Am I Responsible for Changing Others? 

Am I responsible for changing others? Like a friend or someone you know?

I think we are responsible to do our best, but we cannot make someone change. So feeling responsible for someone’s change of disposition is outside of our power.

As I understand it, some things are within our power; some things are not. The future is outside of our power (don’t worry about tomorrow …). The present is in our power (whatever you do, do with all your might …). 

What’s outside of our power is someone’s internal dispositions. So, at one level, taking the emotional burden of changing someone else can only lead to worry or anxiety, because we cannot control the result. 

This is why, I think, the fruit of the Spirit is 100% dispositions, our dispositions, not our results—how much we change people or our environment.

By contrast, the work of the flesh acts on other people in wroth and other vicious ways. But that creates fear, anxiety, etc. So Jesus says don’t worry about tomorrow (what is outside our control). 

Or Hebrews 2 says the devil controls us by the fear of fear, that is, the fear of death.

Fear is another way of saying that you are anxious about something you cannot control. What you can control, what I can control, is my integrity, my peace, my joy, my love—my disposition (by the Spirit).

So I think in such situations, we have done everything possible to say: I think you can grow in this area, because I have noticed such and such a thing. Any other burden we take—can only only tend to anxiety, because it’s outside of our control.