TODAY’S GROUP DISCUSSION

Friday 23rd August 2019

If a younger couple, or a family friend came visiting asking for your advice on a matter you are equally struggling with in your home with no serious success, how will you advise such without being hypocritical and at the same time wanting to help the family of the person who came for advice from collapsing?

For example, if a colleague or a friend complain his/her partner is unnecessarily secretive at home and he/she wants your opinion on how best to handle the situation, and you know as a person you are guilty of the same behavior…will you still go ahead and offer solutions to your friend’s problem, when you have not used same solutions at home yourself? Or will you simply hands off and let the worst happens to that family?

• Group Admin, 3pG

Admin Response 1:

God speaks to His children in many ways, bringing someone to seek your advice on issues you are guilty of can be one of those ways. It’s like God using the dumb ass to speak to the erring prophet in Numbers 22:28 and like one of my sisters says, its always the last line of warning from God to desist from the wrong path and make corrections. There are two plausible ways to handle this, it’s either you simply ask the counselee to go because you feel you can’t help him/her, in order not to ignore the log in your own eyes and be removing the speck in someone else eye, which is hypocritical.

But simply asking the person to go might be a temporary solution to ease the heart from guilt and can also be the beginning of the end for the other family if care is not taken. That simply means you will live the rest of your life with the fact that you had opportunity to help them but you failed to, God forbid their relationship collapse by the reason of that nagging issue they came asking you for a way out. While not maximizing that opportunity to also help oneself, there is the possibility that the trouble at home may stay unresolved for some longer period of time, which may further degenerate into some more complex situations.

Secondly, one can decide to profer help and tell the counselee some possible solutions that can help the matter, and at the same time learning from your own answers with the mind to make use of those same advice in your own family. That’s why in the course of talking, God will put in your mouth things you hardly think can help, at that time, one must realize that God is not just talking to the person who asked for help, but also to the person who is doing the helping.

But if you give those sound advice and refuse to apply same to your own situation is like helping others out of difficulties while the counselor him/herself is buried deeper in the web of self inflicted trouble and hypocrisy and that’s not God’s mind for us. As a matter of fact, it’s like rejecting God’s help and advice which He graciously offered by the agency of your own mouth. That’s very incriminating. Where needed you can recommend the counselee to a more mature believer for better advice, while at the corner of your mind, you also will be ready to do the same since God by his/her coming had called your attention to your own error and the need to make amend.

Admin Response 2:

Aside the above, we must also realize that every behavior is a response to an earlier or very much earlier behavior of someone else. The way you behave now or the way your spouse is behaving is a response to other behaviors in your or his/her background over the years. When we understand this, it will help us to see the need to retrain ourselves where we are not doing too well and it will also help us understand and patiently deal with behavioral weaknesses in others, especially in our spouses.

This is where our individual emotional, mental and spiritual maturity comes to play, more importantly on the way we respond to issues that crop up in our marriages. Your response will rather aggravate an already bad situation or make it better. Every experience, especially as married men and women, is a training opportunity. God allow you to pass through that man/woman because He knows you have the wherewithal to pass the test and learn the lessons therein.

God has only one purpose in all our troubles, to teach us and help us so we can someday help someone somewhere who may be passing through same experience. “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (2Corinthians 1:3-4).

Always wait to to find out the lessons in each experience, there is a lesson God wants you to learn in every situation, once you have gotten that, you ask for His help, strength and forgiveness where necessary and the courage to face your own weaknesses headlong, if you are the erring party but if it’s your spouse, aside patiently learning the lessons God might want you to learn from that difficult situation, patient and maturity is key to salvaging the situation. One day God will push someone your way whose life and marriage will benefit from those lessons you have learnt in yours.

And when that time comes, you will not only speak Bible, you back up your advice of faith with experience and God will be glorified. People learn best from others experiences. That’s why while giving advice to others, we must be open, sincere and relate to others our own experiences in the area in question. This bring hope to the counselee that if God can help you through those challenges, he/she can be helped too. Talk about your failures and what you are doing or what you did to get out of it and tell him/her about your success and what you did to get there as well. Maturity and sensitivity to God is also important here, say as much or as little as God leads you to say, no more no less.

In trying to help others, you also help yourself, especially when one is sincere with God and with oneself. Don’t forget to always point others to God’s factor in your success, and His help in days of failure. Be plain, sincere and tell the truth as much as God will allow you, you are actually not the answer here, God is. Troubles bring patience in us, and patience builds our experience and experience makes us mature believers who is never ashamed (Romans 5:3-5). Your experience is only an instrument God used or is using to prepare you for the present and future assignments. Don’t talk too much of you to the point of falling into pride, Jesus Christ must be exalted in us and in our experiences.

Practice what you preach, tell others exactly things God has helped you to do or is helping you to do to get out of your challenges, especially if you have advised others to do same thing. That’s a good way to escape the trap of hypocrisy. If your advise are contrary to what you practice, and you only provided solutions for others but yourself is deeply guilty of the same thing you condemn with no desire to seek for help or practice what you preach, be very sure the truth will come out, it’s a matter of time. May we not be found guilty and put to shame. Amen.

OLUMOFIN, Kehinde Benjamin writes for Praying Parents Prayer Group Christian Ministry (3pG)