November 27.
No Other Help Will Do

Psalm 86:1

Bow down thine ear, O Lord, hear me: for I am poor and needy.

I am poor and needy. If you’re poor, you are not by yourself, because

Jesus says the poor you will have with you always. Even though many of us look like we’ve got a few dollars, we are just about two weeks from welfare if we happened to miss only two paychecks. Our lights would start blinking and we would be almost out of gas. We may have good credit, but it won’t last long. So we can’t walk around with our chest stuck out like I’m Mr. or Mrs. It. We know the truth. And we’ve got friends who work at the bank and the loan companies where we borrowed money.

We all need something from somebody. That’s why we ought to embrace each other. That’s why we ought to lean on each other. If you are down today, there’s no need of me laughing at you, because the tray could turn. You are on one side of the seesaw, and I’m on the other, but a seesaw goes up and down. Next time I’m going to be down and you’ll be up. It is important to learn how to support one another and unite together.

However, the text is speaking of something more than physical poverty. The psalmist was really saying, “I’m empty.” Have you ever been to the point when you felt empty? You can have all the finer things in life and still feel empty. You can have filet mignon on your table and alligator shoes in your closet, but you feel depleted. If you don’t have the fullness of Christ down on the inside, all this other stuff won’t amount to anything. You can still be suffering the same as the writer of this text. Fine food and fine clothes didn’t take away his suffering. Unless God reached down and touched him, he wouldn’t make it through his trial. He was afflicted in such a way that only with God’s intervention could he overcome and have victory. He felt destitute and was begging God for help.