After I wrote the last post and meditating about things, the LORD gave me the following through a friend:
From My Utmost for His Highest – If you become a necessity to someone else’s life, you are out of God’s will. As a servant, your primary responsibility is to be a “friend of the bridegroom” (John 3:29). 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.” Instead of being friends of the Bridegroom, our sympathy gets in the way. One day that person will say to us, “You are a thief; you stole my desire to follow Jesus, and because of you I lost sight of Him.”
So, often I think I know best or I get in the way of what God want to do in the person and actually hinder God’s work in that person’s life.
Today in my devotion, Streams in the Desert I read about a monk who planted a an olive tree sampling. Each day he prayed for the tree and what, in his estimation, the tree needed to grow…rain, sun, frost…but it died. It was contrasted by another monk who also planted a little tree and his tree was thriving. This was his explanation: “I entrust my tree to its god. He who made it knows better than a man like me what it needs. I gave God no constraints or conditions, except to pray, ‘Lord, send what it needs – whether that be a storm or sunshine, wind, rain, or frost. You made it, and you know best what it needs.’ “
Father teach me to pray. To know when, to know how. Father may I be a “friend of the Bridegroom”, may I be a stepping stone, and may I not be a hindrance.
From My Utmost for His Highest – If you become a necessity to someone else’s life, you are out of God’s will. As a servant, your primary responsibility is to be a “friend of the bridegroom” (John 3:29). 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.” Instead of being friends of the Bridegroom, our sympathy gets in the way. One day that person will say to us, “You are a thief; you stole my desire to follow Jesus, and because of you I lost sight of Him.”
So, often I think I know best or I get in the way of what God want to do in the person and actually hinder God’s work in that person’s life.
Today in my devotion, Streams in the Desert I read about a monk who planted a an olive tree sampling. Each day he prayed for the tree and what, in his estimation, the tree needed to grow…rain, sun, frost…but it died. It was contrasted by another monk who also planted a little tree and his tree was thriving. This was his explanation: “I entrust my tree to its god. He who made it knows better than a man like me what it needs. I gave God no constraints or conditions, except to pray, ‘Lord, send what it needs – whether that be a storm or sunshine, wind, rain, or frost. You made it, and you know best what it needs.’ “
Father teach me to pray. To know when, to know how. Father may I be a “friend of the Bridegroom”, may I be a stepping stone, and may I not be a hindrance.
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