Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Wednesday 10/20/2010)

Are You Disabling Others?

Hebrews 12:12-14 (Amplified Bible)

¹²So then, brace up and reinvigorate and set right your slackened and weakened and drooping hands and strengthen your feeble and palsied and tottering knees,¹³And cut through and make firm and plain and smooth, straight paths for your feet [yes, make them safe and upright and happy paths that go in the right direction], so that the lame and halting [limbs] may not be put out of joint, but rather may be cured.¹⁴Strive to live in peace with everybody and pursue that consecration and holiness without which no one will [ever] see the Lord.

My daughter whom I love dearly has this awful habit of leaving her shoes, wherever they come off. So realistically on a bad week, you could walk through any room of the house and theoretically find a pair of her shoes, in each room you walk through. Now of course there are several problems with that, first, she has a place to store them so that are not where they are supposed to be. Second, who wants her shoes in their space, ahhh, no one, and lastly, depending upon the shoe, they can become a road block, or a trip hazard, and have for several of us in the house. She usually recognizes this fact when someone is yelling her name after stumbling, tripping or having an encounter with a pair of her shoes. Certain weeks are better than others, but we can always bank on at least one pair being out of place, at some time or another.

We are often like my daughters shoes. We are out of place, we are in the middle of someone else’s space, and we are in the middle of the things tripping people up. So many of us have not allowed God to clean us up, to cut out the stuff within us that is harmful, to cure what is ill in us, in order for us not to cause others harm. We have become the thing that is tripping others up by our behavior, attitudes, actions, and even in our living as a whole. We are in theory the shoe in the middle of someone’s path that has become a trip hazard, or a stumbling block. We often do not take the time to work out our own soul salvation, we are too busy trying to perpetrate, direct, cover and point fingers at other people’s issues to let God deal with our own, or even recognize that we have a problem, that may be causing others, pain, suffering and misalignment. Why is it we would rather trip others up, with our bad living, nasty attitudes, lies and deceit then to allow the Father to help us, really save us ( from ourselves), help us to find our rightful place and become placed properly, used properly and in the right place at the right time doing the right thing? Because we do not seek to live at peace with people or with God, we would rather appear right in our own eyes then to get things right, I mean really right with God and with people whom we have hurt, terrorized and caused to stumble and even fall.

The one thing I think most of us that get caught here fail to understand is that we are not getting by with anything. We have not yet began to realize that we must give an account for those things we do in this body and that we do to other people with blatant disregard. My heart grieves when I see people suffering because of the flagrant indifference of others. But if we lack the ability to get us right and to allow God to place us where we need to be, heal us, fix what is broken, and really truly save us, how can we expect to be that instrument used to free and clear the path for others, we cannot. If we think we can we are deceiving ourselves. If we are stumbling over our own messes, it is likely we are causing others to stumble and fall as well. It is time to clear the clutter in our own lives, so as not to become someone that causes others to be disabled by stumbling and falling and becoming incapacitated by our misaligned, misplaced lives, attitudes and behaviors. Let God clean your path so that you can effectively help others through a path and to freedom, instead of down a path that may harm, hurt or disable them.