What Is Help?

What help is helpful? How much help is helpful?

We need to be generous and compassionate. We need to be sacrificial. We need to reach out and help others. But we also need to be discerning with our help.

I’m not talking about the “I’m not going to give someone a hand out when I think he or she is just going to buy drugs” dilemma. I know that happens sometimes, but I think we use it as an excuse way more than is warranted.

I’m talking about making a constant discernment call, so that we rarely hear ourselves say, “If I had known this would last this long, I would have…”

I know we’ll all say it at times. We can’t see everything that’s coming, and we don’t want to get into a stingy “…but what if…” mentality that stops us from taking a chance and reaching out in creative ways.

We’re not always going to know with certainty what type of help and how much help will actually be helpful. But just as we need to be generous, compassionate, and sacrificial with our time and resources, we also need to be generous, compassionate, and sacrificial with our humble willingness to reflect and pause and even withhold or moderate our help. We need to trust God’s timing and provision more than we trust our own concerns or need to fix. We need to find purpose in the ways that we help so that we are always ready to help in the ways God intends.

Quit making excuses. Help his way. He might challenge you a lot more than you’re comfortable doing, but it’s worth the yield.