Ever-present help

Psalm 46:1-3 (NIV) God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

There have been a few times in my life where I have felt my earth give way, and my troubles seem like a mountain the size of, well, a mountain. Looking up at the mountain can be scary. Looking at the ground crumbling beneath me can be terrifying. During the low points of my life, I have two options; be stuck in my fear, or reach out to God. I remember this verse, where it says God is our ever-present help in trouble. That is sweet peace in the chaos. Ever-present. Always there. More than just there though, He is our help. He is active in our lives, not just a bystander. He is our refuge in the craziness of life, He is our haven. I know for a fact, as I am sure all of you do, this world is a dark and scary place. People are out to cut you down, demands of life are always pulling you in different ways. It's nice to have a safe haven to run to, a refuge in the midst of it all. David goes on to say God is our strength as well. I will be the first to admit I am weak. Not in the lifting weight sense, but the weak without God sense. I cannot do it alone. With Him, I can do all things, without Him, I am a wreck. A big one. I am glad that He is my strength to make it through. 

Whatever you are facing in your life right now, I know that God can help you. I have been in some deep valleys and thought, "I'm a hopeless wreck! There is no way God will help me out of this one." Every time I needed Him though, He was there. He was my help. And He can be your help too. I am not someone of great fame or fortune, God doesn't care about those things anyway, but if He will help me, He will help you as well. He is not a respecter of persons, we are all His children. So be encouraged today, that no matter what it is you are facing, He is our ever-present help. We don't have to fear. Fear is a tool of the enemy, to get your eyes off of Christ. I have found the best way to stave off the fear is to praise your way through it. The enemy hates it when we praise God, it confuses him. 

Psalm 116:1-7 (GNT) I love the Lord, because he hears me;
    he listens to my prayers. He listens to me
    every time I call to him. The danger of death was all around me;
    the horrors of the grave closed in on me;
    I was filled with fear and anxiety. Then I called to the Lord,
    “I beg you, Lord, save me!” The Lord is merciful and good;
    our God is compassionate. The Lord protects the helpless;
    when I was in danger, he saved me.  Be confident, my heart,    because the Lord has been good to me.

"He listens to me every time I call to Him", "When I was in danger, He saved me". There are some powerful words in these verses. When we call out to God for help, He is there. We can be confident, because of the faithfulness of God. We know He will never fail us, or forget us. He sees what we go through, and He cares. He is good!

This is my prayer for whoever reads this, wherever you are. Whatever you are facing, I pray that God will be your ever-present help in trouble and you can see the goodness of Him in your life. Everyone is facing some kind of battle, but God is big enough to take care of us all. So rest in Him, knowing He cares for you!

The dot of a dot...

Ever have days where you feel so small in this great big world? How could God see me down here amongst so many? Sometimes I feel less than 'a dot on the map', unseen and undetected. Surely God can't possibly see us all, know us all, and hear us all when we pray. 

There is an estimated 7,069,600,000 people in the world today. 7 billion is a crazy number to wrap my head around, I need a visual! So I did a little googling (new word!) and found out that if everyone held hands, the human population could stretch across the world 294.54 times*! That is a lot of people! Surely I can get lost from God's view in that dense of a population, but He says different:

Isaiah 49:15-16 Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.

Any mother can recall the day she gave birth to each of her children, there is something special about each one. The love of a mother for her children is unexplainable, and unquenchable. Even if you are a adoptive mother, mother to fur babies, or think of a niece, nephew or god-child as one of your own, the motherly love we women posses is hard to overcome. God says His love for us is even greater! He has engraved our names upon His palms, to be there forever! Not only that, He counts the very number of hairs on our heads! Wow, what a awesome God we serve! Who knows the number of hairs I have on my head, besides Him? No one! 

Luke 12:6-7 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Five sparrows for two cents. That's like two for each penny, and the fifth was almost like a freebie. Man, it must stink being that fifth sparrow. They were plentiful creatures, so much so they were selling them for next to nothing. Do you think the seller remembered each one he sold? God did! Not one was forgotten, not even the poor fifth sparrow who, to the seller, had no value. God said we are worth more than the little birds, whom are all accounted for in His eyes.

Psalm 139:13 -14, 17, 18 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.

 Before we were even born, the Lord knew us, knew who we would become, where we go. There is no way we can be unseen by Him, His thoughts are constantly upon us! Outnumber the grains of sand?! Wow! That is a lot of thoughts about His children. My limited mind cannot fathom it, how He can see me, let alone know me inside and out, knows my thoughts...and still loves me! 

Even in the grand scheme of this life, and the life after, God never forgets about us. We are part of His plan! We are important to Him, each and every single one of us...even those that feel like that poor little sparrow who happened to be the freebie no one wanted to pay for. We are precious to Him! Let this be your prayer for your life today, if you, like me, sometimes struggle with feeling forgotten;

Ephesians 3:17-19 ...And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

-Megan

*www.quora.com. (statistic is not approximate, based on a number of assumptions such as height, length of arms, etc)