Does God really helps when we are in need?.

From Rahul:

Does God really helps when we are in need?. Or if he thinks its nt proper for us, He dont. And if He dont, do we have to just sit watching things we dont want?

Question by Rahul, does God really help us when we are in need or if he thinks it's not proper for us he doesn't help us and if he doesn't help us do we have to just sit watching things go the way we don't want them to go? Answer, God certainly hears and responds to every prayer that we make to him and he definitely extends his help to us when we seek that help. Often we may feel that God is not helping us because his help may not come in the form that we expect. We often have a limited perspective of things and within that limited perspective we feel that a particular result is what will be good for me but God has a much more long-term farsighted vision than us and what may seem good right now for us may well in the long run be harmful for us or be not in our best interests.

Therefore what we need is to use our God-given intelligence to understand this point that what we feel is good for us is not necessarily good for us and what God is doing is essentially what is good for us and rather than resenting and rejecting what is happening to us because we can't reject what is happening it is going to happen and it is happening but instead of resenting it internally and thereby wasting our mental energy we can try to use what our intelligence to see what good is there in it. It's like when a patient goes to a doctor the patient may be having a pain in the leg and the doctor may seem to give an additional pain in terms of injection in the same leg and the patient is a small child the child may cry and scream and yell and kick and flail its arms and the child may have to be forcibly held down by their parents the compounders and doctors so that the injection can be given but if the same child grows up then and again if the person who is now grown up has a pain in the leg and when the need for an injection becomes evident the doctor is about to give the injection which the person will himself stretch out his leg to have that injection given although the pain of the injection in childhood and in adulthood is the same but in adulthood there is a maturity to understand that this pain of the injection is going to save me from a greater pain now how did this adult get this understanding by maturity of his intelligence so the child sees life only from the perspective of what gives it instant pleasure or pain so from that instant short-term ultra short-term perspective the injection is a pain but from the mature long-term perspective the injection is a pain reliever although instantaneously there might be some pain in the long run there's going to be reliever it's going to relieve us from pain so god often breaks things to make them better he breaks clouds to give rains he breaks the ground to give grains he breaks grains to give bread or chapatis or whatever we eat and he breaks bread to give us energy inside the stomach so often in this world things have to be broken before they can be made better sometimes our plans of what should be happen need to be broken so that a better greater plan of the lord can be unfolded so what we see in nature happening breaking up things to help them become better what we see in maturity happening being able to see the long-term good behind the immediate pain can help us to maintain our faith in god even when things seem to be going wrong now so when at a material level we are asking god for some help and the help is not turning up does that mean that we just passively watch and do nothing no actually even praying for help is not passivity it is activity but apart from that we can also try to use our intelligence actively to see what good is there and what is happening to us and thereby try to utilize and capitalize on that good and grow through the apparent reversal now our problems the situations in which we need help may have two causes one is external one is internal so among the external some are changeable some are unchangeable so for example if a relative or a acquaintance is not behaving properly with us that problem is external to us and that is possibly changeable if that person understands our point of view and sees its validity then that person may not be as irritable or troublesome as was earlier so this is external problem that is changeable sometimes say when there is summer and there is heat now in general summer is going to be hot and to some extent it is not changeable although occasionally you might get cool breezes but summer is hot so our third kind of problem is that maybe you know our boss or a spouse or our professor may be angry with us because we are being irresponsible and inconsiderate so the problem is internal to us now among these three kinds of problems internal external changeable and external unchangeable praying to god can help in all three cases and praying to god is most helpful in the case of internal problems most often we try to keep looking for the problem externally and we wait for the change to come externally and when that change doesn't come we feel that god is not helping us but most often for external change to take place the change has to take place within if i am sick and suffering and i'm expecting the disease to get cured that cure will take place to a large extent only when i reform my behavior and avoid the causes that are leading to that behavior so if i'm getting diabetes and i'm every day going and every day or every week i'm going and checking my sugar level and other things and i'm finding that it's not going down at all it won't go down if i'm not decreasing my sugar intake now for people who know this are also not able to stop their sugar decrease the sugar intake because they lack the necessary self-control so that self-mastery which is so vital for solving or at least managing the problem that we face in life is what we will positively get by turning to god for help and when we get that self-mastery when we understand okay this is what i was doing wrong and this is what i can do right that to a large extent solves many problems so especially by praying to krishna and adopting spiritual practices like chanting hare krishna these help us to control and master our mind and they that in itself becomes a significant step forward in solving the problem now this is for the internal problem that is there so if we find that a problem is caused by our improper behavior or inadequate discipline or insufficient commitment then praying to god is the best way and in many cases the only way to help just our own resolve and determination without any committed practice of spirituality is unlikely to we offer a sustainable change in ourselves internally now when the problems are external and changeable if you find that some other person is behaving in an irritable way of course by praying to god we can try to introspect and change our own behavior that might be stimulating that irritable negative behavior from the other person but along with that we can pray to krishna for that person for that person's well-being and for that person to have a paradigm shift to have a change of attitude now often people are irritable because they are going through their own problems and they may be having massive problems on their head and they may although we might not be causing so much irritation to them but they perceive even the small problem that might come from us as a massive as an additional burden to their pre-existing problems and then they spit out venomously on us so if we can pray for them that krishna help them ease their burden and