Red, Orange, Green
The Boundaries of Reaching Out
Knowing when to stop, wait or make a move.
Why do we reach out? John 13:34-35 says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Simply put, we reach out and express love because God commanded us to do so.
There are different means of reaching out. One of the easiest ways is through sending inspirational emails or text messages. It might be the smallest way but mind you, it can be a trigger to the most complex situations. I can personally attest that whenever I send a prayer or rebuke to my colleagues, I always ask for God's blessing before sending it because my purpose is to remind them of their relationship with Him but I am also aware that there is a chance of offending them; and so I pray that God will deal with them after reading my message.
However, sending "prayed for you", rebukes, or messages with intentions of showing love and concern will not always be perceived as an act of love. Ironic? Yes. You might have chosen the best words to say or even prayed for the message before sending it but then you still wonder why your message did not get through clearly. In addition to that, here is a hard truth: the sender is most often seen as being self-righteous. Now you will ask yourself, "Why in the world am I labeled 'self-righteous' when all I wanted is to show love?" Let me ask you, "Who is righteous, anyway?" (Mark 10:18 "And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.)
Here are the other questions that may arise:
1. Is there a certain extent of human "intervention" in a fellow Christian's life?
2. Whatever happened to accountability? To brotherly love?
3. How come my intention to help was not realized?
"You crossed the line." (credits to my good friend for almost two decades) -- that was the statement that brought me back to my senses and made me realize where I was wrong. These are the realizations that might answer the previous questions:
1. Yes, there is a certain extent of intervention in a fellow Christian's life because we do not really know how God is dealing with them at the moment. We need to be highly sensitive about what they are currently going through. We should keep in mind that God is Sovereign. So do not act as if your words of wisdom or encouragement will do the trick. Words can either make or break a friend. Be extra careful.
2. As a church, and as the body of Christ, it is true that we are accountable when one of our members are not in sync with God's direction. It is written in 1 Corinthians 12:26 "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it." This is an unequivocal truth and is not supposed to be mistaken for any other reason. Downright like that.
3. We all know the communication cycle and that there are communication barriers: noise, jargon words, emotions, perception, to name a few. It can be that the good intention was received in a different way because it appeared that the concerned brother or sister was imposing the act done by the other party and that the sender is a self-righteous person because he is correcting the unacceptable action when in fact he is also not all-good. This is where we accept that we are mere creations who have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Human efforts, no matter how hard we try, can never match the way God deals with a person's heart. And we should also know by heart that people will always fail us but Jesus never will.
There you go. And here some more important lessons:
♥ Timing does matter.
♥ Do not provoke or trigger.
♥ Face the mirror.
God's blessings abound!
NOTE: I deliberately wrote things straight to the point. If you, the reader, have a different insight, I humbly ask that you respect my blog entry because I am in an unending process of learning. Nonetheless, it would be nice to hear from you. ^_^
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