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Hurting People

If you could see inside of others, what would you see?
There’s a lot of hurting people, hurting deeply, where no one else sees.
My son brings home students who ask to come to his house because they heard “it was peaceful.”
Their families fight or aren’t even together. They want to go somewhere where they don’t have to be someone.
We talk with people, and find things aren’t what they appear. The hurt goes deep with no easy answers.

How can you help?
Sometimes knowing someone cares and has lived through similar experiences helps.
Reading biographies of people who have worked through problems and found resolution.

Some hurts are caused directly by sin.
Love is not the answer.
If loving them could make them change, make them choose right, there would be no need for prisons.
A mother’s love would keep her son from jail.

Knowing consequences is not the answer.
If simply telling them of consequences would make them choose right, then we’d have no sinners.
The leading heart surgeon in our area had a hospital built around him. He smoked. He died of heart disease caused by smoking. Knowing not to smoke didn’t change his actions.
We all have a choice. As the Bible says, “All, we like sheep, have gone astray.”
People must reach bottom before they look up. I can’t make someone else do what is right.
They must want to change.
When given a choice, we sin. It takes God’s help to choose right.
Man left to his own devices is a miserable creature.

Often I see mothers trying to soften the blow of wrong choices their children make. The father disciplines “too hard,” so she undermines his authority and doesn’t support his discipline. Or she helps him out of the mess he’s created by his wrong choices, before he even feels the sting of his wrong. This hurts her son more.
Remember the prodigal son? His father loved him enough to let him go. But he watched for his return.

God gives consequences to make us change.
We don’t like change. We won’t change unless we are forced. What motivation is there for change, when the mother softens the blows? Next time, God must hurt more to get their attention…Letting go, so God can correct our “out-of the home” children requires a greater love then trying to control the situation. Let go and allow God to work.

How can you help when they won’t change?
That’s when you pray.
God has given me discernment. I can see people heading for trouble, but I can’t make them change. I can confront, which I do when His Spirit leads me. But most of the time, His Spirit shows me so that I can pray. [Sometimes, I wish for a different gift—why not cheerfulness, where I can lift everyone’s spirit? Why must I be like Jeremiah, telling people they will be destroyed?]

We recently talked with the boys about the influence of friends. Bad company corrupts good morals. (I Cor 15:33) They didn’t like it. They didn’t want to see. They think I imagine things and don’t live in the real world.
I feel the witch (again) for restricting and reminding.
There are no short-cuts to doing things right.

I’ve emphasized hurting people. Some people hurt, not because of their own sin, but because someone around them is choosing wrong. Giving them to God and leaving it in His Arms is the only way toward peace. Not only for the wayward, but for the wayward’s mom. Not easy, but the road to peace.
God will do right.

“The Lord is near.
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
“And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:5-7

He helps guard my heart and gives me peace. The Lord is near.



Displaying 1 comment

So very true! I think everyone is hurting, just on different levels and for different reasons. It is a challenge to help them, let alone ourselves sometimes, but we know that really, only God can effect the change we all need. Praise the Lord we have help.

Author of Biblical fiction, married to my best friend, and challenged by eight sons’ growing pains as I write about what matters.

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