One of our users wrote in and asked about a painful situation she walked through several years ago. God had revealed to her that the enemy was going to come against one of her friends. She didn’t know what to do with this revelation, so she prayed for him. He later died, and for years she has wondered if she should have done something more.

I know several people who have gone through similar situations. They were given revelation, had dreams, or just sensed that something bad was going to happen to someone they care about. They didn’t know what to do with what God showed them, so they prayed about it, and consequently, some of them have lived with guilt for years, thinking that if they had just handled the situation differently, they could have saved the person’s job, or his or her marriage, or even the person’s life.

Why does this happen? Why does God give us warnings like these, and how are we supposed to respond?

God’s training process

First, God will put us in difficult or potentially confusing situations in order to train us. He knows we don’t understand how to handle certain things, and that is why we’re in the situation — so we can learn what to do in the future.

As people say, hindsight is 20/20. We may know to do certain things now that we didn’t know to do then, but there is no reason for us to feel guilty for that.

When God is training us, He knows we don’t know what we’re doing, and especially in training situations, we are not the ones who are responsible for making sure the outcome is positive. The only burden on us is to do what we know to do and for our hearts to be in the right place. That is all.

When He trains us, He is assuming the role of supervisor. It’s like being in driver’s ed. Yes, we may be the one behind the wheel, but the instructor next to us can grab the wheel if he needs to, and he often has a brake on his side of the car as well. If we get into a situation we can’t handle, the teacher will take over. It’s a safe situation for us to learn in, because we have the freedom to make mistakes, and we’re not fully responsible for everything that’s going on.

If we understand God’s training process, we will be able to do what He says and then let the rest go, without being overcome with guilt. In other words, if we had the burden to pray for someone, and we prayed, we did what God asked us to do. That was all we needed to worry about.

Hand in hand with this, we can do only what we have been given favor to do. Many of us who have walked through difficult situations like this weren’t in a place to change those situations. We didn’t have a lot of favor to speak into others’ lives. We didn’t necessarily have the knowledge or even the vocabulary to articulate what God had told us. All we had was the revelation and the understanding to pray.

The what-if questions that arise after any situation that has turned out badly shouldn’t be used for condemnation or guilt; they should be used as stepping-stones to greater wisdom. What if we had told the person what we were sensing or what we had dreamed? Maybe they would have fought harder and enacted change, or maybe they would have become more depressed. What if we had told other people? Maybe they would have received it and prayed as well, or maybe they wouldn’t have believed it. When God brings up questions such as these, He is not intending us to feel guilty; they’re meant to help us seek Him out and grow in wisdom, stature, and favor.

God’s conviction vs. the enemy’s guilt

This brings us to the second point. Conviction from God is specific: Next time, do this instead. Guilt and shame are diffused; they don’t have a point. Maybe there was something we could have done better, but if there was and God shows us this, He does so because it is part of our training, not because He wants to add to our already guilt-ridden conscience.

Again, we can expect conviction to be specific, and when we respond to it and repent, the weight of it falls away. It’s done. Everything left over — any fear, guilt, or shame — isn’t of God, so we don’t have to pay attention to those things. If they try to latch onto us, we should ask God to help us push them away. If it isn’t from Him, we don’t have to deal with it.

We are responsible only for our own decisions

The last main point is this: God gives us responsibility, and if we don’t do what we’re responsible for, yes, God will correct us. However, we have to understand where our responsibility begins and where it ends. We are not responsible for someone else’s decisions. We are responsible only for our own.

Depending on the situation and the people involved, even if we were perfect in doing everything God wanted us to do, it may not change the outcome. We can do only what God gave us to do, and often, He will give us responsibilities in the midst of a sinking ship. In other words, we can do our job in a bad situation, and that situation can still go really badly. Why? Because we weren’t responsible for keeping the ship afloat. We were responsible for doing only what He asked of us.

Clearly, we can be sad over someone else’s bad decisions; we can grieve and mourn over them, but we cannot take responsibility for them. If we do, we’re assuming God’s role — that we are somehow capable of changing the situation or the person. We are not.

Leave the burden with God

In summation, we shouldn’t feel bad if we’re not perfect in a training situation; our lack of understanding could be why we’re in the situation to begin with. We should recognize the difference between conviction and shame, and we should recognize what we are responsible for. If God gave us the burden to pray, and we prayed, we did what He wanted us to do. He can tell us, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” even if everything around us fell apart.

If you are dealing with any guilt or false responsibility, turn it over to God. Let Him have it. You may even want to act this out physically by lifting the “weight” off your shoulders and giving it to Him.

The simple truth is that we can trust God to bear our burdens (Psalm 68:19). If we try to handle them ourselves, we’re taking on God’s role and building up a wall around us, one that will keep Him at a distance. We are struggling and wearing ourselves out trying to be something He never intended us to be. There is an incredible amount of freedom in realizing who God is, who we are in His sight, and who He wants to be in our lives.