Often we wonder why those around us, family, friends, church family and sometimes co-workers keep going through struggles. They keep going around the same mountain or having the same struggle. Now I am not saying we will not have struggles, for Jesus said in John 16:33, “These things have I spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.” So we will have struggles, but they do not have to be the same. The word tells us that His mercies are new every morning.

Troubles, sickness, depression, financial difficulties, all come. When we see someone going through them, we want to run and try to bring them out, talk them through, pray them out. But we are usually working against God’s timing.

Let me stop here and share a story with you. One day there was a man who went to the park and sat on a bench to eat his lunch. While sitting there he looked up and on the back side of a branch he saw a sack. Now he should have realized if it was on the back side of the branch this was private between the sack and its creator. He sat there and as he ate he watched a struggle going on in the sack. The sack would begin to move and then stop and move again. What the man was watching was the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly.

The man continued watching the process taking place, the cocoon seemed to sometimes move violently, then rest and begin again. As the man’s lunch time drew to an end he decided that he would help the butterfly get out a little quicker. He may have wanted to ease the pain he felt the butterfly was suffering. He may have wanted to lesson the turmoil. But how many know that God knows how much pressure and how long it should be applied? You see the butterfly only becomes beautiful through the pressing that occurs as the butterfly struggles to come out of the sack. Just as we become beautiful in the Lord when we press through our struggles and temptations.

So as the man ended his lunch he took out his pocket knife and cut open the cocoon. When his day ended he returned to that spot to see how the butterfly had made out and on the ground he saw a dead butterfly with only one beautiful wing. The butterfly was not allowed to stay in for the allotted time that God had for him and therefore he did not complete the metamorphosis.

We often do this to the people around us. We are good meaning, caring, concerned people. Just like the man with the knife we mean no harm. We are just trying to help. We do not realize we are trying to take the place of Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God. We try to save them from their struggle. We try to heal them and we want to comfort them. We can be a greater help by allowing God to have His way. We should stand in the gap and pray for them while they make it through the situation just as we did.
We need to realize that when the butterfly emerges he has changed but where he lives is the same world he lived in as a caterpillar. He is just able to live in it a little differently than he did as a caterpillar. Well, when God is changing us he is causing us to be able to live a little differently in our surroundings. We come to realize Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We stand back and allow them to understand that greater is He that is in them than he that is in the world.

When we try to do God’s job we hinder the person’s growth and we impair their vision. They see us instead of God.

So when someone you know is going through a struggle, seek the Lord and see what He would have you to do. Do not just run in with your knife and cut them out of the cocoon too soon. Just know that God is creating another beautiful butterfly.