness the testimony of God Himself to His servant Moses regarding his people:

The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. (Exodus 3:7)

Since we know that God listens to His people, how is it that we have fallen so far away from Him by this time in human history that we have consigned Him to a rubbish heap, and now depend upon ourselves for the answers to all our problems? We have taken a bad situation (a world fallen and broken because of our sinful rebellion against God) and made it worse by refusing to take our issues to Him in prayer. God is the One with all the answers: he wrote them into the Ten Commandments, and then fulfilled the Mosaic covenant with the new and everlasting covenant of His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. In its most perverse incarnation of the sin of pride, humanity has largely turned its collective back on the One who stands waiting for us with open arms, offering true love and everlasting commitment… because we believe, with stubbornly clouded judgment, that we have a better alternative.

When you find yourself in “a situation”… take it to the Lord in prayer and petition. While you are not guaranteed the resolution that you want, you are guaranteed that the Lord will hear you, and will put the resolution in place that He knows you need.

Make the Lord your first resort… not your last resort!