Day 355
Matthew 8:22
"But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead."
Sometimes, what Jesus had to say was not socially acceptable. Sometimes, He did not give religiously correct answers. Most ministers are afraid to be as bold as He was. In Matthew Chapter 8, when a potential disciple asked to be excused until his father died, Jesus' response indicated that waiting for his father to expire was no excuse for putting off following Jesus. (The man did not necessarily mean his father was·about to die. He probably meant he wanted to stay close to his father as long as his father was alive. Then after his father's death, he would follow Jesus.) He told him that those who were spiritually dead should wait around to bury the dead who were just like them, and those who were spiritually alive should be pursuing the will of God.
Many people never fulfill their divine purpose, because they are kept in bondage to others who have no interest in the will of God. Sometimes people are deceived into thinking they can help the hopelessly "dead" people, but people cannot be helped when they have no desire to do anything different from what they are used to. These people do just enough to keep the one who would like to go forward from accomplishing anything significant.
Everyone can be helped, but they have to want help. We must decide to follow God alone and pursue our destinies with Jesus in our view. Once we have firmly decided to put God first, we need to trust Him to show us who we can and should help. We should want everyone to receive help. God does. However, we cannot be kept from reaching those who want help by those who only want attention. That is where the leadership of the Holy Spirit comes in. As we practice following the Spirit of God, we will learn to discern who is ready to be helped and who is not. We will know who God is directing us to help, so we can focus on them instead of the ones we want to help because of our emotions. That does not mean everyone we are led to reach out to will respond. Sometimes God will send us to minister for a specific time period to stiffnecked people who will never respond. The main point, however, is we need to follow God and not our feelings.
It is important that we understand that we are not God. We must submit our desires to help people to God and let Him direct us. If God decides someone cannot be reached at a particular point in time, who are we to overrule Him? If God decides that we should not minister to a particular group of people at a given time, as He did with the apostle Paul, who are we to arrange our own schedule and calendar? Even when it comes to our relatives, we must be ready to follow Jesus and let the dead bury their own dead.
I will humbly submit to the will of God and reach out to those He sends me to. With God's help, I will not allow emotions to determine my direction in life.