Loving Someone You Can't Fix

There's a specific kind of tired that comes from loving somebody you can't fix.

You've tried the long talks, and you've tried the silent treatment.

You've come at them gentle, and you've come at them hard, and the next morning still shows up with nothing changed.

You lie awake at night running the next conversation in your head, the one you're sure is finally going to get through, and it never does.

Somewhere in all of it you started believing their freedom was your job, and that you were failing at it.

Let me tell you about four men who loved somebody they couldn't fix.

Their buddy couldn't walk.

Couldn't get himself anywhere near Jesus on his own.

The four of them picked up the corners of his mat and carried him the whole way there.

When they finally reached the house, the crowd was packed so tight there wasn't a way through the door.

They didn't turn around, and they didn't try to fix him out there in the street.

They went up on the roof and tore a hole straight through the tiling.

Then they lowered their friend down into the one spot in that house where something could actually happen.

Catch what they did, and catch where they stopped.

They carried him the whole way, and then they let go.

They got him in front of Jesus, and they let Jesus be Jesus.

That right there is the whole thing, and it's the thing that's going to save your sanity.

You can carry the person you love.

You can't be the one who heals them.

Why is that so hard to swallow?

Love makes you feel responsible for how it ends.

You watch somebody you love sinking, and everything in you is convinced that if you just love them hard enough and say it the exact right way, you'll be the one who pulls them out.

Look at whose faith Jesus responds to in that house, though, and look at what He actually does with it.

He sees the friends doing the carrying, and then He does the part that only He can do.

He forgives the man, and He tells him to get up and walk.

The carrying was their part.

The rising was His.

You were made to be a corner of the mat, not the cure waiting on the other side of the room.

When you try to be the cure, two things start to break.

You burn out, because you were never built to carry a weight that only the cross can hold.

They keep leaning on you instead of leaning on Him, because as long as you're playing savior, they never have to meet the real One.

I'm not the Savior.

I'm just a man who carries people to Him.

I learned this one the hard way with my own family.

For years I thought it was on me to drag them across the line.

That nearly crushed me, and it never once worked.

Here's the gospel that takes the weight clean off your back.

Jesus didn't just stand there and point at the paralyzed man's problem.

He went to a cross and took the sin and the brokenness of every person on every mat into His own body, was buried, and rose on the third day with the power to say rise and actually mean it.

He's the healer. He always was.

That means the person you love doesn't need you to play God for them.

They need you to keep getting them in the room.

Real love honors their choice too.

God Himself won't drag a person through that door against their will.

He invites.

You do the carrying and the praying, and then you trust the One who actually changes hearts to do what you were never able to do.

Here's how you love somebody you can't fix.

1. Carry them to Jesus in prayer before you carry one more argument to their face.

Your words have a ceiling.

Your prayers don't.

Lift the four corners every morning and lay that person down in front of the only One who can reach all the way inside them.

2. Do the part you can actually reach, and release the part you can't.

Show up for them, and tell them the truth in love.

Then hand the outcome to Him.

You're responsible to them, not for the work only God can do inside them.

3. Quit letting them lean on you in the exact spot they need to lean on Him.

Every time you rescue them from the thing God's using to draw them, you push back the very thing you've been praying for.

Love them enough to point them past yourself.

4. Stay on the roof for as long as it takes.

Those four found another way in when the door was blocked.

Don't quit just because the easy route closed on you.

Keep finding a way to get them in front of Jesus, and let Him set the timing.

PRAYER

Lord, I'm worn out from trying to do a job that was always Yours.

Thank You that saving them was never sitting on my shoulders, that it was always sitting on the cross.

Today I set down the savior role I was never meant to pick up.

I lift the people I love, and I lay them down in front of You.

Help me keep carrying them without ever trying to cure them.

I trust You to do inside them what I never could.

In Jesus' mighty name. Amen.