How Did I Become Stronger in Faith for What You're Going Through?
Updated: Sep 20
You can have empathy. You can pray. You can love. You can offer help. You can even walk beside someone through a difficult season.
But there comes a point where you have to ask:
“How can my faith and willingness to keep going be stronger than the faith and willingness of the person actually living through it?”
That does not mean you stop loving them. It means you recognize that you cannot surrender to God for someone who refuses to surrender for themselves. You cannot do their healing, their changing, their forgiving, their growing, or their obedience for them.
Galatians 6:2 says:
“Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
This scripture is often understood as helping one another when life becomes too heavy. When someone is grieving, hurting, struggling, or facing something they genuinely cannot carry alone, we are called to come alongside them.
But Galatians 6 does not stop there.
A few verses later, Galatians 6:5 says:
“For every man shall bear his own burden.”
At first that may sound contradictory:
Bear one another's burdens... but each person must bear their own burden?
But together, they show balance.
Sometimes a person has a weight that is too heavy to carry alone. That is when we help carry it. But each person also has responsibilities, choices, healing, growth, and a relationship with God that they must carry themselves.
You can help someone stand.
But you cannot walk for them.
You can pray with them.
But you cannot believe in place of them.
You can encourage them.
But you cannot keep them motivated if they refuse to move.
You can show compassion.
But compassion does not require you to repeatedly carry what someone has the ability or responsibility to address themselves.
And maybe that is where your realization comes from when you say:
“I don't even carry my own weight. I let go and let God.”
Because you are learning that you are not meant to carry everything alone. You have learned to release your own burdens to God. So why would you be expected to carry burdens that belong to someone else when they will not even participate in carrying them?
There is a difference between:
1- “Let me help you while you get through this.”
and
2- “Give it to me, and I'll keep carrying it while you stay in the same cycle.”
The second one can become exhausting because the problem keeps returning, not because you failed to help enough, but because the person has not changed that which keeps creating the burden.
When Their Burden Becomes Your Weight
or
How Did I Become Stronger in Faith for What You're Going Through?
God calls us to bear one another's burdens, but He never asked us to become another person's Savior.
That “aha” moment for me.
We can love people without losing ourselves in their problems. We can have compassion without becoming responsible for their choices. We can help without repeatedly rescuing. And sometimes the most loving thing we can do is step back and allow someone to carry the part of the journey that belongs to them while still praying, loving, and being present in the ways God actually leads us to be.
Hopefully you can see it is not about becoming cold or uncaring. It is about learning the difference between love, compassion, responsibility, faith, and boundaries
Remember:
Sometimes the hardest person to get through to is ourselves. We can pray for change, ask God for direction, and hope for something different but we must also be willing to recognize when our own choices, fears, habits, or unwillingness to change are keeping us stuck. Sometimes growth begins when we stop fighting the truth and get ‘SELF’ out of our own way.
Ain’t you ready to get “Self” out of your own way? It’s time to take your “Timeout”. Click below to get your workbook.
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