Sometimes the only thing standing between fanning the flames of hope and giving up for good is the encouraging voice of someone who is more enthusiastic about your situation than you are at that particular moment. Someone who sees the vision more clearly than your impaired judgement allows you to.
We all have down days and let’s face it we are not always brimming with as much enthusiasm as we should. I guess that’s why it’s so important to fellowship particularly in times of trouble because the enemy loves to snack on a doubtful Thomas. He takes these as opportunities to pour just a little bit of poison on our perspective pushing us to compromise on things that give him a foot hold in our lives.
We end up pulling away from God and trying to carry everything on our own strength and this never ends well. Thinking back to the story of Adam and Eve the enemy slithered in and persuaded the two that God was holding out on them and that has been a continuous battle ever since. “Tell me why are we so blind to see that the ones we hurt are you and me?” very potent lyrics from Gangster’s Paradise.
There’s power in loving counsel and encouragement
Sometimes we are guilty of giving judgement before we fully understand the case and so we condemn what has been done without a second glance at what could have caused someone to go so far off track. The focus becomes atonement instead of repentance and the renewing of one’s will to do right.
The person comes to confide in us about what they have done or not done and instead of help them to cooperate with grace we cement the doubts and fears they already had. This doesn’t always happen maliciously sometimes we don’t really know how to give counsel on these things but the person comes to us for some reason.
I think God doesn’t just rehabilitate the lost he continues a work of rehabilitation in the saved too. Because of that we ought to treat each other with love and respect because when we remove God’s forgiveness, grace and mercy we are all the same, sheep that need a shepherd because left to their own devices they perish.
Sometimes we have struggled with something in our personal walk for such a time as when a fellow brother and sister require honest counsel on that thing. It’s easy to distance ourselves from our past and act like we never struggled but It takes a great deal of humility to admit where we once used to get it wrong and vulnerably account to others for good to prevail.
Sometimes it’s up to us to see beyond their mistakes and call them out from the shell of who they misguidedly think they are. The world has a very stringent justice system and you can be confined to jail cell for the rest of your natural life for a momentary lapse, but in the Kingdom there is grace and mercy not because the kingdom supports your misdeeds but because the kingdom is a place of redemption and reformation. So even in the confines of your jail cell you can be set free because the good news doesn’t discriminate.
There have been countless instances where I have changed my whole resolve because someone just happened to have the exact words of encouragement I needed to hear. When you are someone who is predisposed to correcting and encouraging others you don’t always acknowledge that you need correction and encouragement too.
We may not all be called to be evangelists or pastors or preachers and teachers but we are all afforded the opportunity to minister through our care and loving engagement with each other’s situations. We have a tremendous amount of power and control over what we choose to say and that is why it’s always important to search our hearts before we give advice.
Sometimes things fail because it is us who have put the last nail in the coffin when God would have resurrected the dry bones.
My prayer today is for wisdom in counsel, when we are in a position of influence let us put our resources to good use and do right by each other. That way love prevails and our eyes remain stayed on the Father who is faithful and just to meet our every need.
