How much can you help someone

for our candid conversation today, there are so many people in the world who really need help and as christians and especially um as people who love other people, we want to do everything that we can to help. But my question is this when do we get to the point where we can understand we’ve done all we can do and and they’re not being helped and it’s also bad for us. So how much can you help someone until you know, this time has come to an end perhaps? Well, first of all, you cannot help someone that doesn’t want to be helped. So that’s the beginning. That’s the main statement if somebody can say they want help, but a lot of times what they want is rescue. Mhm. They don’t really one or even understand that they if they really want to help, they’re gonna have a part right now, there’s gonna be something they’re gonna need to do. Yeah, not to interrupt you, but I just want to make it clear for everyone who’s listening, we’re not talking about, you know, outreach programs or social program. We’re talking about interpersonal relationships when people, when it comes to people who have addictions, people who have, you know, whatever they have issues in their life and their life is just a mess because yeah, of the way they’re they’re living and a friend or a family member who wants to help that we’re trying to help. Yeah. And uh you can’t I mean I had a personal experience with this with my brother who was had been alcoholic and addicted to drugs for a number of years and he said he wanted to get his life straightened out and so we we let him live with us and and he as long as you told him what to do all the time and made sure he did it, he would do it, but as soon as he was on his own he would go right back to his old ways again. And first of all I want to say that’s something that I noticed in the bible that I thought was very interesting was jesus never went to people saying let me help you never can I help you? I can’t, it was always he helped those who came to him when people came to him and asked for help, he always helped them, but I can’t find any place where he went, you know saying let me help you know, obviously he wanted to help everybody. I don’t mean he didn’t want to help you with a compassionate heart, he did, but but everything he could and like he said how often I would have brought you to myself and you would not you know, which is we were always gonna wanna help everybody. But I think there’s a key there that you really can’t help somebody who doesn’t want help because some of the things that people need help with lifestyle changes alcoholism, addiction, eating disorders, you know, anger management issues, things like that. It’s like I mean I know just from what I went through the problems I had from being sexually abused is you have to really want to change to change because your emotions are involved. There’s there’s bad habits you have from that have been around for a long time and it’s not, it’s not an easy thing and it’s not something that you get over quickly and I don’t even think it’s something that you do without having any pain or discomfort, you know? And so, um I think for the person trying to help somebody, if you can learn how to understand grace, like for four years we tried to help my brother and it was fine, you know, we enjoyed it, we helped him, we spent money, we took him places with us. I mean, but then it was just like I knew it was over, it was like now it’s time to see him stand on his own two ft and be responsible for his own life and when God gives you grace to do something, there’s an ease on it. It’s like, it’s like if something is well oiled, you know, and the holy spirit is the spirit of Grace. And so when, when God is asking you to do something, there’s an there’s an ease, there’s a desire about when you start having to make yourself do it and you you just don’t want to do it anymore and you’re tired of doing it, it’s just not working, it’s wearing you out and and you know, I finally realized that we had, we tried to help him for four years and if you’ve tried for years to help somebody and they’re still not helped, then there’s a problem on the other side and you actually can become an enabler by rescuing people every time they get in trouble instead of letting them experience the consequences of their own behavior. Sometimes that’s the therefore doing them damage. You’re doing them damage. Like my mother was very much an enabler with my brother, you know, because she would give him her pain pills and she would, she she always babied him and rescued him. And you know, sometimes people have to have tough love. And there’s I know there’s probably lots of parents that or hearing what I’m saying, and it’s it’s a very difficult issue when you love someone and they’re hurting, it is very, very hard to not rescue them and to let them hurt. But I think all a person can do really is the best they can do. And if you come to the end of I just can’t do this anymore than you just can’t do it anymore. And it’s not like God can’t raise somebody else up. If he wants somebody else to do it, we do have to realize that we’re not the savior. We’re not the only one that can help people who need help. You can only you can really only do what you can do what you have the grace for. So let me ask you this because this is such a difficult topic for for people who whose hearts are broken, right? Who I love so much