‘HELP! DIAL 333 FOR GREAT & MIGHTY THINGS!’

 

“Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” Jeremiah 33;3

 Lord Jesus, I offer up this labor of love in presenting your Word to all those You would lead to this Ministry web site that by the power of Your Spirit, You would transform lives and reveal Yourself to each one, opening their understanding of Your Greatness and love through Your Son Jesus Christ. That we would know the truth and the truth of Your plan for man would set them free indeed, amen.

‘Help, I need somebody,  Help, Not just anybody
Help, You know, I need someone Help!

When I was younger so much younger than today

I never needed anybody’s help in any way

But know these days are gone, I’m not so self-assured

Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors..‘

If you’re a Believer you KNOW where you get YOUR help from, right?  But like this song let’s turn our ‘time-clocks’ back if you will and ask the very same question…. Where did you get YOUR help in a time of need?  I think for most of us it could be answered in anything that would take away the pain of life’s pitfalls.  For some help came from alcohol, for others it was drugs.  Maybe it was sex.  All in all we agree that it more didn’t help than these things made is addicts of the very thing we thought could ‘help’ us.

‘Help me if you can, I’m feeling down
And I do appreciate your being round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won’t you please, please help me? Help me, help me, ooh..’

   You know, when the doctor leans over with a clipboard in his hand and goes on to tell you that ‘you’ve got cancer!’ and leaves you with no real help in mind. When the Oncologist reviews your ‘charts’ and begins to review his plan for ‘help’ that will begin the process of healing that will help heal your body….. For me this was very much a reality two years ago as my wife and I pondered and then sought and found where our help was going to come from.

‘And now my life has changed in oh, so many ways
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure
I know that I just need you like I never done before.’

What a difference it makes that when your life situations change and you’re left with depending on someone else to help you through it that it becomes so more real to know with confidence that the help you need is far more real and close than you ever imagined?   Instead of independence it becomes more dependent.  Instead of insecurity it becomes secure.

For my wife and I the help we needed was going to come through my surgery and a year of chemotherapy, but the real help, the real healing was to come from the One who created me and formed me.  For the first time in my life, I would go from knowing what I needed to help me to knowing the One who would be doing all the help.  God gave Patty a promise that fateful afternoon in that hospital, that He would be ‘faithful to complete the work He started’  (1 Thessalonians 5:24) when He said that , ‘This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God that therein the Son of God might be glorified” .(John 11:4)  He would become our help not just in fixing what was broken, in becoming our very direct~lifeline that we could have access to 24 hours a day and be there to help us in a time of need.

The older I get the more I am realizing that the  most important thing in my life is not  work, business, rushing here and there; but the most important thing is to live truly a life of prayer.   Prayer is the most essential part of my life.  Jesus said that, ” Men ought always to pray and not to faint”  Luke 18:1

When I’m finding myself up against a challenge in my life I am often reminded of God’s Eternal un- diminishing Greatness in Jeremiah 33:3: “Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” 

 

There are often times when I need to see good things larger than the bad things that surround me in this world.  Just last night, my wife and I were weighing the circumstances of how we were going to provide me health insurance since the employer I previously had was taking me off their coverage. Since everything surrounding my cancer follow-ups were tied into this medical coverage; especially my doctor, it quickly became a source of worry. What would happen next?

Perplexed but not defeated, we prayed, and faithfully gave the problem to the only One who can solve it, Jesus Christ. It has   Although we don’t know what to do, we do know who does know, and so we entrust Him to work it out. It doesn’t mean we sit back and just wait for something to happen; although I’ve seen things happen without me doing anything.  But often God allows us to partake in His work by knocking on doors, making phone calls, following through looking for a window of opportunity God would open for us. All in all, praying “with thanksgiving, that the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”  Philippians 4:6

“Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

In those dark days just before the fall of Jerusalem, Jeremiah is still a prisoner of the king. We see the picture of these people Jeremiah had preached to turn away from their lifestyle apart from God as Jeremiah sits shackled in a courtyard, surrounded by guards. In this humiliating scene, another message comes to the prophet from God. Once again, Jeremiah is looking past the city’s present despair to a future God is showing him: one day God will restore Jerusalem and the people of Israel.

“Call to Me, and I will answer you. I will tell you of great things, things beyond what you can imagine, things you could never have known.“

Have you ever been at a point in your ministry where you thought you had it all figured out and than found yourself in a one on one meeting with God that reveals a particular aspect of your relationship with Him is actually flawed?

Here in this verse we find OT Prophet Jeremiah being counseled by God Himself. For forty years the prophet Jeremiah had warned that Judah and Jerusalem would be destroyed for their sins, and now the armies of Babylon were at the very walls of the city.

Imagine 40 years Jeremiah faithfully preached the Word of God, only to see God’s Word rejected by the people God had called.  It would be very difficult to conceive of a situation more painful than the situation that Jeremiah was facing.

