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).

A Truly Fabulous Gift

I'm late to the party on this one, but there was a Peloton Christmas commercial that threatened infamy. A husband got his wife a Peleton bike for Christmas. She was thrilled. She began vlogging her fitness progress, the ad concluding with her affirmation, "A year ago, I didn't realize how much this would change me. Thank you." Regardless of the character's gratitude and sense of accomplishment, a portion of the general public was not sold, calling the add sexist. Apparently, people not very happy with themselves and, possibly, their marriages began to believe the (imaginary) husband's message to his (imaginary) beautiful Size 4 wife was that she was a bit too porky. Peloton's stock actually dropped more than ten percent, costing the company over $1 billion! Trust me when I say I have better things to do than fight over a commercial, but just this week, one conversation got me thinking about gifts, and another brought this ridiculous social media frenzy to my attention. 

A month ago, as that ad was running, many of us were thinking of the moment our loved one would unwrap the "perfect" gift. Just what they wanted, or needed, or both. You probably never considered your gift might be sending a message other than the one you intended. If you had, you might not have given it, right? Well, I'm gonna say this upfront: my gift this year was a cast iron Dutch oven. Romantic, huh? In previous years I have received a stand mixer, a collar for my dog, and a remote start for my truck. Talk about taking a veiled shot. Cookware. Get in the kitchen and fix me some vittles, Woman! Dog accessories. How is that a gift for me? Car parts. Get lost? The real message is, my husband loves me and knows me. The kitchen is my happy place, and cooking with antique cast iron cookware? Amazing!! I loved, loved, loved my dog, and my truck almost as much. My husband knows what I like, and he knows what I need. I may not get oohs and aahs over his "extravagance and thoughtfulness" from onlookers, but is that what getting a gift is all about? What others think? Those gifts were designed with me in mind. Truthfully, I can't say that upon opening those gifts on Christmas morning, I was thrilled beyond measure. (What about tickets to some remote island, or a new Tesla, or a personal chef? Wouldn't those things be fabulous?) I had to trust Scott's love for me and use those gifts regularly to know just how fabulous they were.   

Here's the part where the second conversation brought this all together. God gives gifts, too. And they're not all fabulous. Some of the gifts He's given me would not have been on my Christmas list ever!, but they were exactly what I needed. When I said "I loved my dog?" Losing our Moosey was one of the biggest heartbreaks that made way for one of the greatest joys. Had he remained, we never would have been able to fulfill what has been our calling for the last seventeen months. My old truck? As much as anyone could love a piece of American machinery, I did. And, while it had seating I could be using right now, my current vehicle has a story I have told others time and time again as I bragged about what God has done. And the young man I met the night the Pig Mobile said "goodbye," will always have someone praying for him. And our current vehicle does not have the repair costs my older vehicle had. What a gift, right?!

God has allowed and given trials and pain. In the book of Job, God not only allowed Satan to mess with His beloved Job, but in the exciting conclusion, it says Job's friends comforted him for all the trouble "the Lord had brought upon him." It seems God allowed it, God endorsed it, and God gave, at least, some of it. The message of the cross is even clearer: God sent His Son to die! If God would give His Son to a brutal death, what makes us think He would never give us gifts that cause us to grieve or struggle? God authored the murder of His Son for the greater good! A tough pill to swallow, when we think He could arrange and administer "bad gifts" in our lives that a greater purpose might be served. What kind of message does that send? Well, if our focus is on us, it's understandable why we'd get the wrong message. God hates me. God is cruel and judgmental. But when we receive God's gifts, bearing in mind two things -- that He loves us immeasurably and most assuredly, and He is working all things out for our good -- we can (maybe with time and some spiritual growth) see the goodness in whatever He gives. Like the remote start that kept my tuchus warm for many years after; or the stand mixer that has churned out loaf after loaf of deliciousness with children and grandchildren at my side, and brought enjoyment to our friends; or the dog collar that brought a smile to my face each time I stretched my fingers under it to stroke my boy's warm, soft fur; or the Peloton wife, who beams as she proclaims, "A year ago, I didn't realize how much this would change me. Thank you," -- we can always know that whatever comes to us has passed through the hands of One who loves us and calls us to be the best version of His people. That is a fabulous gift.