Danny ChaiMy Utmost from a few days ago was another super bold entry made me do a double take and is either totally wrong or totally right. An excerpt:
If you become a necessity to someone else’s life, you are out of God’s will…. when you begin to see that person in the middle of a difficult and painful struggle, don’t try to prevent it, but pray that his difficulty will grow even ten times stronger, until no power on earth or in hell could hold him away from Jesus Christ. Over and over again, we try to be amateur providences in someone’s life. We are indeed amateurs, coming in and actually preventing God’s will and saying, “This person should not have to experience this difficulty.” Instead of being friends of the Bridegroom, our sympathy gets in the way. One day that person will say to us, “You are a thief; you stole my desire to follow Jesus, and because of you I lost sight of Him.”
Bold. Essentially saying that our sympathy and compassion can be big hindrances in people depending on Jesus. And that when friends go through struggles, we should pray that their struggles become much worse. Bold. I can pretty much say I’ve never ever done that.
I dunno, I think I buy it though. We (meaning I) tend to feel that suffering is inherently bad. I don’t think it’s that. I don’t think it’s inherently good either. I buy what Chambers says elsewhere, that suffering is necessary, and whether it’s bad or good depends completely on our response to it. Won’t automatically make you better or worse. But avoiding it is probably anti-Scriptural. Dunno about seeking it either.