To make matters worse, Jeremiah was cast down into a pit in prison because king Zedekiah didn’t want Jeremiah openly prophesying the coming ruin of Judah. To the human eye it would be without doubt that God’s promises to Israel had dried up and all was going to fail.

And yet, it would be exactly during this time; Babylon knocking on the door, Jeremiah God’s mouth piece locked in prison that God would come to His servant with these words of encouragement.

Maybe Jeremiah in all his human nature was expecting a different outcome. Reading in Chapter 32 he had been praying about this deliverance for his people, but now he finds himself in a pit where he could do……nothing more.  What then would God do now for him?  The  encouragement…. the answer God gives him was PRAY!

The Word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah the second time. And that Word of the Lord was: “Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

When all appears at its worse, when everything appears darkest, when we give ourselves over to the hopeless, to the spiritual prisoner it is prayer that God gives as the instrument to confirm in our heart God’s promises even in the darkest of times.

Maybe today  you find yourself shut up in the heaviness of prison, the heaviness of your own heart, and you simply can’t find a way out; so much to the point that your eyes fail to see just how God’s promises can be fulfilled in your own situation.  God says to you, “Call upon Me.”  PRAY!

Old or young, male or female, child or parent. we are called to pray…. God says, “Call upon Me.” 

“When you are in trouble, call for Me, I will come and rescue you”   ‘Call on Him while He is nearby’  ~  “Just ask and it will be given to you; seek after it and you will find. Continue to knock and the door will be opened for you.”  ~  Psalm 50:15~ Isaiah 55:6~ Matthew 7:7

No doubt Jeremiah had prayed and had prayed intensely.  Those who have ever been in jail or prison can all attest how much improved our prayer life improves. And in it all, God say’s to us ‘Call upon Me!’

 

There are times when like Jeremiah we have prayed….and prayed… and yet we might hear what God would say to Jeremiah ; ‘Jeremiah, though you have prayed and prayed intensely, this is still My encouragement to you: Pray. Call upon Me.”  God’s  response…….. Pray on.

Although Jeremiah had prayed, God calls him to continue because, as long as I am in this body of flesh, I need the command to pray or else God would not give it.

I often forget to wrestle with God in prayer. I am so prone to set aside plenty of time for myself and for the world but a few moments for God?  Oye vay, now that I find myself forgetting.   I give the world around me my best, and whatever is leftover for prayer……THIS church is why God says: “Call upon Me!”

This is why, I believe, one of the most realistic and beautiful pictures of prayer in the Bible is found in Genesis 32:22-32 where we see  Jacob wrestling with God all night and not letting God go. THAT to me is prayer: wrestling with God.

Are you troubled?     “Call upon Me”

Are you at your wits’ end and you see now no way out?  “Call upon Me.

Are you lonely?  “Call upon Me”

Do your friends or family fail you? “Call upon Me.”

Are you struggling with anger or rage? “Call upon Me”

Do you feel you are distant from God?  “Call upon Me”

“Cast your cares on the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken.”  Psalms 55:22

Maybe today you are searching for answers to your life; maybe you’ve tried religion and you feel you’ve come up short. After all the ‘good feelings’ you thought would make you better, you’re left looking into a mirror, not liking what you see when it’s just you alone. Call upon Me.

Maybe Babylon has come knocking at your front and you feel outnumbered, unqualified, and empty handed. Call upon Me.

Maybe you’re a prodigal son or daughter and have run away from God, only to discover your inheritance is spent and have nothing but the shirt on your back…Call upon Me

Maybe things have so spun out of control in your life where you’ve tried everything and you find yourself contemplating taking your life..Call upon Me.

Good news,  God is a God of second chances! No long list of instructions from God.  No  “rub prayer beads. recite ‘Hail Marys.’” No, God’s Word simply says, “Call upon Me.” It doesn’t say, “Come through a saint, come through the virgin Mary, come through some priest.”  It says Call upon Me..

“And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”   Isaiah 65:24     ‘I’ll anticipate their prayers and respond before they know it;even as they speak, I will hear.‘

Prayer is all of  God’s grace. God giving to us what we don’t deserve…God working in us to seek Him and God graciously supplying our need,  by His promise that rests upon His character which is immutable.

  A.W. Pink  is quoted:    ” God is perpetually the same: subject to no change in His being, attributes, or determinations…….Because God has no beginning and no ending, He can know no change. He is everlastingly “the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” James. 1:17.

 “Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

With so many variables in this life, finding truth can be difficult to find. But when God says “Call unto Me, and I will answer thee” you can be sure that God ‘says what He means and means what He says’ “For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.” 2 Corinthians 1:20

God is immutable in His essence…….in who He is, He never lies, you can count on Him to come through for you. This means that there was never a time when He was not; and there will never come a time when He shall cease to be.

