Home | Articles | Poetry | About The Author | Contact Us |
Last week the theme for me has been one involving to advocate or not to advocate. There were two separate incidents involving both my personal and professional life. An intense situation came up at work whereby I was so tempted to intervene and say something thinking I could heal a rift between a colleague and the boss. My motives were genuine and sincere but they could have been sincerely wrong. So grateful I didn’t react and instead listened to my dearest husband who let me use his ears as a sounding board while debriefing to glean from his experience of 40 years come June, of living a righteous life closely attuned to God. The other set of circumstances is yet to unfold next week.
What does advocacy mean? According to Your Dictionary.com “It is the act of speaking on the behalf of or in support of another person, place, or thing”. An example of advocacy is a non-profit organization that works to help women of domestic abuse who feel too afraid to speak for themselves. In order to advocate for another, we must acknowledge their dignity, their worth and their value as a human being. As a registered nurse, we advocate for our patients in order to help them or protect them, advise, guide, translate to explain medical jargon, and support them in various ways especially when they are weak or vulnerable during their time of healing from the disease process. Often we are advocating for them with family members present in quite dysfunctional relationships.
To advocate for another is a good thing, a noble thing to do and is encouraged around the world. Mothers do this every day on behalf of their children. Fathers also get involved. Children have stepped in to support friends and others at school who may have been bullied to help them, despite the potential risks involved. Have you had a less than desirable experience when you tried to advocate for another and things went “pear shaped”? Some people are staunch advocates without a second thought as to their safety or the possible ramifications, while others are timid and too shy to speak up. Where do you sit? Hopefully by the end of this writing you will consider joining the ranks of wise advocates rather than rushing in like “a bull at the gate” or “turning a blind eye” and/or “sitting on the fence”.
Should we just intervene every time we see a situation that we come across? Seems like we should as we want to help, right? Just about everyone despises injustice and wants to help the underdog, those who are being taken advantage of, bullied, or abused. What does God say? In Ecclesiastes 3:7 we see that there is “...a time to keep silence, and a time to speak”. This means sometimes that yes we should get involved, while at other times we would be wiser not to. How do we know what to do every time? A short simple prayer to God as we are faced with any given situation unfolding right before our eyes is the best way. If we go in boldly each and every time then we are not correctly discerning and could make the outcome even worse by adding fuel to the fire such as from the warning in the Bible found in Proverbs 26:17 “He who passes by and meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who takes a dog by the ears”. We don’t want to make things worse so best to consult with God before we open our mouths. We cannot ever go wrong with God but we must listen and be willing to be led by His Spirit (AKA the Helper) John 14:26.
Did you know there is someone who is your personal advocate whom you can turn to day or night as He never sleeps? Somebody who will never lie to you or give you bad advice or lead you astray? He will listen to you if you talk to Him in sincere heartfelt prayer which you may like to think of in terms of talking to your best friend except you cannot see Him in your presence. Well there is! He lived here on earth some 2,000 years ago and died from the most agonising death after being tortured so cruelly that He was unrecognisable. This young Man was only 33 and a half years old when He was so brutally killed. He was in the prime of His life, healthy and strong. He died for your sin, my sin, the sin committed by every single human being who has ever lived. His name is Jesus Christ, Saviour of the whole world. If you haven’t spoken to Him lately, then you should. He solves all of my problems and then some! By way of introduction you should also speak with His Father who is known as God the Father. They are both part of the God family of which we seek to be part of as His children.
Let us consider 1 John 2:1-2 “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin and if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world”. The apostle John wrote these words under divine inspiration for us to read, meditate upon, and learn from. If we go to God and say we are truly, deeply sorry for any sin we commit (which is known as repentance) and fully intend to resist the same sin in the future, then we will be forgiven. Jesus Christ is the most loving, powerful Advocate who ever lived. He is our example to aspire to. The best thing to do is read exactly what Jesus did while He lived on earth. If you begin by reading the 4 gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John you will be given much information about the life of Jesus. You will notice that some accounts mentioned in each of the gospels are the same story but told through the eyes of these different men who each had something to reveal from their own personal perspective. It is interesting to learn of the same event through different eyes as more wisdom can be obtained to achieve a more complete picture. There is a definite harmony between all four accounts for our benefit.
Remember, Christ was treated unfairly, wrongfully accused of being a glutton and an alcoholic, suffered silently, was abused, mocked, beaten, judged wrongly, even died a criminal's death but was completely innocent (1 Peter 2:22-24). Christ came as a human in the flesh just like we are, as it is written in John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth”, and was tempted in every way that we are tempted to sin, but He never sinned...not even once because He knew if He did then we could not live (Hebrews 4:15). Imagine that resolve, that determination to live in such a way to please His Father and love the whole of humanity — that is why Jesus is known as our Saviour (Romans 5:8).
Now we are to follow His example and learn to resist sin by overcoming temptation, but we cannot do this without help from our Advocate Jesus Christ. All those who choose to follow Christ through full water immersion at baptism as an adult (Acts 2:38) with hands laid on by God’s minister will receive His Holy Spirit which is known as the Helper (John 14:15-16; John 3:5-6). This is incredible news for all those out there who have no idea that our Advocate desires to help us overcome the world by helping others in service to God by works of power through God’s Spirit in us. John 3:16-17 (ESV) “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him”. What could be more beautifully giving than this gift from above! Our Advocate in Jesus Christ is truly the best gift we could ever receive in this lifetime.