Uninvited Preaching…

Christians can really ruin situations at times and I hear discouraging stories all to often. One of my friends just experienced a major tragedy in his life and told me a story about someone who came in to try and “save” him. First of all that bugs me because it is not up to us to save anyone. It is up to us to live a Christ like life and be an example to others so that through the holy spirit they might see Christ in us. The guy was bedside preaching to him for 40 minutes while he was under pain meds and his family was in there… He was not dying and so there was no clock ticking until his time runs out. I mean who knows for sure but he was obviously ok. Now don’t get me wrong, I think there is a time and place for it all. If somebody seems like they are willing to hear it then why not share it, if God opens up the door to lead into that conversation then by all means take advantage of that opportunity. But when you go right on in, introduce yourself and start preaching to a person where is the sincerity in that? To be that is nothing more then telling a person that even though they survived an accident that they are still going to die. There is truth in that but why ruin a persons day and possibly even make the resilience the person had for the Truth even thicker…
Then second of all, he is from a small town and was telling me how he was put on a couple of prayer lists in town at a couple different churches and all sorts of people he has not heard from in forever have been calling him. To me those things are no more then gossip starters… The school his kids attend even sent out a letter to all of the parents explaining that everybody needs to be in prayer for him and his family. What a nice way to take away a person’s privacy and decency. I would be so mad if my church and/or local Christian school did that to me with out checking with me first. It is nice to know that people are praying for you but knowing the way that most of this world is all that does is give people something to talk about.
No wonder Christians get such a bad rap. So many of us try to take matters into our own hands thinking we know how to make Jesus heal the situation.
What was really cool was that I was able to contrast a situation I went through with the one he is going through right now. I was able to tell him about how after this situation I knew I needed to make some changes in my life and allow God to control things once again. He knows that God was watching over him during this instance, those words came from his mouth. I was glad to hear him say that.
I only pray that he understands that real Truth and does not allow these things that happened to ruin what God so obviously did in his life.
I am a firm believer that if Christians would just take more time to do things that Jesus did rather then try to be Jesus people would recognize God’s hand in their tragedies much more often rather then blaming God for them.