God has neither evolved, grown, nor improved. All that He is today, He has ever been, and ever will be. “I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6) is His own unqualified affirmation. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.

He cannot change for the better, for He is already perfect; and being perfect, He cannot change for the worse.  He is perpetually the same. He only can say, “I am that I am” (Exodus. 3:14). He is altogether uninfluenced by the flight of time. There is no wrinkle upon the brow of eternity. Therefore His power can never diminish nor His glory ever fade.

 His truthfulness is immutable, for His Word is Eternal!

“forever settled in heaven” (Psalm. 119:89).

His love is eternal: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah. 31:3)

And “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end” (John 13:1).

  A sparrow is being pursued by a bird of prey, a hawk. In desperation the sparrow  flies into a cabin where a man catches the sparrow and proceeds to throw the sparrow violently to the ground and kills it.

Would God do that? No. When He calls us to seek His face, and when we, out of this present life, by His grace, fly to Him in all of our fears and toils, will He not have mercy? Will He not hear us? Will He not rush to our side and rescue us?

The Word of God is trustworthy, His promises are faithful so we can be assured that no matter what circumstance, hardship, temptation, trial you are facing right now, nothing can cut you off from the ear of God.   Jeremiah was in prison.  There was nothing the king wanted more than for everyone to forget about the prophet Jeremiah. He wanted the veil of silence and forgetfulness cast over this man. And Jeremiah knew that at this time no one remembered him, really, and there was none to whom his soul was counted dear. And yet, God says, “I will hear and I will answer.”

My own experience confirms that He does hear and answer my prayers, not because of any worthiness of my prayers but because  as a child of God. I have Saviour in Jesus Christ, who “ever liveth to make intercession for me at the right hand of God.” Hebrews 7:25

What’s more, as a child of God I can come boldly to Him..”Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:16

Come boldly, that we might receive what? Our own way? The answer to everything that we want? No. that we might “receive mercy and grace to help us in time of need.”

 

So God says: “I will answer Thee and I will show Thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.” Remember Jeremiah. He could not see it. He saw God’s judgments falling upon Judah. He saw the people of Judah hardened in their sins and forsaking God. He saw the Babylonians at the city walls. And in the midst of that, he said to himself, “Where are the promises of God to His people to preserve them and to bless them? I don’t see this.” God said to him, “Jeremiah, even though you don’t see it, I promise to do good to My own people. Through all of these things I am chastening them for their sins and I am going to bring them back after seventy years. Now you go buy a field. I tell you, Jeremiah, all My children, My true children, will have a place in My blessing.”

But still there was nothing to confirm that promise as far as his own eye could see. All his own eye could see was the army of the Babylonians. His ears heard the war-drums and the smash of the boulders from the catapults thrown against the walls of the city and the crash of the rams against the city doors.  In prison, forgotten by man but then the Word of the Lord comes to him …..“Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

There will come times in your life where you will not have answers, especially when you find yourself in what appears to you is this prison where man may be saying no to what you’ve been called to speak. Maybe it will be a week or years where what you see around you cannot be trusted because the Bible says we must ‘walk by faith and not by sight’ 2 Corinthians 5:7 and we know that faith is  the “substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” Hebrews 11:1.

And although it may seem that the Babylonians have surrounded us and we begin to lose strength, we must never give in to fear because “He that is in me is greater than he that is in the world”              1 John 4:4 and so we remember to cling onto the Rock and know that the “promises of God are Yea and Amen” 2 Corinthians 1:20 because “Faithful is He who called you, who will also do it” 1 Thessalonians 5:24 “and being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”     Philippians 1:6

And so what are you waiting for?  Do you have a call you need to make that will free you from the yoke of whatever the bondage it is that is sealed wrapped in doubt, filled with worry and sealed with fear?  “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for Me?” Jeremiah 32:27

“Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

Maybe you’re reading this today and are struggling with the issues of this life. Perhaps it’s an addiction that attempted to lay claim on your soul, maybe it’s a divorce, bankruptcy,  something you’ve been ashamed of for years, and you feel a strong conviction that says come free!  You may be a prodigal son or daughter,  or maybe just seeing the truth about the extent of  God’s love and forgiveness of your sins, then today is the day God made for you and we will rejoice in it!

^” Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool…….. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.”  Isaiah 1:18-19

If you believe that Jesus died for your sins, that He is the Son of God and receive by His grace through faith His free gift of forgiveness, you can declare before God right where  you are this promise of God that, “ That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Romans 10:9 than say this simple pray.   ‘God, I am a sinner in need of forgiveness. Forgive me. I believe that Jesus  You died for all my sins.  I believe Jesus You are the Son of God. Wash me and cleanse me by Your precious blood and write my name in the Book of Life, Thank You, in Jesus Name, Amen.’

If you prayed that prayer and meant it from your heart, the Bible says that “Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” Luke 15:10

“Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”