When Helping Hurts : A Divine Referral In Intervention

There’s a sinking feeling when you had all the best intentions in helping someone who refuses to meet you halfway in helping themselves. Our intentions to help loved ones, family members, and friends can fall on deaf ears even when there’s a desperate need for intervention. We find over time when we take on the Savior role in other people’s lives that the relationship becomes strained, we become frustrated through countless let downs in disappointment, our resources depleted, and our love for them in seeing the downward spiral has us an emotional wreck. There will be times that we may feel like we’re going in circles in helping others who refuse to meet us halfway, but know we serve a mighty God that can handle helping us all ensuring that he gets the glory for deliverance in the situation at hand.

Isaiah 43:11

I, I am the Lord,
    and besides me there is no savior.

Close To Home

There’s an old phrase that comes to mind that I would hear my Grandfather whisper from observation of witnessing a caring soul taking on a role that they never should of played in someone’s life saying ,” You can’t help everyone.” The truth is many of us ( especially sensitive souls like myself) take it personal when we see someone hurting, in need of help, and our efforts fall short. It literally hurts me to see others hurt especially if I know they have the protentional to do better than their current circumstance. The pain of wasted efforts hurt deeper when it’s a family member. I watched helpless as a child seeing my mother wrestle in trying to help my father who battled drug addiction to no avail with his later tragic end. I’m very close to a young relative who is heading on a dark path that despite all my interventions, solicited mentor attempts that fail, invites to church service, bail outs, and school pop- ins to work with their teachers still chooses to act in detrimental ways in being guided by the wrong peers. Many of us had a friend that one second reaches out for what seems like help, but their later actions show they were merely asking for a deflection from their life’s woes in conversation to vent. Whew, it’s getting real right! As much as we want to help some people it seems as though in our attempts we find ourselves going in circles later depleted in energy. We put on our super hero capes in caring sincerity coming to the rescue to save those we feel are in dire need feeling a load of guilt if we simply let go in letting God take over our prayers for our lost loved one.

Know Your Place

I know the torcher in feeling like you failed if you walk away from wanting to help someone who refuses to meet you a quarter of the way. I learned in my own tears that sometimes helping hurts; it hurts because instead of leading others to our Savior we take on the role of being the Savior in their lives. Our time, resources, and energy are limited, but the Father we serve doesn’t have those limitation to aid us in need. There is only one who saves, whose name is Jesus, he is our Savior who died for our sins. Christ isn’t telling us to give up on those lost loved ones, but he is asking us to trust him through our faith in continuous prayers to allow him to take over in deliverance of those we love who are struggling with battles to are to large for us to take on. Our human efforts may fall short in helping others, but his love never fails for all of us in providing a breakthrough in times of need. Jesus is the divine referral of intervention that surpasses all human efforts in times of rescue.

Ephesians 2: 8-9

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast.