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If anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted.
Galatians 6:1
Paul clearly stated that restoration must be done by the qualified—those who are spiritual. If it isn't done from a spiritual heart of gentleness and wisdom, the one who's seeking to restore can harm the one being helped and be pulled into temptation himself.
To find restoration or to restore someone spiritually, you need to understand what being spiritual is.
"Spiritual" in this context means seeking God's assessment of the problem, allowing God both to define the problem and to provide the solution.
A spiritual solution comes when the Holy Spirit illuminates God's truth from His Word in your heart, your mind and your life.
A Spiritual Approach to Life
A spiritual approach to life's addictions and sins is needed because the outward symptoms aren't typically the underlying cause.
You can't treat something spiritually simply by looking at the symptoms of the problem. You must discover the spiritual cause and treat it spiritually in order to restore someone.
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:12
Like a dog tied to a tree by a rope, a lot of people who are sitting in our churches each week have been hooked into a sin or a circumstance, and although they pull hard to try and break free, they only rope themselves more tightly into the situation. As a result, they end up being strangled by something they can't fix.
How to Find Spiritual Restoration
Many times we want to help people out of a circumstance without identifying the spiritual root of the problem. But if the spiritual is the cause, the spiritual must be the cure.
A snare is always rooted in a spiritual cause because the root of any snare is Satan, our flesh or both.
When we seek to restore one another, we must seek to address the spiritual cause of the snare because only then can we set the person free. Healing is restored by addressing the source, not the symptoms. To get to the source, we need to have a spiritual approach to restoration.
The Role of Pain in Our Spiritual Lives
A fundamental cause for people to become ensnared in the first place is pain.
Today people focus so much on distracting themselves from pain rather than healing their source of pain that they end up piling vice on vice rather than reaching true restoration.
The worst thing they can do is to create one snare in order to get out of another. Healing occurs and freedom from sin occurs when people recognize the root cause of their pain and turn to God.
Restoring others begins when we help them identify the source of their pain. Healing of the soul must occur before they can experience any improvement in their painful symptoms.
Excerpted from Tony Evans, Horizontal Jesus Bible Study. © 2015 Lifeway Press. Used by permission. Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
BONUS: Learn More About Tony's Bible Study
Your vertical relationship with God is connected to horizontal relationships with others.
Loving God is vertical love. Loving others is horizontal love. Jesus showed His disciples how these two loves are intertwined in practical ways. While our relationship with God is based on faith alone, He warns and encourages us to see that the way we treat people affects our experience of Him.
In this six session study, you'll learn how to apply biblical principles drawn from several one-another passages in Scripture. In doing so, you'll reap blessings in your vertical relationship with God.
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