LifeLink Devotions for Wednesday, May 22, 2024

For 25 years I was friends with a chaplain at a local hospital. I remember one instance when the chaplain came into the room of a patient I was visiting. This was three years after he had retired. I thought to myself, “Here is a man who understands the heart of God for people in need and is available at any time to reach out a warm and loving hand to help them.” In all my years of knowing him and observing him I never saw him put his own needs ahead of the needs of others, and I never heard from anyone a discouraging word about his ministry. He is a master of great relationship because he puts others ahead of himself. 

If we are going to be people of great relationships, that must be true of us as well. Here’s today’s relationship wisdom – With the compassion of Christ put the needs of others ahead of your own.

Prov. 24:11-12  “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?”

God is absolutely and unmistakenly aware of every need of every person. He is also just as aware of whether we are informed about the need. We cannot play the ignorance card with God. We cannot pretend to not have heard about the need. There is nothing that justifies our avoidance of involvement in meeting the need. There is no priority in our lives that can be argued into first place when we know there is a hurting person that we can touch with God’s grace and love.

Think about this carefully: any decision on our part to do anything for self, when we know there is another person in need and we have the ability and opportunity to get involved in meeting that need, is seen and felt by God, and will not go unnoticed or unpunished. “If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered.” (Prov. 21:13)

The older I get and the longer I minister, the more I realize that it is not how much I know or how well I preach or how great I administrate and lead that matters most to people – it is how much I care! A loving and serving heart is the single most important asset to great relationships.

Look around, if you dare, there are hurting people everywhere;

All they want is someone to care, a person to share,

Their burdens to bear, who is always there.

Such people are rare, be one, if you dare.

Pastor John