Help & Change Follow a Path, but Not a Script

Here's the description.

The care of souls is not formulaic or predictable.

What helps one person might not help another.

When you listen to people's stories, you can be helpful in so many ways because God works in so many ways.

Some will be strengthened by a particular text of scripture.

Others will be moved by a personal story that helps them see God and the relationship to him in a new way.

An act of love, giving a taste of God's kindness.

Or the death of a friend, painfully reminding them of human need for redemption of body and soul.

God uses people, circumstances, his word, our own choices, and the direct power of his spirit.

Humility is therefore an essential quality of a helper.

We are constantly reliant on God, the wisdom and experience of others, and the input of those we help.

Taken together, a common path emerges.

Our help joins our knowledge of the person with the knowledge of God.

Our help unites the person's story with God's story.

We aim to know the person accurately, meaningfully, and compassionately.

We aim to know God through his word, in which we understand his words in their context and as a larger story of redemption and love.

In response to him, we give him our trust, love, and worship.

All of us are saints, sufferers and sinners.

We will see good, hard and sinful things in ourselves and in the people we help.

We aim to look for the good, hard and sinful in that order.

So that's our description for distinctive number five.

What stands out to you about the description?

I love that it honors the complexity of people and of our hearts and of even just our situations, which, and then it requires of us a certain level of humility, right? If people aren't that simple to figure out, if the process of sanctification isn't a formula, it really requires us to be humbly learners of the people we're caring for of scripture.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's just, it's a sweet invitation to,