What’s in A Name?, Pt 17: Ozer Li

Hebrews 13:6                         “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”

Psalm 54:4                             Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.

There are those believers who live in difficult parts of the world where persecution is frequent, even constant.  They must wonder sometimes, “Will this ever end?”  I imagine David was in that place when he wrote Psalm 54.  He was, after all, one man being chased by the armies of the King of Israel.  He was seemingly in perpetual battle, in close combat, smelling the breath of a warrior trying to slice off his arm or head, seldom relaxed, always on alert even at intimate vulnerable times like in the bathroom.

Most of us don’t live like that these days, but all of us have struggles of one kind or another, and in the midst of those struggles I imagine many of us come to the point of wondering if the struggle will ever end.  But David had a resource that some of us may not:  He had a close, personal, intimate relationship with the God of the universe.  He knew Yahweh Ozer Li (God, my helper) intimately, and knew with God at his side things would be OK in the end.

When he was a young boy, David spent years in the wilderness caring for a bunch of frail vulnerable sheep and he himself learned dependence on the Lord God.  Psalm 54 is a short, poignant poem clearly written by a man under deep psychological stress, but it occurs to me that it wasn’t his last Psalm.  David wrote others after 54 and this means he came out from under that stress.  God was indeed his helper.

One of the things I like about the heroes of the Bible is that many of them were flawed human beings.  David for instance was an adulterer and a murderer.  But God does not see as humans do (1Samuel 16:7), but instead looks at the condition of a person’s heart.  This was where David’s strength lay and why he was called a man after God’s own heart.

7But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1Samuel 16:6-7)

22After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’ (Acts 13:22)

So David’s strength to surmount his struggles came out of his utter dependence upon God.  This is not a thing often found in the 21st Century West but it needs to be rediscovered.  We live in a time that has seen the people of God hurl themselves into apostasy.  They have abandoned God and sought the pleasures of the world.  People seek the quick fixes but don’t understand those fixes don’t last.  The relief offered by drugs or alcohol or sex is temporary at best and self-destructive at worst because they themselves don’t fix anything.

Part of the trouble lays in the word “helper”.  We think of a helper as a person aiding us in the completion of a task, who is a ‘nice-to-have’, but ultimately is of no consequence to the completion.  This is a result of the Western mindset that our success is somehow a result solely of our own efforts.  In fact, the background thought is that if we even need a helper, we have somehow failed.  But the Biblical meaning of helper is entirely different.  There “helper” refers to the absolutely necessary, rather than the ‘nice-to-have’, help that God provides His children.  These days we have the tendency to think we need no help to achieve our daily tasks or even our lifegoals.  This idea is entirely a lie instituted by Satan to separate us from relationship with God.  It worked.  Recent generations have become the most apostate, maybe ever, and many people have little or no relationship with God, and that is probably the result of our demand for instant gratification.  We forget God is the Creator of everything and we forget that God works on a timeline different than ours.  When things go wrong God fixes them but sometimes it takes a while.  When things go wrong in my life, I have this tendency to assume the outcome will be worst result possible.  I do the human things—consider, develop options, plan—but I also do the Godly things.  I pray, read His Word, and listen for His answer.  I have discovered that never has the worst outcome happened and seldom has the next worst thing happened.

We are utterly dependent on God’s help.  Especially for us Americans is this a sea-change in thinking.  We must understand that God wants intimate relationship with us maybe more than we do of Him.  After all, God knows where our life is going, the faulty thinking we engage in, and the ultimate need we have for Him.  But He won’t break our free will; we have to come to him.  Another thing to consider is this:  God gives us everything we need to accomplish the purpose for which we were created.  He walks beside us, guides us, provides for us, nurtures us, sustains us, loves, strengthens and teaches us.  So, the ultimate solution to the frustration of our struggles and the pain inflicted by our enemies is to turn to God.  I expect that at some moment in every life a point is reached when that person just wants the struggle to end.

When that happens turn to God.  He is the only solution.  You may respond, “I don’t think I believe that!  I’ve never seen it happen!”  Well of course you haven’t.  That injection by God in someone’s life is the most intimate of intimacies.  It is personal beyond words.  If you are at that point, if you need your Divine Helper to intervene in your life then it is time to turn to Him.  Talk to Him.  Pray!