My Present Help in Trouble

"My Present Help in Trouble" – Psalm 46:1 "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." The study first distinguishes which trouble it means —not the great tribulation, but the everyday kind, the kind that polishes and perfects— and then unpacks the three words of the verse: refuge, strength, present help. Out of that comes the most uncomfortable claim in the message: trouble is personal, it is not handed around or unloaded onto someone else; what is shared is prayer. It moves through Psalm 121:1-2, Psalm 91:2, Psalm 34:19, Isaiah 41:10, Isaiah 40:29 and 2 Corinthians 12:9.

I. The people who did not receive Him

A. Scripture is the only place where we have known a truth. It is not the books; the earth is full of books.

B. When God called His people in the time of the law, that people did not answer: they awaited a king who would ride out and rule the world in might.

C. And when they saw a plain man, they began to reject Him. Rejection comes when we fail to see how great and powerful God's essence is.

D. Revelation makes plain when they will receive Him: in the time when we are with the Lord, in the seven years and the marriage of the Lamb.

E. There we shall see Him face to face as He is, and there He will say: "thou hast been faithful in a few things, I will make thee ruler over many."

F. That first generation did not accept the privilege, and God raised up the people of grace, and that is the people we belong to.

G. The first coming was squandered and they crucified Him: it was what human beings would do. But that blood is what flows in our lives when we are converted.

H. You were bought with blood. What is over our lives is the blood of Christ: not religion, not a church, not four walls.

II. What trouble is

A. Every struggle you have is against the devil, not against people: not against your wife, your husband, your child.

B. This is not about the great tribulation, but about the troubles of this earth, the ones we have to live, because they are what purify us.

C. Do you think success and comfort are what make us strong? What that produces is vanity.

D. When you are put through diverse trials you are polished; and while you are polished, God is perfecting.

E. If you let a child run loose, jumping and breaking, he will not be formed into the image of the Lord. And that is what the Lord wants of us.

F. Trouble is not a whim: trouble is what God perfects in our lives. And everyone passes through diverse trials.

G. If a noble spirit upholds you, you will get through it. If the spirit is not noble, life will be far harder: that is where the "whys" come from.

H. Whatever your trouble, none of it is meant to leave you defeated, destroyed, or shamed.

I. There are days when we are ground down. And we have to be ground down, whether we like it or not.

J. A couple marries and wants children, and what a celebration. Then the pains begin, and another being arrives to be raised with wisdom; and if you did not learn it, there will be trouble.

III. What they are for

A. Troubles —depending on how you pass through them— are for learning to fight and to overcome. We cannot live defeated by them.

B. They are not to knock us down: they are to purify us, to make us understand, to make us know. Because we are not children.

C. Take a toy from a child and he fights and screams; and the father ends up grounding him a week, when the matter could have been settled in a moment.

D. Look at the state of the earth: wars that seem about to end and do not. And we say the leaders do not know what to do, when we cannot govern our own house.

E. And when there is war, it is the most vulnerable who are struck, so that the people feel it.

F. Our war is spiritual, not physical. They know what they fight for; you and I know the Gospel: it calls for prayer and fasting.

G. For we can gossip here and murmur there, telling more of the tale so as to be pitied. But when we take a position that damages love, that is no longer trouble: it is something else.

IV. Refuge, strength, present help (Psalm 46:1)

A. Refuge: God is a shelter, a place for when everything around is shaking. Why do you look for another human being?

B. Strength: He does not only protect us, He gives us inner force to endure.

C. Imagine you learn you have an illness. What do you feel? Trouble. Well then, if God is my present help, whom am I going to seek?

D. No one can take your trouble away or resolve it for you. Let each carry his own; the trouble belongs to the one it falls to.

E. And it is said "through diverse trials": not one, but many.

F. Present help: God never arrives late, God answers on time. But if you do not pray, God does not know your face; He knows it when you pray.

G. If you are a man or woman of prayer, God answers on time, though not always as we expect.

H. Trouble is personal; the retellings are for gossip. And the church belongs to God and to the Holy Spirit, who is very jealous.

I. The verse does not say there will be no trouble: it says that in the middle of it God is present and active. It is a declaration of faith: I am not alone in the trial.

J. If you share your trouble, you are unloading it on someone who already has his own. What the word says is "pray one for another"; and that is what we do not do.

K. When everything fails, God does not fail; when there is no way out, He is the way; and when the trouble presses, He is still my present help.

L. What does God do from the third heaven? He watches and sends angels. Heaven organizes; but if you have not used heaven, you are using your own tactics, and those get in the way.

V. "From whence cometh my help?" (Psalm 121:1-2)

A. Perhaps you have never asked it; learn it today.

B. Because what we do is talk it over with our mother, our husband, our children, the neighbour, our friends. And is that good? Does it do harm?

C. The psalm's question is to lift the gaze off the problems and seek divine help. And when does the help come? When you pray.

D. There is also much relief in reading the Bible every day. Children who read the word look at ease, because they are becoming acquainted with it.

E. And if they have anything to say, it will be what they read. For what is read of the word educates you: it educates you to be a warrior, to fight.

F. "My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth": the help comes directly from God, not from a mortal.

G. You cannot rest on anyone: it has to be on God. And if it is on God, you must learn to pray; if you do not pray, God does not hear you.

H. "But I sang a chorus in the car." No: prayer is when you separate yourself with God to pray. And the Lord's Prayer carries you in an order and teaches how to pray.

I. In prayer you will begin to see miracles; for in bringing God what you must fight, faith increases, and faith is the evidence of things not seen.

J. If you never pray and never fast, that is lukewarm; and the lukewarm God spews out, because it has no effect in the work.

K. We are not an ornament: we are warriors. And do you think the devil checks your children's age before attacking? He checks it, and prepares the attack.

