Please Care For My Soul

Please Care For My Soul!

Psa 142:4  I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul. 

This is a sad note. The Psalm was written while David was hiding from Saul in a cave. A dark, damp cave does is not an environment for inspiring joy and optimism. A King to whom you have done no harm maniacally hunting you down doesn’t help much either.

He is crying out to God which is really the only true refuge a person can find and if He is the only one that cares for your soul you are still in great shape. Nevertheless, we humans long for love, comfort, loyalty and many other things from our fellow humans.

Indeed, we are to be Jesus with skin on and as He ministered so are we to minister. I am a people person. Jesus is the ultimate people person. He came to save us and He interacted with people of all levels meeting their needs.

We are not always good at that. We are open to family, friends and some co-workers but folks not in our circle or not quite like us might get closed out. Somebody that sins we run from or sadly, we want to beat them down or give the coup de grace. Brethren, this ought not be so!

Gal 6:1  Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. 

If a man be overtaken in a fault or sin? It is more like when a man is overtaken as we all mess up. That is why we who are currently walking in the Spirit and victory need to help or restore him to fellowship with God, but with humility or meekness. Why, because if we are not careful we can be tempted and fall into the same sin. Be careful! When you see someone fall and you think or say. “Good grief! How could they do that! I will never do that!” That is throwing down the gauntlet to the enemy and he will accept the challenge. He has brought down saints stronger than you.

Gal 6:2  Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. 

Life brings some heavy stuff into our lives besides sin. We suffer loss of loved ones, jobs, health and many other things. These can beat us down to where we even despair of life. We need someone to care for our soul! The law of Christ is to love one another. If we are to be one as He and the Father are one then we need to see ourselves as connected to one another. We are a Body and when the smallest parts of our earthly body hurts or malfunctions it calls the whole body into alert status. That is how it should be in Christ’s Body!

There is a difference between helping people to excel or succeed and enabling them to continue to make bad decisions and stay under that heavy burden. We are to give them a hand up not just a continuing hand out without responsibility.

The Proverbs has verses about the slothful who will not work having a hard life, not a rewarded one. The poor still had to work the field to get the gleanings that were left for them. The farmer did not put the wheat in a barrel and deliver it to them. Paul said that “he that will not work neither shall he eat.” Welfare without accountability is a big problem in this country.

Gal 6:3  For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. 

Sometimes we get a bit too big for our spiritual britches. We close ourselves off from the needy and hurting because it is work that is beneath us. We seem to have arrived. When I was an Associate Pastor in a church of 450 both the Pastor and I cleaned the church including the toilets. It was not beneath us. I was taught in the military to lead by example. Jesus taught that as well. No one was beneath Him. No need He would not address.

When we think we should not help the needy, the smelly, the addicted and whatever else may break the crease in our pants we have deceived ourselves that we are somebody other than sinners who are saved by grace. We are not immune to any sin. We just think we are just as the one who fell into sin thought he was immune.

A preacher is said to be have been mentioning the “stinking flesh” several times in a sermon. A lady of means and breeding told him that she took offense to that phrase. He said, “Lady do not bathe for a week and come back and tell me you don’t believe that the flesh stinks.” In a Texas summer it might be in less than week.