How Can I Help You?

Do you like to help people? It gives you a pretty good feeling inside, doesn't it? You see the homeless person standing by the road. "Will work for food," her sign reads. I mean, obviously you're not going to bring her back to the house to do your laundry, right? So you slip her a few bits of change from your cup holder. The light turns green and --"Wait, did she just call me cheap?"  Yeah, giving can make you warm and fuzzy all over. Maybe it's your own family. You give him the money to buy a car. "I'll pay you back when I get on my feet," he says. Six months later he's smoking weed in your basement, using your pantry for his personal bodega and hasn't given you back a dime from the job he refuses to go to. LOVE helping others! Whoo Hoo!

There are right ways and wrong ways to help people. (Scott and I have pretty much mastered all the wrong ways, in case you'd care to contact us for our "NEVER Do This" list.) But I think the "right and wrong" of it all stemmed more from our motives than it did our technique. For instance, we helped because it made us feel good. A great byproduct, but it probably wasn't the best incentive. Sometimes we helped out of fear. Like, "If I don't let her use my car, she says she'll just steal one." That's really not fear; it's two opposing camps battling it out for control -- one to get what they want, and the other to get who they want. We've certainly helped out of obligation before. Those sad animal shelter ads or the ones where refugees are starving? Whoo, they can certainly tug at your heart strings! So what is a better motivation for helping people? Who and when do we help? And how do we help them?

As Christians, the first thing we are to do is seek the kingdom of God (Mt. 6:33). That should be our motivation for all we do -- to seek Him, to bring glory to Him, and to desire His kingdom come for everyone. God has a plan, and we are part of it; we are the vessels He uses, but it is His plan. That is the who and the when: help everyone all the time. But in the manner God directs. Imagine the Church as God's tool shed (my pastor's analogy). God goes to His tool shed and pulls out those He needs for this particular part of His project. Screwdrivers do not jump from their hooks, determined to prune the trees. Power tools do not spring to action on their own, but require Him to supply the power and allow Him to direct their use. Put that way, it's hard to be so overwhelmed with our position as individuals, and easy to understand the importance of bringing each situation, each need, each individual before the Lord in prayer (Phil. 4:6-7). If we're reaching into our pockets or throwing about a casual promise to pray for others without first consulting our Master, we are the hammer deciding for itself to remove an oil filter. At best, we are ineffective for the Kingdom; at worst, we may do more damage than good.

The Bible does give specifics on how to help: feed the hungry, clothe the poor, visit the sick and incarcerated (Mt. 25:31-46); visit orphans and widows (James 1:27), and love (Mark 12:30-31) -- God first, others next. But it is in complete surrender to what God has planned for you and for the person needing help. It is, first and foremost, the desire to please Him, to bring glory to Him, to obey Him. And none of this is without the preaching of the gospel (Mark 16:15), the justification for our actions. Practicing what we preach, as we preach it. If we do good without ever specifically, publicly pointing to Christ and His work in us, we are merely "good people" to the rest of the world. If we talk about Jesus, but never demonstrate to folks who He is, we are clanging cymbals, out of time with the opus God has written for our lives. Our words are not the substitute for our actions; nor are our actions substitutes for verbally sharing the gospel. The two accompany one another, just as faith without works is dead (James 2:14-22), or helping without the correct motivation can bite you in the tail (Murphy, 2020).