Thursday, March 24, 2016

How To Know When To Stay Out Of God's Way

My Utmost For His Highest
 
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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