It’s easy to think that your mistakes are your own, and maybe you have a right to them… especially if you think you can handle the consequences yourself (however short-sighted your perspective may be). Until you have been there yourself, and done things that you can’t take back, and see it affecting the people you love, you don’t really know how connected your life is to other believers– living stones in the temple Christ is building– and how when one crumbles, the stones that stand beside you lose their footing too.

How do you warn someone how easy it is to make reasons for what you do when your heart is ragged and you are just trying to survive? How do you explain from the other side of that fence how you can never go back, and this is something you will always remember, always wonder how things would be different if you had looked for help, realized sooner that obedience is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, and the only thing in life that measures love, shapes faith? How do you pass along what you know now, that God is always present, always faithful, even when circumstances press hard and heaven seems silent?

You can see the ones who have been there; they are “marked with the tenderness of the penitent,” as Ann VosKamp says.  They are people who have learned the hard way that God is more interested in obedience than in happiness, and that He will let everything burn for the sake of the gold remaining. That He will always come through for you, in His own time, His own way, if you wait on Him with a heart surrendered. And maybe that lesson is worth it, in the long run…but what wouldn’t I give to spare another brother or sister that grief?

“Troubles surround me, chaos abounding
My soul will rest in You
I will not fear the war, I will not fear the storm
My help is on the way, my help is on the way

Oh, my God, He will not delay
My refuge and strength always
I will not fear, His promise is true
My God will come through always, always” (Kristian Stanfill)

“And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” (Ephesians 6:18)