Friday, February 03, 2006

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Perhaps what is both most frustrating and liberating about pointing another to truth is the fact that I can't make that person believe truth or act on it.

I sat completely frustrated recently. Having spoken at length to someone about truth, sin, weakness and our strength being Christ, I left the conversation feeling very much inadequate and like I had wasted time and words. It wasn't that I felt my words were not appropriate or that my message was bland, it was that I didn't give the person what they wanted to hear. I struggled for a while with the notion that I was like a car with its back end jacked up in the air, wheels spinning for all they're worth but little fulfilling the purpose for which they were made.

Soon enough, my thoughts turned to the parable of the sower, and I realized that my responsibility had been fulfilled and that I had only to leave the rest in God's hands. And it's a very comforting thought to ponder that our sovereign God can do as he likes, when he likes, how he likes. We're created and designed to serve and speak truth, but the Lord directs the deep waters of man's heart, and just because we don't see the seed take hold, grow and bear other fruit, it doesn't mean that we don't have reason to rejoice. Sometimes we can even marvel at the fruit of someone else's seed.

To reinforce that epiphany, another person came to me shortly after my inner tussle and humbly confessed that they had sinned against me. I don't consider myself a highly dramatic person, so I can say with sincerity that this was probably one of the single-most impressive and awesome things I even experienced in my life. I had no idea any wrong had been committed against me, so the sin could have been easily covered up, but here was a person that recognized truth and acted on it and the Holy Spirit's prodding.

The amazing thing is the result. Fear teaches us that confession is a sign of weakness, that the person we've sinned against will run away screaming at the horrible, rotting stench that our sin gives off. Fear says that if we give in to the Spirit's plea to emasculate ourselves to our brother or sister, we may feel we've satisfied the Spirit's pushing but we'll still be a loser. We'll never be able to wipe that mark off our record.

Fear, and its manipulator, Satan, are liars.

The real result of my incredible encounter was that the person's standing grew by leaps and bounds in my eyes through the simple (yet painfully difficult) act of confession, while the person was remarkably liberated from the peril of fear by speaking me the truth. We live in a sinful world that teaches us crap. Left is actually right and right is left, love is a drug and hate is a good thing. "Don't go into the woods because those we do not speak of are there," but the reality is that Satan is a liar and a thief of our joy, and we too readily forget that his mission is to steal, kill and destroy. For me the forgetting often happens when I don't see whether the seed took root and bore fruit.

It's moments like these I wish I had a better memory.