HELP?! It's not what you think.

As I was reading this morning, I came across this very interesting comment:

..........for the word "help" is inapplicable
where we ourselves do nothing...............

After reading it a few times over, I was caught up in the idea, because I realized this is something I've never thought of before. For me, it came to be about questioning what am I actually asking for when I ask for help? It didnt take me long to discover that probably a good 70% of the time, when I ask for help, or pray for help, I'm really asking if someone else will do something for me, not with me. For example - my trip to Uganda - I am asking people to help send me on this trip. This is accurate because I am paying for some of the trip and am asking others to make financial donations. It would be relatively inaccurate to ask people to help send me if I were relying solely on the donations of others - more accurate would be simply asking people to send me, not to help send me.

This most certainly could fall into that category of things that most people dont care about. That category of 'if you're gonna get picky about it, okay fine, sure, that's true... but it doesnt really matter.' And I suppose if it doesnt matter to you, no problem. But I seem to spend a lot of time mulling over the things of this category. And today HELP has been my subject of choice. Because I guess, along the line of prayers - if I keep asking God to help me _______ (fill in the blank) and am angry because He's not helping. He must not be listening. He must not care.
OR.
I dont think He's answering because what I really was asking was for Him to miraculously make something happen. [i.e. "God, help me be patient with my coworkers." Which would mean, God I'm gonna try hard to be patient & if you could help me in this process that would be amazing. Probably more successful if we worked together on this one. Unfortunately, when praying that prayer, I had no intention of trying to be patient. I was actually asking for God to somehow make me unable to be anything but patient with people. Do you see the difference I'm trying to illustrate?]

I think this one has grabbed my attention ... for several reasons. For one - it makes me consider whether I'd ever ask God to do something like miraculously change something (probably not. if i'm being honest. and since God is fully aware of my thoughts anyway, might as well be honest!). So then secondly, it makes me consider what it I'm committing to when I ask for help. And I do go back and forth here... or maybe just try to further clarify.

Take today at work for example. After reading this before work, I prayed that God would help me work hard today because I knew I had stuff I actually needed to get done. And when I was asking God for help, I was making up my mind that YES. I will be intentional about honestly trying my best to work at work & not check my email, or daydream, or write this blog during work! But - I'm not saying I'm committing to work hard b/c what if God doesnt help, well then shoot I'd better work that much harder just in case. No no, that's not it at all. It's what that quote says - the word help is inapplicable when I do nothing.

Obviously I'm still thinking this through, these were just my first thoughts & it made me think so much that I wanted to share the concept with other people & see what other people thought about this. Sooo... what do you think?!