The Response

“Our God, will you not judge them? For we are powerless before this vast number that comes to fight against us. We do not know what to do, but we look to you.”
All Judah was standing before the LORD with their dependents, their wives, and their children.
2 Chronicles 20:12-13
Helplessness is a terrible feeling.  Circumstances completely out of your control.  Powerless.  Undone.  I have been in three significant car wrecks.  The memories from those are not detailed but the overwhelming feeling of being out of control and helpless is clear.  One of those took place by freshman year of college.  Five us were folded into a Pontiac Grand Am.  We were fit so tightly that no one wore their seat-belt (it was the 90s).  As we flipped headlight to taillight three times and rolled over twice, the front passenger quoted the 23rd Psalm.  We were helpless and our only hope was God’s grace.  All five of us survived when first responders were certain they would find deaths at the scene.

Jehoshaphat gathered all of Judah together.  They knew they were helpless.  They didn’t know what they could do so they looked to God.  Jehovah-Roi. God my protector.  Judah had no human protector.  The king, who the people would have normally looked to as their protector, spoke to Judah that he, and therefore all of Judah were helpless.  Jehoshaphat placed his need and his hope in God as Jehovah-Roi.  God their only protector.  No one, no man could protect them.  They were undone without the protection of their God.

I don’t think the front passenger, in the midst of the car flipping, was working through exegesis of Psalm 23 when he began praying but he was speaking a prayer much like Jehoshaphat.  A prayer of helplessness.  Psalm 23:1 says “The LORD [is] my shepherd.”  We are his sheep and he is our protector.  We are helpless and he is our Jehovah-Roi, as Jehoshaphat said, “we are powerless...but we look to you.”

  • Do you recognize your insufficiencies and rely on God’s power or do you struggle with pride and self sufficiency?
  • Do you join with others and wait on the Lord or do you bulldoze ahead figuring things out with your human mind?


--Zine Smith

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