He must Increase – We Must Decrease

LaDonna Taylor will be with us at Amana on Sunday at our 10 a.m. service. I look forward to her visit since last time she was with us Jesus healed my knee. My knee was as bad as Pastor T’s or Sally’s. I had a prognosis of continued pain and an eventual knee replacement. Since LaDonna’s visit, I have been pain-free. I have no explanation why Jesus would heal me instantaneously while others who love more and serve better need surgery for relief or continue to suffer. I do know that, should He choose to, Jesus heals, for His reasons, in His time.

I am learning that we can’t save, heal or fix ourselves. In my sinful arrogance, I am somewhat slower to learn that I can’t save, heal or fix anyone else. Dr. Taylor has apparently learned this lesson. Perhaps that’s why her ministry is so blessed. She just does what she does best, play her violin, and point to Jesus. 

When Jesus uses us in any small way to do the mighty things He does, we tend to think it’s all about us. Worse the person blessed may conclude that it was us and not Jesus. That’s why it’s so crucial that we just do what He calls us to do and constantly point to Him.

 “If you become a necessity to someone else’s life, you are out of God’s will.” I had to read that a couple of times and really pray on it before I could accept it. Face it, we love to be needed. It can define us as important. The truth is we are not needed. All anyone needs is Jesus. That’s an awful hard truth. Jesus uses us to bless others; at least we hope He does. But if we were not here, or if we refused to be used, He would use another.

There is a good reason for this. We’re not wise enough to do the fixing directly. We love imperfectly. We are not smart enough to know when pain and difficulty in someone’s life is necessary to what Jesus is doing. In our attempts to save and heal and fix, we can kill and hurt and break. As a servant, your primary responsibility is to be a “friend of the bridegroom” (John 3:29  ). When you see a person who is close to grasping the claims of Jesus Christ, you know that your influence has been used in the right direction. And when you begin to see that person in the middle of a difficult and painful struggle, don’t try to prevent it, but pray that his difficulty will grow even ten times stronger, until no power on earth or in hell could hold him away from Jesus Christ. Over and over again, we try to be amateur providences in someone’s life. We are indeed amateurs, coming in and actually preventing God’s will and saying, “This person should not have to experience this difficulty.” Instead of being friends of the Bridegroom, our sympathy gets in the way.”