Help Is Here

Focus Keywords: overcome hurt, spiritual affirmation, changing your narrative, Lamentations 3, Elijah’s loop, Steven Furtick, divine help, faith over feeling, spiritual resilience

This comprehensive rewrite summarizes Steven Furtick’s message, “Help Is Here,” addressing the spiritual danger of getting stuck in a negative cycle—or “loop”—of pain, abandonment, and doubt. Drawing heavily on the biblical accounts of Jeremiah (Lamentations 3) and Elijah (1 Kings 19), the message insists that spiritual breakthrough begins when the believer changes what they say, thereby summoning the divine help that is already present.

The Danger of Circling Your Hurt

The human experience of pain, betrayal, and criticism is profound and unavoidable. Jeremiah, the prophet, openly documents his feelings of affliction, wandering, and tasting bitterness and gall in the Bible (Lamentations). This book’s inclusion is a grace, reminding believers that being an “overcomer” does not mean feeling no pain or that being afraid is a lack of faith.

However, the pain itself becomes a spiritual hazard when it leads to a cycle of dwelling on the negative experience.

• The Devil’s Strategy: The enemy keeps the believer “circling your hurt”. As long as the individual remembers the hurt more than they “recognize God in it,” the Devil can keep them going around and around.
• The Lie of Insufficiency: This cycle of hurt causes the believer to wonder not only “Am I not enough?” but also “Is God enough?”. The Devil, knowing the believer is too familiar with scripture to directly deny God’s power, attacks the problem obliquely: he suggests that God is “not enough for you and your situation and how it’s different with you”.
• The Cost of the Loop: Circling hurt prevents the believer from “summoning your help”. This circling can manifest as reliving abandonment and trauma during high-stress times.

The Transformative Power of Your Own Voice

The critical turning point in breaking the cycle of hurt is the revelation found in Lamentations 3:21: When Jeremiah speaks, God comes.

• God Waits for You to Speak: In Jeremiah’s moment of despair, the expected pattern—that God would speak to the prophet—was broken. Instead of God reassuring Jeremiah (“No, I’m not gone, I am here”), Jeremiah spoke first.
• Changing What You See: God is “waiting for you to change what you say,” and when you do, you will see what He spoke. If you change your narrative, God will “walk into the room,” show up in the hospital, step into your broken heart, and come into your storm.
• Summoning Help: The decision is binary: “Am I going to keep circling my hurt or am I going to summon my help, O God?”. Calling Jesus—declaring, “I need you right now”—is the act of summoning help.

Elijah’s Cautionary Tale: The Loop of Self-Pity

The message uses the story of the prophet Elijah hiding in a cave (1 Kings 19) to illustrate how easily a believer can get trapped in a damaging mental loop, even after great spiritual victory.

• The True and the False: Elijah had performed a powerful miracle, yet he ran for 40 days into a cave, eventually telling God to kill him. When God asked, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (repeated twice), Elijah’s response was a mixture of truth and a consequential lie:
  • Truths: The Israelites rejected the covenant, tore down altars, and killed prophets.
  • The Lie: “I am the only one left”.
• The Deceitful Loop: The Devil had convinced Elijah with true facts about people’s betrayal, making it easy to trap him in a loop that led to the central lie that he was alone. Treating people based on the lie (“I’m the only one”) reinforces the lie until it becomes a “loop, and it’s your life”. Circling this hurt causes the believer to forget how to be grateful and how to pray.

The New Loop of God’s Truth

God’s response to Elijah was not to engage in a loud, dramatic display like the fire, earthquake, or wind, which He had used previously. Instead, God came in a “gentle whisper”.

• Loud Lies, Quiet Truth: The Devil’s lies are loud because he is far away and “can’t get to you”. God’s truth is a whisper because He is “close”. To hear God, the believer must draw near to Him.
• The New Way of Thinking: God brought Elijah a “new loop”. This is a new way of handling adversity and processing pain. Jeremiah’s later declaration confirms this lesson: “This I call to my mind, and therefore I have hope”. This hope is born from calling to mind “the Lord’s new loop,” His infinite compassions, and His love that never stops.
• God’s Love is Unconditional: The new loop affirms that God has the believer “in his hand even when I don’t understand it in my mind,” and in His plan even when they rebelled and got off course.
• The New Assignment: Instead of validating Elijah’s self-pity, God immediately gave him three new, forward-looking tasks (anointing Hazael, Jehu, and Elisha). This proved Elijah was not alone, as God had reserved seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed to Baal.
• The Breakthrough: The result is seen in the happiest verse: “So Elijah went from there”. He broke the loop. His focus was no longer on what “they did” or what “they didn’t do,” but on “what he still can do”.

Practical Application: Summon Your Help

The ultimate takeaway is the assurance that help is on the way. God will not let the believer die or abandon their faith, even dragging a “bad attitude” into church if necessary, just to remind them “I have help”.

The Devil may be a “very present devil in the time of trouble,” but God is a “very present help in the time of trouble”. Believers are reminded that there is “more with us than with them”. The solution is to transition from “circling your hurt” to “summoning your help”.