I am a positive person. I’m a natural optimist actually. I don’t know who I got it from, or how I got it, but that is the way I am. I haven’t reached the ultimate point of seeing the best in everyone and everything yet, but there is a strong part of my brain that is looking for the opportunity in each situation. There are streams of the Christian faith that would see those qualities as being laudable and the basis on which the Christian approach to humanity is based. That’s all good. Now for the shocking news.
There are some people who are beyond my help.
People are really complex. There are things that other people take for granted and consider as just common sense which some struggle with and are not able to do properly if at all. There is the saying that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink. This is seen as you can show people all you like about what they should do, but it is up to them whether they choose to do it or not. Here’s the reality which a lot of relationships highlight – we are not always inclined to do it. Therein lies the frustrations of a great many relationships. Therein lies the frustration of a great many people. You see people warned and told time after time with experience after experience how not to go about their life conduct … and blunder right back into the wrong practice. You pull your hair out and despair.
Until you look in the mirror.
I mean look in the mirror that reflects who you really are. (You can refer to that mirror as the gracious love of God – I know I do.)
I won’t speak for you – that would be presumptuous of me – I can tell you that I am one of those who was beyond your help. I may have had the people, the support may have been there, the advice might have been given – did that make a spot of difference? You better believe it didn’t. I can tell you the number of times someone would ‘try’ and talk to me and get contrite and suitably meek responses from me. You know how it goes. you hear what they’re saying. You feel bad. You know they’re right. You even comprehend the consequences of the action and they think they’ve helped. Until you fall back in the ditch of sin again. Not difficult. some of us even rationalise it with those fateful words – ‘it’s just the way I am, I can’t help it’.
I was beyond your help.
So with that being the case, it’s not as difficult to see how there are people who are beyond my help. And there’s little point in putting on services and investing in people who are beyond my help. Rather it would make more sense to invest in the people and exercises (i.e. prayer and observing how things can develop) that can monitor people and who might make the breakthrough where I am not able to help. Better that than to essentially waste time trying to get that stubborn mule to take on the water you’re pouring into them.
The point of hope, which has lead me to a place where I can be helped a lot more than I used to – and I’m in desperate need of that help – is that although I was beyond your help, I wasn’t beyond help. Where people couldn’t get through with reasoning, cajoling, motivating and threatening, Jesus got through by His grace, love and mercy. As people passed me onto the higher source (Holy Spirit) to breakthrough, they left me in the best hands possible, and were then able to chip in and play their part, once my eyes were opened to my folly and desperate need for that kind of help.
The people you relate with, work with may very well be beyond your help – but faith and hope says just like the old AA advert, you might not be able to help, but you know The Man who can.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
dmcd
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