What If?

Have you ever ended up right back in a place you swore you’d never go? Why is it that prayers, advice, counseling, church, duty and promises fail to keep us out of the hells we hate? And if there’s a way out with no going back, what is it?




What if you knew that no person could help you, would that change your approach to healing? I’m not saying that friends can’t help each other, but I know that I have spent a lot of time trying to help people but they truly are not better because of me- and vice-versa. What if all of our “help” really just keeps someone down longer because they are counting on us for hope? Don’t get me wrong, I want to help people! But what if my help is really “enabling” or a small deposit into a God sized hole that is just big enough to temporarily disguise the hole in the first place?



I have heard the advice from a few friends that I try to “save” people. I have heard straight talk from one who says that in my attempt to go the distance in helping people, especially those whom I allow to turn to me instead of Christ, that I will end up a gross disappointment. I have also read in a great book that the only person who can pull a person out of a pit is Jesus, and that I can’t want or will or beg or manipulate them out of it.



So, I’m asking for your thoughts. Where do you draw the line? What is encouragement and what is enabling? What is speaking up for someone and what is speaking for them? What is caring and what is controlling? What is giving up and what is giving it to God?