Have you ever thought, God, where are you when I need you? God, why aren't you hearing my prayers? God, why have you abandoned me? I'm sure every Christian at some point in their lives has felt this way. However, I don't think God has abandoned us at all. I believe that at the bottom of every disappointment in our life, every struggle, every feeling of not being heard, we are the ones that are not depending on him.
The more I go through life, the more I realize, when I'm at my loneliest, when I'm feeling like the whole world is against me, that's when I forget that God is sitting there, waiting for me to depend on him.
We live our lives in such a way that we are completely self sufficient. We plan our days, we make goals, we choose which friends we spend time with, we choose to be hurt, we choose to be angry, we make SO many choices in a day that we don't even realize we are doing it. What does God do? He sits back, waiting for us to make the choice to choose him. When we're lonely, when we're feeling like we don't have something to do, how many of us choose to sit and read our bibles, choose to learn who God is, why he created us? Yeah, some of us are theology junkies and we do like to read about God in our spare time, but do we really try to get to know him. Think of the person in your life who means the most to you, besides God. Who is that person, I bet you can read them like a book, I bet you know how they are going to respond to certain situations, I can imagine you even know what the slightest expression on their faces mean. That's how we should know God. Sure, we can't see him, but we know he's there. Even the strongest of atheists have been known to send out a prayer when they are at their very bottom.
Why is it that we only call on God when we NEED him. Maybe it's our selfish nature. A lot of us are even like this with our friends, we call on them when we NEED them... Sure, most of us try to be good friends and help them out when they need us, but often we fall short. Some of us are the opposite, we are always trying to help people, people who sit back and don't help themselves, this is called codependency. It's not healthy, and it's not Christlike. Think of the woman at the well. Jesus said to her, "Go, and sin no more!" He didn't say, stay, use me, I'm here to hold your hand and tell you what to do every step of the way. No, he said stop doing what you're doing. It's wrong, it's sinful, it's destroying you, and you are the only one who can fix it. I Love you enough to tell you this. It's never that God isn't there, it's that we either choose not to listen to him, choose not to talk to him, or choose to ignore his work in our lives.
I find God more and more evident in my life over the last few years. Sure, there are moments that I ignore him, there are even days that I am plain out angry at him, but in the long run, I know he's there, I also know I'm ignoring him, being stubborn, wanting to do things my way.
So what does this mean for us, Jesus calls us to love people as he did. I think sometimes that means giving them space, waiting for them to ask you. No one wants to be friends with someone who tells them how to live their life, unless of course they are afraid to live it. Afraid to take ownership over their own life. Those who are afraid to take ownership obviously have never had to, and as hard as it is to see someone you love hit rock bottom, I think it's harder to watch them in limbo, switching their decision process to whatever the friend of the week has to say.
I find the best friendships are the ones with the most silence. There is nothing more rewarding than to be able to talk to a friend about your problems without them trying to fix it. Sure, they might give you advice, they might call to see how you're doing with it, but ultimately they leave it up to you to make the necessary changes. We need to lead by example. We need to love, we need to let our friends know we are there, but we can't do the work for them. They need to make the choices that are best for them. God gave us that freedom, he wants us to use it. So as the Casting Crowns song says "Love them like Jesus". This doesn't mean baby them, make decisions for them, it means challenge them, offer assistance, spend time with them, but don't ever make their choices for them, they'll end up lost in the end.
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