Since God is love, and, as I see it, love is best defined as helpfulness, then God is helpfulness. All that God is and ever does is helpful. That means that every time we make contact with him, say, in prayer, we are instantly helped. It could not be otherwise because he cannot be otherwise.
Think of what that means: when you look up to God in any way with even the weakest of struggling appeals, you are immediately helped. It’s not a matter, initially, of feeling helped but that you are helped simply because God cannot be other than true to himself.
And when we read the Scriptures, it is of paramount importance that we not believe we are rightly understanding them until we can see that all God said or did is the most helpful thing that could possibly be said or done under the given circumstances. Again, God never says or does anything that is not perfectly and supremely helpful.
Going one step further, all so-called disappointment or disillusionment with God is nothing but disappointment or disillusionment with a figment of our imagination we call “God.” The true and living God is and can never be disappointing. Our struggle is with a distorted image we’ve projected on him. Hence, it is not without reason that the first of the ten commandments is, “You must not have any other god but me.” (Exodus 20:3) God is addressing the tap root of all our life’s troubles: a god made up of a distorted idea of who he is, that is, a god whose nature is not perfect helpfulness.
This also would explain why the first act by which we come into contact with the true and living God is repentance. That means we change our minds regarding the false image we’ve projected on him. We must utterly abandon it. The next act is to believe the good news: the true and living God is pure helpfulness. You will always be helped every single time you open up to him, anywhere and regarding any concern. And imbedded in that Good News is his grace. That means his help is assured because it is freely given.