and and would do anything to change the circumstances. Does there does there come a time like you said that you have to make that decision for what’s best for that person rather than even what might be best for you in the moment? Because there’s a lot of guilt that comes with that, I would think, and I think seeing that is very important to be honest, and I can tell you as a mother, it’s much easier for me to rescue my Children than it is to let them go through something. I mean, it’s like I would rather go through it myself than to watch them go through it and uh, maybe moms have Greater problem with than dads do. I don’t know, it’s not always the case, but I get it. It’s hard and I absolutely 100% believe that that’s what tough love is. It’s loving somebody enough to not rescue them? Because you finally come to the point where you realize that even though you keep trying to it’s not working. So what is the difference then between that point that you get to where you’re you’re essentially changing what you’ve been doing because it’s not working. Um and giving up. So do you ever give up on somebody? No, no. You continue to pray for people. You continue to to have hope. You continue to love them, you know, and I think if you come to that point with somebody and they’re accustomed to you rescuing them are always being there for them. You you need to have a conversation and you need to tell them, you know, I want you to know that it may not feel like it to you, but I’m doing this for your benefit and I’ve been doing thus and so and thus and so for however long of a period of time and it’s just not working, nothing’s changing. And Uh huh. I don’t know exactly what you’re going through. I don’t know how hard things are for you. I’ll always love you. You know, I’ll be here for you as much as I can, but I cannot keep letting you ruin my life with your bad decisions because that’s not helping them. It’s not that’s not changing anything that’s just being codependent on them. It’s like codependency is when you have a problem and my joy is dependent on, you know what you do and so it any any day you can make me unhappy. All you have to do is do the thing I don’t want you to do anymore. And it’s it’s it’s a hard situation, you know, and I’m not gonna say that making that decision is gonna ease your pain, but you’re absolutely right. You you do it for them not to them and there are many examples in the bible really, where, where this is the way that God loves us and helps us, right? Um Jesus said, do you want to be healed? Do you want to be healed? And sometimes that answer isn’t isn’t yes, because they’re not ready yet? Well, and in the amplified bible, the scripture that you’re talking about, I think it’s in John five and and the amplified Bible says, are you really serious about getting well? And I love that. And that was a man who had had a condition For 38 years, a lingering disorder. The Bible calls it and he’d been laying by the pool of Bethesda waiting for a miracle and how many people do that, They lay around all their life waiting for a miracle. But yet During those 38 years, could he have done something? When jesus asked him, you know, how long have you been in this condition? The amplified says that he was trying to shock him into realization, You know, and maybe there’s somebody watching today that needs to be shocked into realization. How long have you had the same condition and how long have you gone around and around and around the same mountain waiting for a miracle. Maybe there’s something new need to do and the, the man in the amplified bible, the man said to jesus, well, every time I try because the deal was that once a year when an angel came and started the water’s up, Whoever got into the water first got healed and so all these sick people would lay around there for a year hoping to be the one that got the miracle. And he said to jesus every time I have nobody to help me and every time I try to get into the pool, somebody gets ahead of me and until someone else’s fault. Yeah, not to sound mean, but I mean really both of those were self pitying and blaming. It’s like, well I don’t have anybody to help me. And and uh anytime I try, somebody always gets ahead of me and you’ll usually find people that that need the kind of help. We’re talking about self pity is usually wrapped up in it somewhere. It’s usually like life is not fair and I you know, I haven’t been treated right and you don’t know how hard this is and you know God anoints us to do hard things and if he says that we can be free from something, then we can be free. But it’s not it’s not easy. Yeah, thank you Joyce because this is a hard conversation but I think it’s an important one to have because it doesn’t mean you’re taking your love away, you’re loving them in a different way and you know what I feel like I want to do, like I want to pray for people that are going to love that father, we come to you on behalf of all the people that are trying to help people that they love and they’re just not getting the breakthroughs that they need and they’re needing to make decisions about. Do they continue? Do they quit? What, what do they do? And I’m asking you, first of all to comfort them and I pray that you will lead them and guide them and show them what to do and when to do it and give them the courage to do what you ask them to do in jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you Joyce.