Our Great Need of Divine Help

There is no way to be saved unless the Lord helps us to see our need. “No man can come unto Me, except My Father which hath sent Me draw him.”* (John 6:44) An individual cannot see his sins and cannot see the Savior as his Savior unless he has divine assistance. Until the Holy Spirit reveals the grim and horrible truth about the state of ones heart, no true repentance is possible. Saving faith is not inspired in the seeker without God’s help.

There is no way that a saved person can see the depth of his own inherited depravity of heart except that same Holy Spirit assists. Nor can a consecration to God go as far as is necessary unless the Lord is leading and guiding, flashing light on the soul, and dividing asunder between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart. Sanctifying faith is divinely inspired when God is satisfied, the heart is purified by the power of God, and the soul is possessed of perfect love.

There is no way to live for God, even with a pure heart, without God helping us to live for Him. “Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.”* (Psalms 39:5) As the poet stated, “God’s way is best; if human wisdom / A fairer way may seem to show, / ’Tis only that our earth-dimmed vision / The truth can never clearly know.”* Our constant dependence on God is an abiding condition. Indeed, we are so needy that we cannot even see how needy we are without the help of the Lord.

There is no way that we can hold to truth without God’s help. “Without Me ye can do nothing.”* (John 15:5) As one brother stated, “There is no holding things purchased with blood without the shedding of blood.” Truth must be bought to be possessed, and it costs all we have.

Also, there is no way to get or keep a vision of God’s work without His help. In the book, A True Story in Allegory, Sister Lottie Jarvis writes that “Many, quite forgetting that the Word cannot be understood properly except by the Spirit, began to consider it from a human standpoint.” “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”* (1 Corinthians 2:14) Without the Lord’s help, our understanding of His work in men degenerates into mere human observation, and we think of things that are actually inspired and directed by the Holy Spirit as merely human efforts. A brother or sister may actually be testifying and rejoicing in light that the Lord has shown on their path, but to those whose faith stands in the wisdom of men, it will appear as only that brother or sister’s ideas—fine for them, perhaps, but deemed peculiar to them and others like them. How forcible the apostle’s words apply: “When ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.”* (1 Thessalonians 2:13) Surely, unless the truth is received as the word of God, there will be no effectual working.