"Better is open rebuke than love that is concealed. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy."

"Do not reprove a scoffer, lest he hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you."

To this day this man continues in his own path and his own way. I continue to daily pray for them.

I would like to share a case counseling example to show you the love, kindness, and patience of God to work out His love and plan for our lives; and to show that in order for a person to get to this place, he gets there not out of hurt, because God will never condemn a man necessarily if he is hurting, but out of willful choice in the face of Jesus’ greatest kindness and manifested love and healing in one’s life to keep him from making that decision.

Seven years ago the Lord led me into friendship with a man who had a drinking problem. When I first met him the Lord spoke to me plainly and said, "Do not moralize him; just love him." The Lord told me this for five years.

At first I did not know why; but as I got to know this man and his problems better, I began to see why he had a drinking problem. Besides having a rough childhood, at one point in his past, some, I suppose well meaning, Christians had taken him into a field and tried to literally beat some quote unquote demons out of him. Needless to say as a result of this experience he found it difficult to trust Christians, especially ones who tried to moralize his life. This man had been so hurt by Christians that when ever he would go into a Church he would go up and cuss the preacher out. He would do this to find out how genuine they were. What I mean by genuine, would they be able to love him and discern if this was what was really going on and be able to truly manifest Christ’s love to him through their response?

Earlier in this concept I talked about a special kind of sensitivity to people with immoral problems. It is so important that before we judge people from face value alone that we spend time before the Lord about that person through worship and praise, opening up our heart to Jesus’ heart, and allow Jesus to minister to our hearts about the individual we are concerned about before taking any actions toward that person, irrespective of the obviousness of his or her actions.

You want to minister life. Jesus is life. Jesus said, "It is the Spirit who creates-life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and life." (John 6:63). Jesus is the answer to man’s needs, problems, and immoral behavior. We do not want to minister ourselves, flesh, no matter how truthful our words are. We want to minister Jesus; that is, what Jesus is telling us to minister. This is because only then are we assured of Jesus’ backing through the Holy Spirit and that there will be life changing power and conviction that leads to life behind what we say. In this person’s case the Lord made quite plain to me to just love him.

This man was hurting very deeply inside. For me to just deal with his drinking problem, without first getting to the root sin of his problem, at that point, would only have added to the hurt. He had been badly rejected by Christians in the past for false reasons and it was a reflection of God’s love toward him, he thought, through them. If it was true that Jesus Himself felt this way about him and he was supposedly a hopeless case then what difference did it make what he did with his life morally. He was condemned already. He was drinking to drown out the hurts and feelings of rejection that Satan had him believing were coming from God through some well meaning immature Christians.

I do not claim to be any better than other Christians. The love I had for this man was definitely a supernatural love outside of myself, but I do believe my choosing to believe the best of this person at the offset and my openness to Jesus through worship and praise helped me to be able to receive properly from Jesus His instructions to my life concerning this person.

After five years of a growing friendship with this man, he came over one night to my apartment purposely stone drunk. When I opened the door he came in and walked up to me and said, "What do you think of me now?" What he was really saying was, "You have shown me God’s unconditional love now for five years. Can God still unconditionally love me even in this condition?" After I had taken a minute to pray and open up my heart to God, looking to Him as to how He wanted me to react to what was presently taking place, I said to this man, "If your asking whether or not God still loves you, yes, he still loves you. I am not saying that He condones your drinking, not because it hurts Him but because He knows what it is doing to you and because he loves you and does not want your life to be destroyed."

After that night, for the first time in the five years, I knew him, he stopped his drinking. Why? He stopped his drinking because he was convinced through the testimony of Jesus through my life that God loved him and accepted him even when his life was not very pretty to others. The Apostle Paul says, "For it is the love of Christ that controls us. . ." (2 Cor 5:14).

After that night this brother began to really grow in the Lord. A few months later he unconditionally surrendered the lordship of his life to Christ and as a result of that, Jesus was able to do a work of stability in his life which resulted in his being able to plant himself into a Church body and stay there. God had placed this brother into a body that loved him and allowed him to grow at the speed he was able to. He had a good steady job and a good relationship with his parents.

