The world says that God helps those who help themselves. But the Bible says that God helps those who are UNABLE to help themselves. He is the God of the weak and the helpless. He calls Himself the God of the widows, orphans and strangers.Deuteronomy 10:17,18 says, "For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality, nor take a bribe. He executes justice for the ORPHAN and the WIDOW, and shows His love for the ALIEN by giving him food and clothing." He doesn't call Himself the God of the rich and the mighty - because they have access to human and financial help. He is the God of the weak and the helpless, who have no access to human or financial help. God is on the side of the weak. That's why He has to make us weak before He can help us. He gave Paul a thorn in the flesh to make him weak, so that Paul might know the power of God resting on his life always. In 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Paul says,"Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me - to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong." As long as you are depending on your wealth and your influential friends to see you through life comfortably, God will leave you to your own devices. He won't even answer your prayer for help - for He sees that your confidence is in the arm of flesh - your bank account and the influential men you know. But if you could only come to the place of weakness - where you are no longer depending on human resources or people - then you would be the most blessed person on the face of the earth. For then, God Himself will be your support. It is blessed to be weak and helpless, for then we can trust in God for everything. King Asa of Judah was a man whom God had helped more than once. Yet when he had a severe disease of the feet, he depended on his doctors, and not on the Lord, to heal him. "And in the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa became diseased in his feet. His disease was severe, yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians. So Asa died" (2 Chron. 16:12,13). Because he was the king, Asa had enough money to pay for the best doctors in the land. But all his influence and his wealth could not heal him of his disease. How much better it would have been if he had trusted in the Lord! There was nothing wrong in his being TREATED by the doctors. There was everything wrong in his DEPENDING on them. It is best to be in the place where you have the Lord alone as your Helper. If you are one of those who desires God's best in life, you will find that God weans you away, again and again, from leaning on the arm of flesh. He will make you weak, so that you might lean only on Him.

Consider how God dealt with Elijah. When there was a famine in Israel, God fed Elijah through crows and a brook. "The word of the Lord came to him, saying, 'Go away from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. And it shall be that you shall drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to provide for you there.' So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, for he went and lived by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he would drink from the brook."(1 Kings 17:4-6). Twice a day the crows brought him bread and meat and there was always enough water in the brook. This happened so regularly that Elijah was in danger of depending on the brook and the crows rather than on God. And so God decided to change the channel of supply. "And it happened after a while, that the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land."(1 Kings 17:7) One morning, Elijah went down to the brook and found that it had dried up. God was teaching His servant to stop depending on crows and brooks. He Who could make a meat- eating crow to go against its own nature to provide meat for His servant, could well be trusted to provide an alternate means of supply now. And so God told Elijah to go to Zarephath. And there God was going to take care of His servant - not through a rich businessman, but through an old, helpless, poverty-stricken widow. She was the last person in Zarephath whom we would have selected for such a task. But God's ways are different from ours. He delights to use the least likely channel of supply, so that our faith might rest, not on the channel, but on God.

"God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that he might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God."(1 Cor.1:27-29). It will be a wonderful day in our life when the crows that have fed us for so long, stop coming. Then we can start trusting in God alone. When the person who has promised to help you lets you down, don't complain against him. God must have stopped him from helping you, so that you can learn to lean on the living God. God is a jealous God and He will not share His glory with another. "I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another." (Isa.42:8). "Thou shalt have no other gods but Me" is a word that we need to hear again and again, for our flesh has such a tendency towards idolatry - to lean upon human and financial resources. God wants us to be dependent on Him alone for all our needs. Then we can live in victory all the time.