There is nothing I can say that makes this smaller, so I am not going to try.
Somebody has put a decision in your hands about an animal you love, and whichever way you go you will be the one who went that way, and you will carry it. That is the shape of it and I am not going to dress it as anything else.
I am also not going to tell you what to do. Not a hint, not a lean, not a story that ends in a way that suggests it. I do not know your animal, I am not qualified, and there is nobody on the internet who should be doing that to somebody in your position. What is in front of you belongs to you and to the person qualified to advise you, and to nobody else.
What I can do is sit with you for a few minutes and take one specific thing off you, because I think it is the wrong thing and it is doing the most harm.
He does not do it willingly
There is a verse in the middle of the book of Lamentations, which is a book that does not pretend anything is fine, and it says something about God that I want you to hold today.
For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men. (Lamentations 3:33, King James Version)
He does not afflict willingly.
That verse sits inside a passage where the writer is describing genuine and unrelieved suffering. He is not saying it does not hurt. He is saying something about the disposition of the one who allows hard things: there is no appetite in Him for it.
That matters here for a specific reason. Because underneath the decision you are holding is a fear that somewhere there is a judgment being formed about you, and that the judgment is being formed by somebody who is looking for the fault.
Lamentations 3:33 says the opposite about His disposition as plainly as language can, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that reach somebody sitting on a floor next to a basket.
You are not being watched by somebody looking for a fault, and there has never once been an appetite in Him for your pain. Lamentations 3:33 says he doth not afflict willingly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a sentence about God's disposition arrive as something a person can lean on.
What I want to take off you
The thing I want to remove is the word betrayal.
It is not usually said out loud. It arrives as a picture rather than a sentence: the animal trusting you, and you being the one who arranges the end of it, and the two of those together forming an accusation that has no words in it and therefore cannot be argued with.
So let me put words on it so it can be looked at.
You have been the one who fed it, decided for it, arranged everything about its life, and taken it to be seen when it was unwell. Every single one of those was a decision made on behalf of a creature that could not make it. That is what having an animal is. It has been your hands the entire time.
This is also your hands. It is the same hands. It is not a different category of act that suddenly makes you something else, and Lamentations 3:33 gives you a God with no appetite for suffering as the ground to stand on while you think, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a hard decision from a betrayal.
You have been deciding for this creature its whole life, and today has never once been a different kind of act. The written word says he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes an accusation with no words in it and gives it words so it can be answered.
About timing
One more thing, and I am going to be careful.
People are haunted by timing. Too soon, and they will say they took something that was still there. Too late, and they will say they let it go on for their own sake. Almost everybody who has done this believes afterwards that they got the timing wrong in one direction or the other.
I want to name that in advance, because knowing that almost everybody feels it takes some of its authority away. It is not evidence. It is what this decision does to people.
I am not going to tell you when. Nobody who is not standing in the room with you and qualified to be there should say a word about when, and I am not going to be the exception. What I will say is that the guilt about timing is not a reliable signal about the timing, and Lamentations 3:33 is about a God who is not administering that kind of scrutiny, and the Holy Spirit does not run the calculation you are frightened of.
You are not going to be assessed on the hour, and the guilt has never once been an accurate instrument. Lamentations 3:33 shows a God with no willingness in Him to grieve people, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a decision that has no clean version of itself.
So here is what I believe is going out over somebody today.
You are not betraying anything, and being trusted has never once meant that this decision is treachery. I am not softening it. Lamentations 3:33 says God does not afflict willingly, which places His disposition against suffering rather than in favor of scrutiny, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my telling who can hold somebody in a room like this one.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You are not deciding this alone, and there has never once been a moment of it He was not in. The written word says nor grieve the children of men, which is God being described as unwilling to cause grief rather than indifferent to it, and the Spirit of God is the one who sits on cold ground with people at four in the morning.
Whatever you decide, and I am not going to influence it, you are not what you are afraid of being.
Declare this over yourself
- Picture that calls this a betrayal, you have no words in you and you never had. Lamentations 3:33 says he doth not afflict willingly, so by the Holy Spirit you do not get to accuse me in the name of Jesus.
- Fear that I will get the hour wrong and be judged for it, you have no place on this floor. The word says nor grieve the children of men, and by the Holy Spirit I am done treating my own guilt as an instrument.
- Father, You have no appetite for any of this and You never did. Your word says he doth not afflict willingly, so by Your Spirit I sit with him today, and my hands are the same hands they have always been.
Lamentations 3:33
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.