“For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” Gal. 5:13……………….
“Do not try to fix this, Lara,” the Spirit of God told me one afternoon. “Let me.”
A beautiful, beloved friend of mine was hurting, overwhelmed exhausted, and so very dear to me, not to mention that I love helping people anyway, whether strangers or friends or family.
Immediately I wanted to do something to help. Something. Anything. Something concrete. Tangible. Not long after I jumped right in, the Spirit of God yanked me back out.
I had already loved her when we spoke, encouraged her, offered biblically based counsel, given her scriptures, listened to her, and made clear how much I care about her. But I wanted to do something MORE. That’s why I jumped right in. And that’s exactly why the Lord had to jump right in after me and fish me out. But why? Shouldn’t we help others? Aren’t we supposed to love others? Aren’t we called to serve others?
Absolutely! Yes! God calls His followers to love others, to help others, and to serve others. BUT. And here’s the big BUT. We are to follow the Lord in all this. We are to follow His Spirit. We are to seek Him, to hear Him, to obey Him. We are to let God lead the way. We are to do what He wants us to do, whether it’s to love and pray and encourage and stop right there, whether it’s to jump in and do a zillion tangible practical things to help someone, according to His will and His time, whether it’s to wait and let someone else help and then we help, absolutely whatever God desires, in God’s time, through Christ, for God’s glory.
There is NOTHING wrong with wanting to love and help someone, but sometimes like in my case that day our way and timing of helping someone is NOT the will of the Lord. I hadn’t sought the Lord. And not only was I not helping my friend by what I had started to do, but I was taking up time and energy not doing what in fact God wanted me to do that afternoon. I needed to trust the Lord to lead me in how to help my friend, and I had already done the most important thing of all. To show her Christ’s love and to point her to God and to His Word. Anything else I would do afterward needed to be placed in the hands of the Lord, and I needed to trust Him to speak to my heart about what else He might want me to do, and trust He might even show me how to help her by having her share with me the help she wanted.
If we are helping others in the flesh according to what we think is best and in our own strength, we are missing the point. Helping others should be about and for and through the Lord Jesus Christ, and the best way to do this is to let the Lord lead the way!
I didn’t need to fix the situation my friend faced, and I didn’t need to fix her. Any fixing needed to be done by the Lord, and I needed to humble myself before Him and before my friend and let the Lord use this little vessel of His in her life however He wanted.
Trying to fix a situation, or to fix someone in need of help? Seek the Lord, friend! Follow Him! Humble yourself before Him! Hear Him! Obey Him! And give HIM the glory!