we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
I John 2
The above passage is an encouragement to the Believer that, no matter what happens on earth, there is a heavenly advocate for us. An advocate is one who pleads another’s cause, who helps another by defending or comforting him.
Now, on earth, that is another question. When one is a situation beyond one’s knowledge, or beyond one’s resources to successfully contend for, to depend or support, when one’s case or cause is right, but one cannot succeed against the forces against you, because they accept prejudice, or bias, or tie one up in endless processes, or skip the due process that is your best defense, how do you find the resources, learn the tactics, find the endurance to stay the distance? In other words, how do you find the advocate with the knowledge and resources to help?
If anyone has an answer to that question, I am (not desperately but) eagerly and earnestly looking for and anticipating finding the answer. I need an advocate.
I have not denied this fact. I have openly expressed my need, and asked for help wherever and whenever I thought I might have reason to expect it.
And my experience to date has created in me what I believe to be an irrational fear. The fear that anyone who tries to help me, or says they will help me, will instead betray me. To date people who have said they will help, have acted the role of betrayers, and the ones who said “we will find you an advocate” have proven the most Judas of them all. I want to ask people, but I am feeling very timid, very cautious, though the depth of our deepening condition has me still making the bold statement, the fervent request for help. I know no other method.
We keep thinking we have hit bottom, and then something like what happened to us a couple of days ago at the doctor’s office shows us our vulnerability. Yet we still continue to say “We will survive, we will thrive,” with a trust in God, though as Jasini points out as she says it, we have no guarantee that God will rescue us in that way. More deserving people than us have suffered worse catastrophe than we are suffering, or likely (hopefully) will suffer.
We have been betrayed by church after church, and finally wonder if we dare say anything at the latest refuge we have found, or if doing so will make it another place of betrayal. I cannot believe it of these people, and yet irrational fear casts its shadow over my contemplations. For even if the fear is irrational, it does not mean the fear is not valid.
What would you do, in our situation?
We face the same plight as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego did, with no guarantee we will have any success (they didn’t either).
At The Rainbow 