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We know that suffering creates endurance, endurance creates character, and character creates confidence.

Romans 5:3–4

Are you a rescuer—forever helping people in need, saving them from trials and temptations? If you find that you aren’t hearing from God or that you want more from your spiritual life than you are getting, then it might just be because you are trying to play God in the lives of your friends.

Suffering is a powerful tool in the hand of God. He uses it to shape people and to move them toward him. If you feel a need to stop the suffering of others and to give them advice that you have no right to be giving them, then you might be putting something between them and the voice of God. You can most certainly give advice to others, but it has to be advice that you come to through discernment and constant prayer. It shouldn’t be off the cuff with the sole goal of relieving the other person’s pain.

Always get back to God’s Word. Are they suffering because they refuse to obey? Can God make something out of their suffering? What do they need to learn from this experience? Don’t always think that your job is to help them get away from the trial. Sometimes the most important thing is for them to stay in it and to fall on their knees in complete surrender to the only one who can truly save them. Let others need God more than they need you, and stop playing God in their lives.