Consider His Feelings

 

                When my son was born, it took me quite a while to figure out how to put him to sleep. I could tell he was tired, but it would take quite a while of rocking and walking him around to get him to finally fall asleep. When he was finally asleep, I would carefully try to bend down and lay him in his crib when suddenly, he would be wide awake and we would have to start all over again. It seemed inevitable that when I would finally get him to sleep and successfully lay him down in his crib, his father would come home anxious to hold and care for his new born son. Before I could stop him, my husband would be picking up our boy and our son would be wide awake again. I never could get mad at my husband for doing this because he did so out of love for our son, but once our son was awake and fussy because he was still tired, my husband would hand him back to me so I could get him back to sleep.
                Sometimes I think that this is what we do to God. God will be working in someone’s life drawing them into a relationship with Him, and then we decide to come into their lives with no idea what He has been doing and tell them that they need to know God. When this person does not respond the way we expect, we hand them back over to God to take care of again and walk right back out of their life.
                As my husband learned more about how to care for our infant son, he realized that when he came home he first needed to find out how things were going before he could effectively take part in caring for our boy. Just like my husband was exited to care for our son, as followers of Christ we should be excited to take part in bringing others into a relationship with God. In order to effectively do so, we need to recognize that God is already working in their lives and we need to take the time to discover what God has been doing before trying to jump into His work. I believe that we should share the gospel as often as possible, but before doing so we should ask God how he has been working in that person’s life in order to effectively care for his people.