My Help Comes from the Lord: Our Hearts’ Weakness and God’s Sufficient Power

Where do we turn when life feels overwhelming? When we feel useless and like we are not accomplishing anything? When it seems like we are in the hamster wheel of life and not gaining any ground? When we want things so much bigger for our lives than seems possible in the here and now? When the future just seems scary and the world’s heaviness and darkness seems to creep into our hearts and minds? Why do we even experience this list of hardships? The Weakness of Our Hearts These experiences and emotions are common for all of humanity. Even the strongest Christian is prone to the weakness of this world, the flesh, and the temptations of the evil one.

As Christians, when we experience these feelings of helplessness, loneliness, heaviness, etc., it should remind us how weak and feeble our hearts really are. Psalm 113 describes David as feeling as if God has forsaken him.

The Apostle Paul provides details of his own battle with sin when he writes “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19).

Thousands of years before Paul, the prophet Jeremiah described the heart as being “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

Ezekiel approaches this topic from the opposite vantage point by identifying our need for a new heart. “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). 

Even as regenerate believers, we still need to be reminded that our hearts are still affected by sin and in need of sanctification by the Holy Spirit. God’s Power in our Weakness As Christians, when we realize the weakness of our hearts, this creates a posture of humility and dependence on God. God has, through his Word, given us his precious and very great promises (2 Peter 1:4). Psalm 121:1-2 says: I lift up my eyes to the hills.  From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord,     who made heaven and earth. When we realize our need for help and our dependency on God because of the weakness of our hearts, we have this sure promise that our help does come from Yahweh – the one who created the heavens and the earth. This Psalm is written in present tense – meaning it’s current and active. God’s help, God’s strengthening, comes into our present moment of need. 

Of Psalm 121:2, Matthew Henry wrote: We must see all our help laid up in God, in his power and goodness, his providence and grace; and from him we must expect it to come: “My help comes from the Lord; the help I desire is what he sends, and from him I expect it in his own way and time.” So, when we feel weak or helpless, as if life has no meaning or like we are not moving forward, we can trust in our God who promises to help his children when they have need. All we need to do is look to him. This is a promise. God is our help. Our God, our help in ages past.

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal home. - Issac Watts Brittany Proffitt lives in North Texas and is a writer and content manager for So We Speak.