Can't Convince You

As per my last post, God is really showing me things about ministry and how I am to interact with my students. Just as I can’t love my students into a relationship with Christ. I can’t save them from sin or their lives or anything else. Something else that God pressed on my heart this week was this

You can’t convince someone into a relationship with Christ.

You can’t just tell someone about how much God loves them, and then love on them yourself and expect drastic changes in their heart, in their relationships, and more importantly in their relationship with God. It’s God. It’s God’s job, no, His joy to change hearts for Him. We are only vessels on this earth, commanded to do His will.

I have a student who wants a relationship with God. But there is one huge issue standing in her way. Herself. She has spent her life with drug addicted parents, with boys who use her body for fun, and she’s also had to live with her own self-deprecating thoughts about herself. She prays for God to change things and gets mad when there is no immediate response from Him.

I can tell Her that He is working in her life. I can point out ways that God had protected her and kept her from harm but those things are turning out to not be enough. I can’t convince her to love God. And I can’t convince her to submit to Him. Her salvation rests on the shoulders of the Holy Spirit, not mine. All I can do is what God commands me to do and pray that in every interacting I have with her, I’m being obedient to Him and not working for my own ends.