Learning to Receive When You'd Rather Give

Some people find it far easier to help than to be helped. Discover why Peter refused to let Jesus wash his feet, and why learning to receive may be exactly what God is asking of you.You will drop everything when a friend is in trouble. You will bring a meal and take the late phone call. But turn it around, and you go stiff. When you are the one in trouble, you wave people off. I'm fine. I've got it. You would let a friend do for you a fraction of what you would gladly do for them.This episode opens with Avery Rogers, a self-reliant woman who got to college, wanted friends, and made a plan: she would be the helper. She carried people's luggage and brought them food and never asked for a thing back, and she called it generosity. Then a friend told her the truth. A friendship that only runs one way is not a true friendship, no matter which way it is running.Peter had the same instinct, and it collided with Jesus on the last night. When Jesus knelt to wash the disciples' feet, Peter refused. In John 13:6-9 he protests, "you will never ever wash my feet!" and Jesus answers, "Unless I wash you, you won't belong to me." Peter's refusal looked like reverence, but it came from a man who wanted to relate to Jesus on his own terms, as a giver, never as a needy person on the receiving end. Jesus told him that road leads nowhere. The whole faith begins by receiving something you could never earn or repay. If you cannot take grace with empty hands, you cannot have it at all.Here is the turn. Sometimes God is trying to give you something, and your reflex to serve is what blocks it. It might come through a friend who wants to help or a church that wants to bring you meals. When you wave them off, you may be waving off God. Receiving is its own kind of humility. It admits you are not the strong one in every room, and for some of us that admission is what God is after right now.There is one more surprise in Avery's story. Learning to receive made her more generous. Once she quit keeping score, she started seeing the people around her and everything they could do together that she had been trying to do alone.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why some people can give endlessly but cannot let anyone give back to themWhat Peter's refusal at the foot washing reveals about receiving from GodOne step this week to let someone help you, and why it makes you more generous, not lessYou do not have to do it all alone. You were never supposed to.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/291Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.