{"id":2079,"date":"2015-07-29T07:06:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T14:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/?p=2079"},"modified":"2015-07-29T07:06:06","modified_gmt":"2015-07-29T14:06:06","slug":"god-could-have-helped-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/2015\/god-could-have-helped-me\/","title":{"rendered":"God Could Have Helped Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Is Mark Roth here tonight?”<\/em><\/p>\n

The moderator of our evening church service this past Sunday scanned the audience.<\/p>\n

He couldn’t see me. I didn’t help him. I sat still, blending in as well as any bald guy could. I was very tired after chairing a long Board meeting that ended shortly before the service began.<\/p>\n

He still didn’t see me. I still didn’t help him.<\/p>\n

But my wife raised her hand and pointed at me. \ud83d\ude2f<\/p>\n

The moderator (a former student of mine, I might append) called me up front with instructions to talk about nonresistance.<\/p>\n

Impromptu. Spur of the moment. No advance warning. No notes. No thinking time.<\/p>\n

I walked up front slowly, giving myself some extra moments to think. <\/p>\n

They should have been moments to pray. But asking God for help didn’t even cross my mind! \ud83d\ude33<\/p>\n

How could that be?! Especially since I’d just been praying for the brother who had been called up front first. (I think he had a more difficult topic than I for spur-of-the-moment talking in front of a big audience.)<\/p>\n

Had I thought to pray, God could have helped me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But I didn’t think to pray. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

I was so intent on giving a right answer<\/a> that I didn’t think to ask God to help me know what to say<\/a>!<\/p>\n

God helped me anyway. He’s that way. I bless Him and thank Him for that.<\/p>\n

Ask God for help — that’s one lesson for me from my Sunday night experience.<\/p>\n

Another lesson is to consider what I believe and what the Bible has to say about it so I can give impromptu studied words in due season<\/a>. It’s hard to be that disciplined, though.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
\n“The prayer of the upright is His delight.”<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Too bad it never crossed my mind to ask Him!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[41,44,78,30],"class_list":{"0":"post-2079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-proverbs","7":"tag-faith","8":"tag-live-right","9":"tag-prayer","10":"tag-seek-wisdom","11":"h-entry","12":"hentry","13":"h-as-article"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJBV-xx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}