It is time to turn your accessibility into just visibility. You can very well impact people’s lives by the way you live your own, without affording them access to you. Their access to you could become the very distraction that complicates your walk in Purpose. The walk you had before you aligned with people who don’t add to your life is more important, than retracting from your future to build theirs. Ministry in and of itself isn’t diminishing. Charity is love, and love is not monolithic.
Love has so many facets, with just one face— His.
Sometimes love is not allowing people to come to you— so they’ll go to God.
It’s about having the faith that you’ve known darkness and made it into light again; so He can do the same for them without your interference. I am not saying that we must not serve others, we must not serve others without the directive from God to do so.
We must not operate out of our humanity and give it the lens of God working through us.
Especially when the word says:
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
Ephesians 6:12 NKJV
Wickedness in a heavenly places could look like a bleeding heart that “just needs your help.” Okay, easy enough right? Where you take off your only band aid, to bandage them up? Now you’ve infected their wound with the pathogens of yours; prolonging their healing AND reexposing your own once more to infection. AND allowing your own wounds to reopen and bleed out. Does the both of you being more impaired look and sound like God is in it? It’s not wrong to help others, it’s wrong to do so from a finite perspective. It’s wrong to heed a inconspicuously selfish desire to be altruistic outwardly to others. Especially, at the expense of you recognizing the humility required to surrender to the idea that: the you today can’t do much to help them, and for them: learning the lesson that you are not an earthly god for them. Rest in the knowing that God will provide for you both.
The remaining scripture says…
“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints— and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.”
Ephesians 6:13-20 NKJV
This is important because He will appoint the time where you will exalt His name and take authority over the healing of others without them having access to you. Just visibility. An earthly vessel for His ethereal works. When we choose to do things without the voice of God to guide us, it isn’t always the devil attacking us for our well-doings. In fact. the devil may actually be trying to reward you with “warm feelings” and smug satisfaction to clout you from acknowledging your disobedience. While you do what you feel you should be doing you can’t hear what you’re being told to do, and what you should be doing evades you longer.
“It is possible to be successful without God being at the center of your success. ”
I actually think it’s EASIER to achieve success without God, when you have worldly stock and an ally to make you feel like “God is doing this.” Especially when we know we haven’t talked to God and we’re operating on autopilot. It’s like... if God says everyday you walk by a homeless person “feed them” but on the fifth day you just do it. You just assumed that is what He would want you to do, and on the 365th day you decide you’ll open a homeless shelter. And you’re so, so proud. Did God give you that directive? Did you hear His voice? Do you even recall if He has said anything recently? We do this in so many things in our lives. We get this bicycle push off from God and instead of staying close to Him letting Him guide and teach us... we get excited.. we lurch ahead... we’re peddling and peddling, but now we’re on rough terrain or we don’t quite no how to brake yet or worse we fall on rocky ground and hurt ourselves now we’re scared to get back on. We’re “upset and disappointed” with God that WE LEFT HIM. We get wounded because we didn’t stay connected. We leave God behind. We choose a “good life,” and not a God-potential life.
In Isaiah, it reads:
“Woe to the rebellious children,” says the LORD, “Who take counsel, but not of Me, And who devise plans, but not of My Spirit, That they may add sin to sin; Who walk to go down to Egypt, And have not asked My advice, To strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, And to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore the strength of Pharaoh Shall be your shame, And trust in the shadow of Egypt Shall be your humiliation.”
Isaiah 30:1-3 NKJV
But WAIT, because God is sovereign...
“Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you; And therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; Blessed are all those who wait for Him. For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem; You shall weep no more. He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry; When He hears it, He will answer you. And though the Lord gives you The bread of adversity and the water of affliction, Yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore, But your eyes shall see your teachers. Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” Whenever you turn to the right hand Or whenever you turn to the left. You will also defile the covering of your images of silver, And the ornament of your molded images of gold. You will throw them away as an unclean thing; You will say to them, “Get away!” Then He will give the rain for your seed With which you sow the ground, And bread of the increase of the earth; It will be fat and plentiful. In that day your cattle will feed In large pastures. Likewise the oxen and the young donkeys that work the ground Will eat cured fodder, Which has been winnowed with the shovel and fan. There will be on every high mountain And on every high hill Rivers and streams of waters, In the day of the great slaughter, When the towers fall. Moreover the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, And the light of the sun will be sevenfold, As the light of seven days, In the day that the LORD binds up the bruise of His people And heals the stroke of their wound.”
Isaiah 30:18-26 NKJV
I know, I know; that was a lot. But I am not sorry because it was necessary. Sometimes it’s God serving us our bad seasons based on our decisions to do “good” things He didn’t call us to. We know what bad things beget us, which is why I made no mention of them. We avoid bad things well. But hear me: It doesn’t have to be “bad,” to be damaging.
At some point, we have to get off our high horse and recognize that doing “something with good intent” is not what we’re being called to do. We’re being called to walk a specific walk— one full of obedience and submission.
What if the fullness of your ministry is to bring people into the fold by your very obedience and suppression to anything that makes you take your eyes off God? What if that’s just it and you’ve been “doing right” wrong all this time? It’s time to tap into who is using you— God, you, or them?