One weekend, though, several months later, he got bored. He became impatient with Jesus fulfilling some desires in his life he had. Because Jesus would not jump at that point when he said jump, he got angry with the Lord and decided to start up his drinking again. This time though it was not because of rejection, it was not because he was not being loved by Christians, and it was not because he did not have a good job or a good relationship with his family. He started his drinking again simply out of free will choice in plain rebellion to what He knew was Jesus’ Lordship over his life. Again, the Apostle Paul tells us plainly in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and Galatians 5:19-21 that drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Jesus did not only make it plain to this brother that getting drunk was wrong, but Jesus also made it plain to this brother that for him to drink at all was wrong because he was an alcoholic. In his case it was not just that he was walking on shaky ground because he was getting drunk, but because he was drinking period.

His drinking then led to his deciding not to go to Church anymore. When he saw God was not a slot machine God, "I will put in my time and you spit back" mentality, and that God was not going to give him what he wanted now, he decided Church no longer had any place in his life. On top of all this he went out and bought some pornographic magazines and began to indulge in their perverted pleasure.

One Friday morning he called me up to see if I had any plans for that Friday evening. I told him I did not. He then said, "Why not come over tonight and we will do something together." I told him since I did not have any plans for the night I saw no reason why I could not.

After I hung up the phone I became uneasy in my spirit, not at peace about going over and seeing that brother for the night. Always before Jesus’ admonition to me concerning this brother was that he needed my love, not condemnation; but this time the brother was not hurting. Everything in his life was okay. He may not have had everything he wanted, but God had well provided for all his spiritual, soulish and physical needs. He was doing better than I was at the time because at that time I was unemployed, had a bad relationship with my former Church, and no relationship with my family because of my calling into the ministry.

I decided that before I went over to see him I better seek the Lord about the matter first. After I prayed, the Lord led me to the first book of Corinthians and showed me the following passage,

"But actually, I wrote you not to associate with any so-called brother if he should be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reveler, or a drunkard, or a swindler--not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the Church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves." (1 Cor 5:11-13). This was an admonition that Paul gave to the Corinthian Church who were allowing immoral people to have fellowship in the Church. Jesus was saying to me by the Spirit that this passage applied now to the situation, making it the sword of the Holy Spirit.

After spending more time in worship and praise before the Lord as to how to explain this to the brother, I called him up that evening and said the following to him, "Before I can come over tonight I have to explain something to you. You know Joe (a fictitious name), Jesus will never condemn a man for weakness when hurting. We all have something we gravitate toward in our weaknesses when we have been hurt, but your not hurting right now. You have a good relationship with your Church. I have no relationship at all right now with my former Church. You have a good steady job. I have no job at all. There is nothing wrong with your relationship with your family. My relationship with my family has been bad for years. If you were hurting in some way then I know Jesus would want me to come over and love you and express God’s healing love to you, but your not hurting. Your drinking stems this time from simple willful rebellious free-will choice. This is not easy for me to say because I consider you to be one, if not the closest friend I have, but Jesus has made plain to me that unless you stop drinking and get rid of your porno magazines and at least go to the early morning service at Church Sunday morning, that I cannot fellowship with you. If I do, I will be going against what I know clearly to be Jesus’ present Lordship over my life in relation to you and thus I too will be walking in rebellion against the Lord also." Paul the Apostle states in 2 Timothy,

"And the Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth." (2 Tim 2:24- 25).

After I explained all this to him he answered back,

"I do not want you to do anything that would cause you to sin against the Lord, and you are right; what I am doing is out of simple stubborn willful choice and I have no excuse, but this is where I am at at present."

With that I told him if he had any needs, I could help him with his needs and to feel free to call; but until he repented of his immoral life style, I could not relate to him as a friend. He said okay and we both hung up. At that point I became at peace about what I had done and was assured of by the Lord that I had done the right thing.

The next day, Saturday morning, about 10:00 A.M. in the morning, there was a knock at the door. When I opened the door, my friend Joe was sitting there on the step. I smiled and said, "Ya! What’s up!" He then said, "Can I come in and ask you about something?" I replied back, "Sure, come on in."

He had a genuine need about something that was concerning him. After I answered his questions about his need to the best of my ability, he proceeded to tell me what happened the rest of his evening after I hung up. He said, "After you hung up I told Jesus, ‘If you want me to stop drinking then appear to me and tell me to stop’"