season 1//episode 4: does god really help those who help themselves?
Welcome back, friends! I am so glad you’re here and hope that whatever you’re doing today, that you are being filled with joy.
Today we are going to unpack this statement: God helps those who help themselves.
So my friend, have you ever heard the statement, “God helps those who help themselves?”
Many people believe that this phrase in Scripture. I was shocked to learn that a few years back, 52% of professing Christians believed that it was a verse in the Bible. Well, there is no such verse, friends!
“God helps those who help themselves” is a quote that many people attribute to Benjamin Franklin, but it is actually from an English politician named Algernon Sydney who lived in the 1600s.
Regardless of where this quote comes from, we can say with confidence that it is not biblical. The entire message of the Gospel is one of self-denial and surrender, which means that we cannot really do anything to help ourselves.
You may be listening to this and wonder “What does she mean when she says ‘the Gospel?’”
Each of us was created by God. Thousands of years ago, God created the first man and woman. The trouble is that they began to question their trust in God and wonder if He would really come through for them. The consequence of their actions was death. This sin created an eternal separation called hell between us and God if we decide not to choose Him. Thus, struggle entered the world and for a while, hope seemed like it was lost.
But the beautiful thing about God is that He had a plan. He loved the people He created in spite of their betrayal. So thousands of years later, He sent hope to the world in the form of His only Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ walked on earth as a man but possessed all of God’s power within His earthly body. Jesus died a sinner’s death on a cross. But three days later, He rose from the dead!
Because Jesus rose from the dead, we can have eternal life in heaven! When you choose to say yes to Him, He takes your brokenness and the junk in your life and turns it into something beautiful for Him. If you want to experience lasting peace and hope, all you have to do is come to Him. He is waiting with open arms.
This isn’t about praying the perfect prayer or doing all the right things. It is about living in relationship with the Creator of the universe. This is a sacred and beautiful privilege that we cannot take for granted. He loves us enough to give us the best help of all–salvation through His Son!
Now, why would this quote “God helps those who helps themselves” sound so appealing to us in the first place? Well, think about how we are raised and the culture we live in. I know that people all around the world can listen to this podcast, but if you live in the United States, you were bred for self-sufficiency. The American mentality is that we get stuff done and we do it by ourselves. We figure things out. We don’t want to be weak or need the help of others. We just want to be “successful” at whatever the cost, and the needle for success is always moving.
But God’s kingdom and His ways are so completely different. He tells us that the most important thing we can do is humble ourselves by admitting our need for Him. He tells us that we need to be a servant instead of expecting to be served.
I don’t know if any of you watch The Chosen, but it has been such a blessing to me and to our family. If you don’t know what it is, it is the first multi-episode series about the life of Jesus, and it is so well done. The goal of this series is to portray what life would have been like in Galilee and to weave Bible stories from the Gospels into it.
Anyways, as I watch The Chosen, I am struck by how gentle, kind, yet firm Jesus is. I see that He truly longs for His followers to love Him above all else because it is what is best for them. He wants them to be able to receive His love and give it away. The Chosen is not sponsoring the show; I just wanted to give a shameless plug.
As I consider the life of Jesus and how He was sent to show the people the love of His Heavenly Father, I see that if I were able to help myself, I wouldn’t need Jesus! This is so similar to what we discussed last week when we talked about how “God never gives you more than you can handle” is also a false statement.
Let’s consider the difference between thinking that everything is up to you and the other extreme–not being a person of action because you’re just waiting on God to work things out.
On the one extreme, we may be tempted to go about life as though everything is up to us. This is where I lived for the first 25 years of my life.
When I was in college and in my early-mid twenties, I wanted to be seen as capable and as a “good Christian girl.” I don’t think I would have said it quite like this, but if you examined the motives behind my actions, that’s where I was.
I was desperate to find some solace in knowing that I was ok with God, just as I was.
As I mentioned in the first couple episodes where I shared my testimony, I had experienced a situation with sexual abuse in my childhood that had completely changed everything for me and left me feeling dirty and unworthy of love, completely devastated with my innocence shattered.
It took years for me to finally recognize the situation for what it was, but the false beliefs I developed as a result of this incident along with other difficulties growing up set me on a path of trying to earn my righteousness before God.
I wrongly believed that I could wash myself clean by performing for Him and that my purity and righteousness were based upon the amount of good things I could do.
“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” - Galatians 1:10 ESV
Where is your greatest pain point? Where are you operating out of a place of hurt instead of healing?
Either you run to the “big bad sins” that will ultimately destroy your life in an attempt to hide from God, or you run to the “pretty sins” in order to look good and earn favor with Him.
On the other extreme from performance and people pleasing is the sin of passivity. We can just sit around and do nothing and say we are “waiting on God” instead of being people of action. We may say we are waiting on Him to fix our marriage or our job situation or our parenting, but we are actually just folding our hands and sitting in the comfort of all we know instead of stepping into the unknown with Him.
So how do we move past the mentality of believing that we have to help ourselves before God will help us?
Well, we can choose whether we want to live this life with Him or for Him. This is the ultimate difference between relationship and religion. When we choose to believe what He says about Himself and what He says about us, we find that we can make choices that honor Him because we are resting in His love for us. When we feel a sense of obligation or duty toward Him, chances are that we haven’t been made new or we have slipped back into performing or trying to earn His love.
He calls us new, loved, and redeemed.
When this is our name and identity, we can take off the need to be a “good Christian” and just enjoy being His.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” - 2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV
We have the privilege of resting in the love of our Savior and trusting Him to do what we could not and never could do, which is save us from ourselves. This is the power of the Gospel.
I’ll talk to you next week, friends.
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