The Journal: News of the Churches of God

They say the best Friend is always a great listener

By Jamie Cartwright

BIG SANDY, Texas--"Just beeeeliiievve in yourself!"

"Oh, all right." (The guy believes in himself and kills the monster, climbs the building, rides his bike without falling, kisses the girl or whatever.)

"See? I told you. You have only to believe in yourself, guy. You can do anything if you just--"

Ack! Hold it right there, Tubby! The above conversation is roughly taken from several movies and cartoons I've seen. Believe in yourself, dearest child, and everything good will happen. Put all faith in you. Realize you have all the power. (I'll never forget Capt. Planet screeching, "The power is yours!")

Reality check, please.

What happens when we hilarious humans start putting all faith in ourselves and in nobody else?

"Honey, this is the 17th funeral invitation we've received this month." So maybe I'm overly exaggerating. What I mean is, well, um here; let me give you an analogy:

My brother and his friend have gone rock-climbing a few times together. Trey was telling me about it and said that, while one person was climbing, the friend had to hold the rope that connected to the climber's harness. Should this rope not be held correctly and used safely by the guy on the floor, well-splat. My brother had to put full trust in his friend. He had to go on climbing, just knowing that he would be all right. Faith and that kind of thing.

That's kind of what our daily lives are like. We have to put full faith in God and know He won't let us splat. Of course, it really, really helps to love God and pray to Him to help us in everything we do. If Trey and his friend had been hating each other for a long time or had a failure of communication-let's hear it again, folks: splat!

Prayer is one of the greatest things invented, I think. Here is this Being, this Spirit who created our world, a world so magnificent and wonderful. People are always discussing aliens and watching movies about intelligent beings from outer space, but, if you think about it, if, say, dogs had not been created and we saw Steven Spielberg bring them to the big screen, we would probably be amazed and wondrous about them.

I'm straying from my topic. We can talk to God. God's no snob. He lets us send Him our requests and actually grants them most of the time, unlike several disc jockeys I can think of. And, as long as we're discussing disc jockeys, He's always there for us. Open 24 hours. Same good ol' Guy, too. Never a substitute teacher or a nightly shift to come in.

Even in the deepest, darkest parts of our lives He's there. Sometimes it seems He's cut off all communication from us; turned the walkie-talkie off, unplugged the phone, etc. But, nope, He's there. And He hears us constantly. They say the best friend is a great listener.

If God is always with us and listens to us and helps us, shouldn't we believe He will help us, much more than we can help ourselves with our own comparatively wimpy muscles?

Please don't think I'm saying we should sit around on our fat, lazy rears and pray, "Dearest Father in Heaven, please make the potato chips come here so I don't have to walk across the room." Haven't you heard the expression, "God helps those who help themselves"? What I am saying is that we shouldn't get so cotton-pickin' overconfident about our abilities. God made us, God can kill us. We are Silly Putty in His hands. Fortunately, God loves His Silly Putty.

If you would like to E-mail Miss Cartwright with any comments regarding her article, her address is jmctexas@aol.com. If you currently are mad at your computer, go ahead and send real mail to Miss Cartwright at The Journal, P.O. Box 1020, Big Sandy, Texas 755, U.S.A.

The Journal is available from P.O Box 1020, Big Sandy, Texas 75755, U.S.A., and https://www.thejournal.org.

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