Know When to Walk Away…..

Thoughts about another year of ministry with women in addiction:
What in my demeanor or conversation or stated and lived beliefs would ever give anyone the idea that I would continue to give aid and comfort to someone living a double life of deception, keeping secrets, and being unaccountable to others and ungrateful to God for the time, resources, and relationships extended on her behalf?
I’m hoping anyone who knows me would say: “Nothing!” Being a Christian does not mean I will enable you or make it easy for you to live a life that defies the very things to which I am called and for which I stand.
One might get the benefit of the doubt for a while and even a second (or a third) chance. But the truth will always come to light. God will see to it. And when it does, there will be no misunderstanding where I’ll be……walking away.
The days are short. The need is urgent and compelling. The time of judgment is near. And there is no time to waste on molly coddling or pleading further with any who lack a healthy reverence for God or simply wish to use God and his people and resources with no intention of making changes in their lives to follow Christ. .

I ask myself (and God) regularly if I need to continue to offer discipleship and life recovery assistance to women in addiction. Sometimes the results appear to be so unproductive. But God reminds me that I am not responsible for the results….I am only responsible to be obedient to him. God does the work. And God will only do the work in those who will receive his consolation and correction. When one refuses, I let her go her way. And, scripture says that God eventually does, too. One who chooses that path is taking herself to hell. God does not . At the beginning of every year I recap all the numbers of women who have been at Titus 2, how long they stayed, what was completed, etc. Just this week I was asking myself the same thing again and God brought to mind the reality that he would have done all he did in dying to redeem humanity if even only one had been saved. How can I set a threshold for how many must be positively impacted in a year for the effort to be “worthwhile?” I will be faithful to do what I’ve been charged to do for as long as God gives me strength and resources to do it and brings women to us.

I want my time here to count for eternity. I may be so marginally effective as an evangelist that my efforts will count little in others’ eternity, but if I am obedient to God, it will have affected MY eternity. And that’s actually all God is going to hold me accountable for…..MY response to Christ, MY action on behalf of the Kingdom, MY faithfulness to him.

When a woman says she is sorry for disappointing me or doesn’t want to disappoint me, I honestly don’t know what to say. But I want to shake her by the shoulders and say, “Get this! I am not the point. My feelings are not the point. Your LIFE is the point. Disobedience to God, being less than what you were created to be, having the abundant life Christ died to give you, and living in eternal joy with God….THAT is the point!”