NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Day 179 – Loving to help

Scripture focus: If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. James 1:5 The Message

In the Old Testament, an infirmity could get one in a lot of trouble. Usually referencing a physical defect or deformity, scripture is clear: offerings, sacrifices and even priests had to be “without spot or blemish.” In the New Testament, the reference to infirmity takes on a more metaphorical meaning. The Greek word for infirmity is really the negative for of “sthenos” – which means “strength.” In the New Testament, it refers primarily to weaknesses of the mental, moral and emotional kind.

Old Testament Priests were required to be without physical defect – but they had mental, moral and emotional blemishes. So when they offered a sacrifice for sin, they were asking on behalf of themselves and their people. In the New Testament, Jesus was without blemish of any kind. When Jesus was crucified – sacrificed – for the sins of all people – he did so as the entirely unblemished Lamb of God.

In Seamand’s chapter entitled The Wounded Healer, He makes an astounding point. He says it would be enough for Jesus to have atoned for our sin because he understood the truth of our infirmities – atonement is atonement. But – and this is a huge point – Jesus didn’t understand our brokenness at an intellectual level – HE FELT OUR INFIRMITIES.

How can the sinless Son of God feel our feelings of shame, know our emotional weaknesses, relate to our infirmed state? Because he felt as we feel. As a proof text, Seamands offers up this account of the humanity of Christ:

He “offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared. Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered” Hebrews 5:7-8

“Jesus wept” is not just the shortest verse in the bible – it’s the reason we can approach the throne of grace with confidence. He gets us. When we approach Jesus, he doesn’t exhort us to stop feeling the way we feel. He doesn’t demand that we grow up and stop crying like babies.

Emotionally unhealthy people often think the solution to their emotional longings is to become people who know what they’re doing (get “it” right and do “it” well – whatever “it” is) or figure a way to squash all that emoting. But the author of the book of James doesn’t shame us with angry exhortations to get “it” right or stop feeling big - he encourages us to remember who to ask for help! I wonder if emotional health is best expressed when we know how we feel and what we think we want – AND we acquire the wisdom to know how and when and where and to whom to express our longings. I wonder if the mature and emotionally healthy ask for help differently than those of us who are still in the early stages of healing.

How do you ask for help?

Recommended reading: 2 Kings 10 in the morning; Acts 17 and Psalm 144 in the evening