change their attitude that prayer at a subtle level will surely help them but more than that it will help us because we will see them not as agents of misery but as victims of misery ultimately everybody in this world is suffering even the people who are causing us suffering are suffering so the person who is causing the suffering is not just an agent of our misery but that person is a victim of some other misery the frustration from which is being went out on us so when we change this attitude that itself will gradually reflect in our interactions with others when we stop holding others responsible when we stop resenting and criticizing behind the back and or basically sending negative vibes to those people then those people also sense that change of attitude in us and their attitude changes so for external changeable problems now we change we try to change our behavior that is stimulating those problems we pray for the change of that person's behavior or that circumstance by which their burden will be eased and their attitude will change and we pray that our own attitude changes so that we don't see them as agents of misery but as victims of misery that is from their heart and lives being went out on us also now when there are external unchangeable problems then at that time what i started off in the beginning we need to understand that this is good for me i may not understand how it is good for me but okay this is what i have got now so once we accept that okay this is good for me i don't know how it is good for me but it is good for me let me make the best that i can out of it so once we accept so when we have faith in god and we pray to god for help then god gives us the mental focus by which we stop wasting our mental energies in resenting and hating what is happening to us so we take our mental energy off that that external unchangeable situation and focus it on doing what we can best to cope with and respond to that external unchangeable situation if i had a plan to go out for some work and suddenly it is stormy rains or if i'm going out for an appointment and suddenly i meet a traffic jam then neither the heavy rains nor the traffic jam seems to be going away all that will happen is if i don't turn to god and seek a spiritual perspective of the whole thing then i'll waste so much of my mental energy in just complaining and cursing internally and sometimes even audibly and externally so that whole wastage of mental energy is avoided if we can turn to god and we can use that mental layer to to deal with the problem maybe we can make a phone call to delay the appointment to inform that that our our arrival will be a little later we can do some other work during that time as a further preparation for the meeting or we can do some other productive activity during that time so the important point is that the external world is not in our control and we may or may not be able to change it many times when we pray to god we expect god to sort of wave a magic wand and remove the external problem that is troubling us god can do that and there are times when he will do it but but in the external world problems will keep coming again and again and just by god's magic wand waving even if he solves those problems that improved external situation will not lead to our internal growth we will become like spoiled children by that who just get their way all the time you know in the west many times some not in just in the west in westernized india also many times parents sometimes want to give whatever their child asks for and they feel that oh in my childhood i did not get this toy i did not get this playstation i did not get this gadget to play with so let me use that shower it on my child and such a child when is used to constantly getting whatever he's asked for he goes to college and then he receives maybe a good-looking member of the opposite sex and proposes and that person just gives a slap in the face and goes away and that's person who has never taken no in his life becomes so angry that the person either be either sometimes in extreme case kills that person is rejected or just commits suicide himself so sometimes parents in the name of love by showering all everything that the child wants on them make their children to spoil children who cannot take no as an answer in their lives now our our materialistic hallucinatory sort of culture that we we often imbibe through the movies and through the advertisements it may indoctrinate us into believing that i never take no for an answer and we may think that that attitude of never taking no for an answer is a sign of success but actually it is a sign of immaturity colossal immaturity and a completely unrealistic understanding of life because no matter how big a person is that person has to take no for an answer so many times somebody might be the best cricket player and still despite his best efforts the team may lose the match somebody might be a billionaire superstar and still his film may flop somebody may be the most powerful person in the country the wealthiest ceo or owner of the world's biggest company and still that person may be hit by economic recession so success in life is not just in getting things the way we want but success in life is also in learning to take no maturely and intelligently because life is going to give a handout a handout a note to us at some time or the other and to a large extent our life long-term success will be depending on how we can take that no in our stride and move forward and faith in god is one of the best ways that enables us to take that no in our stride and focus our energy on what we can learn and how we can grow within that no and in this way um we can eventually grow so that we can get a bigger yes in the long run and of course from the ultimate spiritual perspective no matter how many yeses we get in this world ultimately we are going to get a no in the sense of death and before that it has a holding and disease but during this whole process of yes and no from life we get some things we don't get things if we turn towards god and grow and take shelter of god then we will have developed our relationship with krishna and through that we will get the ultimate yes we will get entry and return to the spiritual world where we will be eternally happy in a happiness of love so to summarize yes god always helps us but his form of help may be different and because your question is a general i have given some specific examples but i have tried to answer in terms of general principles when we need help basically the problems can be threefold of either internal external unchangeable and external changeable so in internal problems god's grace especially if we connect it with connect to it through spiritual disciplines can help us make the most effective change a change that is not possible practically by any other method and external changeable situations by starting with changing ourselves by praying for the situation circumstance or the person to change and by seeing the person not as a not as a cause but a victim we can improve our approach to that situation and external unchangeable situations we can learn by god's grace and the spiritual discipline that comes when we connect to that grace to take our mental energy of the resentment and focus it on the practical opportunity that is there within the problematic situation and thereby grow in life so we should always seek help of god whenever we feel the need and we should not think that we have to keep active keep passive and helpless when the problem seems to be going on but we should proactively try to see how we can grow within that problematic situation thank you don't use god.