HE NEEDS YOU MORE THAN YOU NEED HIM

For five years my wife and I served in the Church’s Riverton Addiction Recovery Program.  After two years of serving we were called to be the coordinators for the Riverton Region.  That added to our responsibilities.  We oversaw every aspect of the Program.  Besides the service missionaries who served with us, we relied heavily upon individuals who were in a stable state of recovery from their addictions to act as facilitators in the 12 step support meetings.  At those meetings, they shared their recovery experiences and perspective and also testified of the Lord’s grace manifest in their recovery.  For those attending the meetings for the first time, these facilitators were living witnesses to the possibility of recovery.  They offered hope to all those who attended the meetings.  Their very presence inspired those who came defeated by despair and hopelessness as a result of their own, unaided efforts to achieve recovery.  Because their role in the recovery process was critically important, it was imperative they maintain stability in their recovery to reduce significantly the likelihood of them relapsing.  One day I received a text from an individual that I did not know.  The text was lengthy and, in my opinion, quite disjointed.  It was incoherent in many ways.  Sentences were fragmented and ideas scattered.  After reading it a couple of times, I gathered this individual had once been a facilitator in the addiction recovery program and wanted to become one again.  Given the tenor of his text, I could not envision any circumstances under which we would allow that to happen.  I did not respond to the text and for a few weeks I didn’t hear anything more from him.  I was relieved to think that by ignoring his message, he had just gone away.  However, one Sunday afternoon we were leaving our church service a little after 4:00 pm when I turned on my phone only to discover to my utter horror another text from him.  Though this text reflected a far greater capacity for fluency, it was far more concerning than the first.  He indicated that his bishop had signed his facilitator application and that he was ready to begin facilitating.  Even more concerning was the news he would be attending the monthly facilitator meeting which was scheduled to start in less than two hours.  I was aghast.  How could this have happened?  What could his bishop possibly have been thinking?  I had met this bishop a couple of months prior during one of our training meetings.  I knew he was an experienced bishop and my interactions with him garnered my respect but now I wondered if he had possibly lost his mind over this situation.  I called him.  He was very familiar with the individual and worked with him regularly.  He said that this person had some mental health issues which was probably why his original text to me had been so fragmented and beset by irrational thoughts and expectations.  He indicated that if the man took his prescribed medications regularly, he was quite rational.  I was still skeptical because of that original text.  But because I respected this bishop, I listened to his explanation.  Even after hearing it, I couldn’t bring myself to agree to accept this person as a facilitator.  I felt like my first obligation was to the participants in the program, to protect those who come seeking help.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that this man could easily slip back into his disjointed mental state if he stopped using his medication.  I didn’t want that to happen in one of our meetings.  The bishop said he was sitting on an airplane awaiting takeoff as we spoke.  He indicated that he would be out of town for a week on business.  We agreed to meet together with this man the following weekend upon his return.  It was the best concession I could muster and only then because I so respected the bishop.  As promised, the man attended the facilitator meeting that evening where we met him.  I spoke to him after the meeting and expressed my reservations but explained that we would meet together with his bishop the following weekend.  Meeting him still didn’t convince me that he should become a facilitator.  On Wednesday morning of the subsequent week, while waiting for his bishop to return, I was saying my prayers and was in the middle of something important to me when this man’s face intruded into my mind.  With that visual came these words just as plainly as if they had been spoken audibly to me, “He needs you more than you need him”.  My own words cannot convey the feeling that accompanied seeing his face and receiving that message.  It was as if the Lord was asking me for a favor.  It was so gentle, so tender, so respectful of my position and agency and yet so full of love for this man who I had classified as hopeless that I could not help but marvel even more than ever before at the love the Lord has for each of us.  How could I have possibly thought the price He had paid for me was more important than the price He had paid for him?  Every day that I’m granted to live, I stand more amazed at the love Jesus offers us all.  In essence, here was God, the Holy One of Israel, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, asking me if I would let this man have the opportunity to serve as a facilitator because he needed to serve with us more than we needed his service.  It really felt as if I had a choice to allow him that opportunity or not.  Had I declined, I felt that the Lord would have accepted it and found another way to help him.  Through it all came a feeling of such peace that all my personal reservations about this man serving with us vanished immediately.  I somehow knew that if the Lord was asking for this, He would take care of it and I need not worry about it.  I can’t begin to tell you how good it made me feel to honor that request.  I knew that if it was something important to Him, it was certainly perfectly fine with me.  This early morning experience so changed me that I called the bishop to inform him there would be no need to meet with the man when he returned, as we had planned.  From that moment on I experienced absolutely no concern about the matter.  I knew it was in the Lord’s capable hands, hands far more adept than mine.  This man regularly attended his assigned meetings and did a faithful and acceptable job as a facilitator, there was never a negative incident while he served.  And from it all, I am much more humble, much more aware of the extent to which the Lord’s love is expressed, and to whom.  I cannot help but marvel again at His majesty, clothed in ultimate meekness and humility, worthy of all my adoration, and even more importantly, my complete submissiveness to His divine purposes.