How God Helps Those Who Help Themselves: The Sufficiency of Grace and The Accountability of Effort

Ever since I can remember, people have always told me, "God helps those who help themselves." And without blinking, without a moment's doubt, I believed them. I believed the empowering truth of this statement then, and I firmly believe it still today. I believe God helps those who are ready, willing and able, and want to help themselves. This statement, "God helps those who help themselves," articulates our belief that we are under the responsibility to help ourselves, first, so God, in turn, will help us. Helping ourselves is the requisite, the precursor to attaining God's help. And most of us believe God wants to help us. It's really a matter of discovering how God helps us, because I believe God wants to help us, and I believe we know we need God's help. Then it becomes recognizing what we need to do to help ourselves so that God can help us. That's the thrust of the rest of this manuscript. There are things we do and behaviors we choose, both positive and negative, accidentally and intentionally, acts of commission and omission, that impact how we experience God, one another and this thing we call life, both constructively and malevolently. This is a manuscript that names those "things" that help God help us. These things are easily within the grasp of every human being if you truly desire God's help. And most of us know, we need all the help we can get.

Though he prefers to be addressed simply as, ＂Grant,＂ The Rev. Dr. Grant F. C. Gillard, M.Div, D.Min, pastors the First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Missouri. Arriving in 1993, Grant has remained in Jackson, raising a family of three children with his wife, Nancy. Nancy is also an ordained Presbyterian Pastor, currently serving a church in Perryville, Missouri. Grant is active in the local ministerial alliance and assists local churches in the absence of a pastor during their times of transition. He began keeping bees on the family farm in Glenville, Minnesota, after graduating from Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, with a degree in Agriculture in 1981. While in his sophomore year, seeking the easiest class possible to elevate his battered grade-point average, Grant ignored his advisor’s derision and enrolled in a seemingly innocuous class entitled, ＂Entomology 222: Beekeeping,＂ taught by a retired high school biology teacher and adjunct professor, Richard Trump. Without grasping the potential blessings and lifelong implications this providential twist presented to his academic life, Grant was hopelessly inoculated with the desire to keep honey bees, which would later include visions of commercial aspirations. Grant was active during his high school years at the First Presbyterian Church in Albert Lea, Minnesota, where he was baptized and ordained as a ruling elder. Returning to his home church after his college graduation, Grant’s church members, along with the Rev. Elmer Bates, convinced him he’d make a better pastor than a farmer. Their encouragement spun his life in yet another improbable direction. In 1987, Grant graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, with a Master’s of Divinity degree. It was there he met another Presbyterian student, Kansas City native, Nancy Farris. They married in 1986 during their senior year at Fuller. He later obtained a Doctor of Ministry degree from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2000. He’s only served two congregations thus far in his twenty-six years of ordained ministry. With his newlywed wife, the two served as co-associate pastors at the White Clay Creek Presbyterian Church in Newark, Delaware. With a desire for more opportunities to preach and teach, Grant moved his young family to Jackson, Missouri in 1993 where he answered a call to serve as the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church PC(USA).