Sacrificial Love Edit Blog

How to Offer Spiritual Support for the Broken 

From time to time we may come across with people who are beaten severely by the enemy and are in the brink of loosing passion and joy of life. These people are passing through the worst time of their lives and they are in need of all the help they can get from their loved ones. 

Meditating about our past tribulations and how God carried us through it is a great start to offer help to those who really need it in times of trouble and confusion. We were once living a low form of life filled with anxiety, depression, and self-doubt. Only Jesus has transformed our lives into a magnificent piece of work. We are the works of his omnipotent hands. 

Sometimes we felt so proud and self-righteous and we tend to forget what we have passed through. We may think we are in good shape for now, but the truth of the matter is we are so brittle. 

The Bible teaches us that we must be very careful about what we think of our selves. We may think we are safe, but we are not.

1 CORINTHIANS 10:12

Therefore, let the one who thinks he stands firm [immune to temptation, being overconfident and self-righteous], take care that he does not fall [into sin and condemnation].

No one is immune to sin, lose and condemnation. We all are sinners by nature and it only takes a matter of few unfortunate circumstances to stumble and fall.

The great lesson in life to learn is not only to stand temptation of sinning but also to have a compassionate and kind heart towards those who really are going through tough times.

In other words, it is very important to feel the pain and weakness of our friends and families when they are too confused to lead their life in the right directions.

It takes a good heart to put our serves in their shoes and walk the walk and talk the talk with them.

We need to do this even if we are going to pay a huge sacrifice to make them feel comfortable about themselves. We may pass through tough times when they navigate through their lives and go through the healing process.

We may be escape-goat to their actions with or without intention. We may a victim of their personal attack on our hard work and support, but we need to still pray and support them as much they need.

The tough part is to keep them with you as they may not feel they need you.

The most important part is not how we feel about ourselves but how much care and love we can offer to them. The center of our thoughts should be them and not us.

When God gave us relief from the attacks of our enemies like Solomon, He expects us to do the same for others in great deal of trouble.

He wants us to offer help as much as we could. He wants us to be like the good Samaritan who stopped to help the person who was left between life and death. However, He does not want us to be like the hypocrites who avoided helping the poor man that really needed their help. 

But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

Read Luke 10:25 for the whole story.

The most important thing we can do after doing all we do to help is to pray for them privately for God to heal their broken spirits. 

I believe prayer has great power to reach the depth where we cannot reach if we attempt to help them physically. Holy Spirit intercedes in their lives and offers the best help that no human can offer. 

We need to activate their faith by praying for all of us that are involved. When we look in to the past, we all had someone who constantly prayed for us even when we are weak in our faith.

The people who were strong in their faith may become weak and the weak might get stronger as the Bible says in 1 Samuel 2:5:

“She who was barren has borne seven children, but she who has had many sons’ pines away.”

“It is not by strength that one prevails;”

If we think we are in spiritual race by competing with our fellow brothers and sisters, we completely misunderstood our faith in Christ.

We don’t get praise from our father by beating our brothers. Instead, we will get punishment for doing that. 

God rewards us for humbly serving our brothers and sisters specially those who are about to stumble and fall.

God doesn’t take delight in seeing the sinner die in their sins nor He is happy when we ridicule them with insults and gossip. 

He calls us his children when we pray for them and love them by covering their weakness even up to the point that no one knows about it.

Again, don’t we feel deeply sadden if someone broadcast our sins on national TV? We all do. However, we don’t care if we do the same to our brothers.

It doesn’t mean I am part of the sin he is committing but I care much about the soul that is committing the sin - The soul that looks like the same soul (my soul) that was going down the hill before Christ intervened and rescued from the crowds of the dead. 

When the wrath of God is revealed and consume everything that is evil, we don’t want our brothers and sisters go down with it. At that time, there is nothing that can be compared to what is about to come to the perishing world. There is nothing that can prepare us to comprehend the wrath of God.

However, there is only one thing that can save us from it. That is the blood of Jesus and the mark or stamp that is sealed on our heart by the Holy Spirit. The stamp authenticates that we are in deed the children of God.

On that day, we don’t have any more chance or time to correct our mistakes.

We don’t have any second left to forgive those who do us wrong.

We don’t have any second left to pray for those whom we love most.

We don’t have time to intercede for the world that is going to be destroyed.

We don’t have any more excuses and procrastination to do what is left for us to do.

My fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, now is the time to love deeper than we ever love before. It is time to witness the gospel of Christ boldly to the unbelievers and save them from what is to come to the world. Now is the time to hold our loved ones tight and tell them we do care when they are feeling down. Now is the time to offer hope of the coming of the King.

Love without sacrifice is selfish love and is fake. If we say we love our brothers and sisters, we need to feel the pain of reject, blame and sometimes total denial from them when they are in temporal denial of the truth. It is what comes with the package. No one loves his children and hate to change dippers. Similarly, when we say we love our family in Christ, we need to take gracefully what comes with it as the result of this new family made of multi-hormonal, multi-cultural, and multi-behavioral individuals. 

Therefore, in conclusion, let us take pride in living a life according to the scriptures. We need to love the lost to the point we may need to sacrifice our time, money, energy, youth and resources just to serve them and put them in a better spiritual position than what they were before.

I leave you with one of the most important commandments of God. Sacrificial Love. 

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. -1 John 3:16

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