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Share With The Lord's People

             Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. (Romans 12:13)

 

I know some people who wish God would drop signs down on fishhooks to tell them what to do. It would be useful if God would do something like that to tell us that this person is in need, or this person needs ________. From the stories I’ve heard, He sometimes does tell someone that someone else needs, or what someone else needs. More often than not, He doesn’t. It might be a nice, spiritually romantic idea to wash someone’s feet, but if what that person needs is $10, or a challenge to pray, or admonitions about a sinful practice, washing their feet doesn’t meet a need. It meets our need to feel like spiritual giants, but that’s not sharing with the Lord’s people who are in need, it’s using them to meet ours.

The first two things we need to share with the Lord’s people who are in need are time and space. We need to get to know them well enough to learn what they really need and share enough of ourselves that they feel comfortable expressing their needs to us. We need to pay attention for long enough to notice that they have a need they can’t or won’t confess with words. And we need to be around for long enough that others can discover our needs, and meet them because we’re all needy in one way or another.

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