06—EXPLORING JESUS AND HIS REALM:  The Lord is my strength (BY VATINA)  10-SEPT-2021
God bless you, my dears. I am thrilled just to have the chance to speak to you all once again. Praise the Lord for His supernatural assistance that makes talking like this possible. Well, let’s get started, shall we? Let’s pray.
Dearest Jesus, the One we belong to, please open our eyes now to behold wonderful things out of Your Word. 
Well, the passages that I’d like to go over today are, 
Psalm 60:11—Give us help from trouble: for vain in the help of man.
Psalm 18:1—I will love thee, O Lord, my strength.
Psalm 121:2—My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

(Prayer continues: ) Lord, You took us and You drew us out of many waters, out of deep and dark times. You set us up on a rock. And here we sit now, on the rock of stability amid a sea of confusion and indifference to the Word of God. But here we sit, solid on the rock foundation that we are to safely build our life’s goals on. If we have any other plans or wishes that have no foundation, or rest not upon the true things You teach us Jesus, then one day it’ll all be thrown down. 
Please teach us, Jesus, that the only way to be strong, really strong in thee, Lord, is to build bit-by-bit on the solid truths that You alone know; truth that come right from Your heart, and that You can teach us. Amen.
If we look to the wisdom of this world, we’ll only get mixed up signals and a mass and mess of confusing voices, each one stating that their “facts” are the real ones. But if their so-called “facts” are in fact in opposition and pulling away from the truths of the Lord’s counsel, then it’s going to bring you down rather than pull you up. 
See, the sun in the sky that all plants grow towards, as well as the evaporation of all liquids to join the clouds above, is an illustration of something important for each one who walks with Jesus. 
Look up. Grow up. Build up. Go up. 
First you need to receive counsel from Heaven. This then matures you and teaches you things. With this counsel you can build your work and life on the right foundation, one that will remain. And at lastly, when it’s your time to meet dear Jesus He’ll commend you for staying true and doing your best to listen, believe, and follow in His ways. 
Do you know why I was so little, so nothing, so weak and had so many human frailties to contend with? That was to keep me always in need of a very big and totally capable God who can run things with or without anyone’s help. He can carry the full show, alone, whether or not I or you choose to do things His way. There is no doubt about it. He can do anything and everything and is in no way handicapped without human assistance.
How do we know this? Well, where were you or I when He formed the hills and mountains, and created the sea and filled the Earth with all that it has? Like He told Job, God is God and doesn’t need our help to make anything He wishes to; or to remove anything that isn’t doing what it’s meant to be doing.
So, although it is nice for us human beings to have other people to live with, to work beside and to cheer us on with compliments, when it actually comes down to it and we need help where there is no help, God is perfectly and completely capable of just doing the miracles and giving the help, without anyone giving their approval and assistance. 
So what do you need help with today? Are you the only one praying for that certain thing that you are sure is God’s will for you? Do you feel alone in reaching a goal that God has placed in your heart to accomplish? If you are the only one reaching for it or even seeing that it is something worth your time and effort, you are not alone. 
Philippians 2:13—For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
God’s got to start the work. Where? In you, in your heart, moving you to do this or that for your benefit and that of others. Then, once He shows you His plan and makes you wish to be on His team that is completing that assignment, you need to call for His loving and capable strength to complete the work.
And if no one else is there beside you helping you, don’t worry. If they were beside you, they might just be slowing you down anyway, or arguing about what’s the best way to do it. If you are called to work or to do a project alone, with just you and Jesus, or to pray for something that only you feel is truly important, then know that God is a strong and fully capable partner to teamwork with.
Remember how Jesus said, “…every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” (John 16:32)
So even if Jesus, who had many thousands following after Him and wanting to be with Him, yet while on Earth He felt alone in what He was called on to do, so will each of us who are also called by God to do special and unique things, feel alone from time to time. We won’t always have the chummy support of close friends always by our side cheering us on and lending us a hand—especially if your job contains a fair amount of uncomfortable things to do. You can be sure then that, indeed, “vain will be the help of man”. 
Who wants a life of sacrifice and hardship? Not many can keep their eyes on the Heavenly prize for long enough to actually finish a project they are given by God to do. Sooner or later the world will pull most or many people back down, like gravity, to lull in the easier-to-do things of this world. 
So what do you need to do? Be like a plant, or “be like a tree” as the first Psalm says. And do what? Look up to the Son, the Son of God, the source of life-giving light. Then grow up and just get stronger so you won’t fall down into the ways of the World, but can help pull others up too. And finally, when it’s time to go up you’ll receive a well-deserved “well done”.
You’ll be glad then that you didn’t wait around for someone else to cheer you on, but you just did what you personally were called on to do—with or without the support of others in some way.
Let’s end in a prayer. I like talking to Jesus because it shows Him and it shows me that I am not working alone. 
Talk to the King; work with and for Jesus. Isn’t He the best partner you could have? One who can actually do anything that is needed. And you know what? When we communicate with Jesus--about anything, really, but here I am talking about when we are in communication about a certain project or goal or wish to be made into a reality--He then also doesn’t feel that sick lonely feeling that comes when the people He made don’t acknowledge Him, but try to do everything on their own. 
Of course, He is still right there helping them even if they never pray. But it’s pretty hard to work with someone who keeps ignoring the help you are giving them, and then takes all the credit to themselves. 
Imagine it like you are driving in a car and God is the driver. What if you, sitting on the other side of the car, were to look out the window and think pretty well of yourself: “Wow! I’m really going places.” Forgetting entirely that the only reason you are moving forward is because God has given you a vehicle to take you there, as is the one in charge of transporting you.
So there is a whole lot more that the Lord is doing for you and with you than you realise and imagine. You are not traveling through this world on your own, and even if you never were to say a single word of prayer your entire life, there is more that God is doing on a daily basis for you than you could have hours in a day to list it all. 
Taking the time to praise the Lord, and to ask for His advice and counsel, as well as to make sure you are doing what He most appreciates you doing with the time and life He is giving you and providing for you, makes Him feel you appreciate His companionship. It makes Him feel your love. And He loves to be in teamwork with you. He doesn’t just want the works done. He could have made it be that that job never needed to get done in the first place, right? But He made the situation and set it up for you to do something for Him. Why? So You and Jesus could have something interesting to do together, and to build your comradery through it. 
If you then just do the job, push your way through, complain and are sad why you have to do so many things on your own, and forget that you have Jesus there waiting to work with you, you’ll miss one of the most important aspects of working for Jesus—that it is to be a together thing; you and Him. It won’t matter as much to you then if you get much help and support along the way from others. Jesus will give you both the strength and the companionship that you need.
And one day when things change for the better, you might get to meet up with all the many others who also had to do a tough and lonely job for Jesus, and you can talk with them about it and find out how much you all have in common. You’ll have some really good friends then, with lots in common to talk about. But you have to do the fighting work first, even though others aren’t there to pick you up again or help you along the way.
I’ll end with one last scripture:
Psalm 28:7—The Lord is my strength and my shield, my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.