He must increase, but I must
decrease. —John 3:30
“When you see a person who is
close to grasping the claims of Jesus Christ, you know that your influence has
been used in the right direction. And when you begin to see that person in the
middle of a difficult and painful struggle, don’t try to prevent it, but pray
that his difficulty will grow even ten times stronger, until no power on earth
or in hell could hold him away from Jesus Christ. Over and over again, we try
to be amateur providences in someone’s life. We are indeed amateurs, coming in
and actually preventing God’s will and saying, “This person should not have to
experience this difficulty.” […] Beware of rejoicing with someone over the
wrong thing, but always look to rejoice over the right thing. […] John (the
Baptist) said this was his joy. It represents a stepping aside, an absolute
removal of the servant, never to be thought of again. […] You may often have to
watch Jesus Christ wreck a life before He saves it (see Matthew 10:34).” CHAMBERS
One pastor said “Often times,
until Jesus is all you have, you don’t understand that Jesus is all you need.” Perhaps you experienced that in your life or
in the life of someone that you care about.
Very often God will use the circumstances of life to bring a person to
the place where they must look up. Or
they might continue to resist God and go their own way, even to their own
destruction. Our temptation is to step
in and try to save them. We want to fix
it. We don’t want those we care about to
be sad .. worried .. stressed … so we step in … intervene, and at the same
time, we pray that God will speak to their heart that they might turn to
Him. So what if God is using their
present circumstance to do that very thing, to answer your prayer. Not every hardship is God-induced. It requires Spiritual discernment to know the
difference. I did not say experience or
human wisdom … spiritual wisdom. The
most important thing is salvation. Do
you believe that?
Let’s look at that. What is most important … soothing your pride …
paying a financial debt so your car is not repossessed … or knowing that you
will be in heaven, forever. I suspect most will say the latter is … I mean that’s
the “right” answer after all. But how do
we live those trials out will prove what we really believe is the most
important?
You see, the pressure that
people find themselves under is a result of their trying to live life on their
own. If they will yield their hearts to
the Lord, He will give them that capacity to live life without pressure, even
though bad or disappointing things might happen to them. Living this mortal life successfully starts
with a right relationship with the Creator.
Most of the problems you see people struggle with are not problems that
lead to physical death. It may well be
that the best thing you can do for someone is to “stay your hand”, not help
them out of the trouble. Instead, point
them to Jesus. The thing is, they will
not understand why you did what you didn’t do (think about that for a second)
until they come to spiritual understanding.
In the mean-time they may accuse you of not caring .. of not loving them. It is hard to watch people you care about,
struggle. But just like the butterfly
freeing itself from the cocoon, you must not intervene, or what should have
happened .. a butterfly being able to fly away, won’t happen. ELGIN
Charley Elgin
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