L. What do we always have in our mouths? Lament and complaint. We never say: "I prayed about this, and God laid His sovereign hand on it."

M. The help does not come from the earthly. You can strive for your children in earthly things; but when something goes wrong, the earthly will not teach them.

N. If everyone in the house is willing to fight and overcome, the order is such that they all come out winning. And the blessing comes down on the day of trouble, because there is a righteous person praying.

VI. "I will say of the LORD" (Psalm 91:2)

A. It is trust and divine protection, declaring God to be a wholly personal refuge.

B. Fathers and mothers: does your child have God as a personal refuge? Remember you will grow old; and if he does not, no child will come near, and no grandchild less.

C. The key is that it is a personal declaration: "I will say." It is not positive thinking, but an active confession of trust in God.

D. "Refuge and fortress" describes God as an impregnable castle in the face of danger. For the dangers will come.

E. Total confidence places security not in circumstances, but in the person of God.

F. And the church is not made of ministries or of those who sing. The songs stir the emotions, any song moves you; but this is about when the trouble comes.

G. For trouble comes full of upheaval, quarrels, hard days, need and loss: financial loss and loss of everything.

H. When there is no work, no food, no roof. You may have a house today; tomorrow you do not know. Think of the time of the pandemic.

I. "I will say" is declaring with conviction that our security is wholly in God. If your confidence is fully in Him, you will see the heavens open.

VII. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous" (Psalm 34:19)

A. It says "many": trouble is not one, it is many. One with the grandchild, another with the child, and circumstances being what they are.

B. Though God's followers face many difficulties, they are not alone: God promises to deliver them out of every one.

C. But whom will He deliver? The righteous. And to be righteous one must live as a righteous person: saying we go to church is not enough. One must get in the line of the righteous.

D. The reality of affliction: the life of the righteous is not free of problems, of anguish, or of difficulty. We are exposed to mistreatment and to cruelty.

E. The promise of deliverance: God not only helps us bear the trials, He offers protection and deliverance out of all of them.

F. For in front of people we are the most perfect; and alone in a car we have not a hair of perfection.

G. On the day trouble makes the righteous faint, God delivers him and gives him strength like an ox to rise and go on fighting.

H. For life was not made to defeat us: it was made for fighting. And there is no hiding.

VIII. "Fear thou not; for I am with thee" (Isaiah 41:10)

A. It promises presence, help and divine support in the face of fear.

B. "Fear not": God assures His constant presence, removing the need for fear.

C. "Be not dismayed": an order not to give up or lose heart, for He is your God. And what do we do on the day of trouble? We fall back.

D. Do not shelter under roofs that give only a little shade: let God Himself light and protect you from the third heaven.

E. There is the present help in perfection, because only He knows us entirely. No one knows you fully: you are the only person who knows yourself.

F. "I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee": what we must learn is to exert ourselves, for if we exert ourselves He helps us. Nor are we to sit with folded arms.

G. The law of sowing and reaping: you sow and you reap what you sowed. That is law, that is binding.

H. "I will uphold thee with the right hand": not the left, the right; it firmly symbolizes God's power and protection. What for? So that you do not fall.

I. It is an invitation to trust God rather than be distressed by life's challenges. And everything depends on what God is to your life.

IX. "He giveth power to the faint" (Isaiah 40:29)

A. It is one of the most quoted promises of strength in the Bible, and comforts those worn out in body and spirit.

B. A divine source: God is the inexhaustible source of energy for the human being. Unlike us, God neither faints nor is weary.

C. People do grow weary: the milk ran out, and from that comes a quarrel lasting till tomorrow.

D. Strength to the weak: He promises not only to give strength to the tired, but to multiply it, for the one who feels he has no vigour left.

E. Ask God today to release strength to you, because tomorrow, in the trouble, you will need much energy.

F. And we have only one life: as it is wasted, it does not come back. Life always goes forward, and what we do or fail to do is in our hands.

X. "My grace is sufficient for thee" (2 Corinthians 12:9)

A. It is a message of hope for when you feel at the limit, reminding you that your frailty is the place where God shows His greatest strength.

B. And for grace —everything God gives freely— to be sufficient for you, God must know you: prayer, the word, and fasting.

C. Then God looks and says: I have a sheep who prays, who reads the Bible, who fasts. And what does He do from the third heaven? He sends grace.

D. And peace begins to flow, and joy, and well-being, and open doors, and miracles; and on the day of trouble one says: another one came and went.

E. God's favour and love are enough to sustain us, even if the problem or the pain does not go away.

F. Power in weakness: God does not always remove the difficulty, but uses it as the stage on which His strength shines.

G. When we admit we cannot manage alone, His power works more plainly. And Paul stops complaining of his weakness and sees it as an opportunity to experience God's power.

H. What sinks you? Your weakness. That is why you need faith, and faith comes as you seek God; for faith comes by the knowledge of the word.

I. That knowledge produces faith, faith produces the miracle, and the miracle defeats every trouble completely.

J. Sometimes one must die a little to one's own cleverness; and then the hand of God begins to come, by means of grace.

K. You will depend on no one: you will depend on God. Let the ungodly lament in his ungodliness; the righteous is a soldier who goes forward, and lament is not in the righteous.

XI. Application

A. Stop passing your trouble around: it is yours, and in telling it you unload it on someone who already carries his own.

B. Trade the complaint for the testimony: "I prayed about this and God laid His hand on it."

C. Separate yourself to pray in earnest, not a chorus in the car; and set aside one day a week for fellowship with God.

D. Read the Bible every day, and put it into your household: what is read educates a person to be a warrior.

E. Prepare before it arrives: confidence is not improvised on the day of trouble.

F. And get in the line of the righteous, because the promise of deliverance out of all of them is for the righteous.