“When it is in your power, don’t withhold good from the one to whom it belongs. Don’t say to your neighbor, ‘Go away! Come back later. I’ll give it tomorrow’—when it is there with you.”
‭‭(Proverbs‬ ‭3‬:‭27‬-‭28‬ ‭CSB‬‬ – Read the chapter)

You’ve almost certainly had this experience before: you are driving down the road or sitting in traffic, and you see it. A person sitting out standing on the side of the road looking rough and holding a sign asking for help. Perhaps you have been approached by someone on the street asking for money. What do you do? Knowing how to help a neighbor in need is hard. But one thing that is clear in the Scriptures is that we are supposed to help. Let’s talk about it.

I read an article a few weeks ago about the ongoing debate between the two major approaches to combating homelessness. One model—and the dominant model over the last 35 years—argues that getting them housed before anything else and not attaching any real strings to that housing is the way to go. The older model—which is making a comeback thanks to support from the Trump administration along with the increasingly obvious failures of the first—argues that unless and until you deal with the reason for the homelessness in the first place, housing by itself won’t solve the problem.

For instance, if addiction is the issue, then the person needs help dealing with that first or housing isn’t going to be able to be maintained. Of course, dealing with addiction is hard and complicated and takes a willingness on the part of the addict to own up to the addiction and be willing to get rid of it in the first place. All of that takes time. And money. Lots of money. And that doesn’t even begin to compare with tackling mental illness if that is the culprit (and in a significant number of cases, it is). Helping in ways that are ultimately helpful is hard.

Navigating the world of government policy is far more difficult than most politicians make it seem. They often over-promise, and even more often wildly under-deliver, and we stay stuck in the same, worsening issues that have long plagued us. What can be equally as difficult, but on a scale we can actually imagine, though, is when a friend or neighbor is in need. The best help is almost always the most personal help.

Now, I said something a second ago that was more important than it seemed in the moment. When we are thinking about giving help to our neighbors (and i’m defining that word like Jesus does as the people who are living around us generally, not specifically the ones who happen to live next door), one of the most important principles we have to keep in mind is that our help needs to be helpful.

To get a better sense of what I mean by that, think about it like this: Have you ever tried to do something really complicated or which required a lot of careful focus and had a toddler decide that he really wants to help you with it? That little one is absolutely sincere and means well, but his help is almost assuredly not helpful in that moment. It’s help that is perhaps even actively taking away from the goal you are trying to achieve.

Help that is manipulative is not helpful. Help that is given because we are convinced we know better than the one we are helping even though we haven’t actually done our homework about the situation to know for sure what the best ways to help are isn’t helpful. To put that more simply, arrogant help is not helpful. Help that allows for the root causes of the issues to remain firmly in place, making certain that the problem the one we are helping is facing is going to just keep coming back isn’t helpful. Help that is merely enabling is not helpful. The best help may not be exactly what the person wants, but it is personal, it is dignifying and empowering, and it is rooted in godly wisdom and care.

Giving this kind of help requires a relationship. It can’t be done very well from afar. It necessitates learning about the other person’s situation to a sufficient degree that we can see both how they got into that situation in the first place as well as how they can potentially get out of it if they are willing to do the necessary work to achieve that end. It often requires a long-term investment on our part. It isn’t often very complicated, but it will take more than just money.

Is all of this going to be inconvenient? Very likely. Getting involved in someone else’s issues is by no means an easy thing to do. We’ve all got plenty of our own issues to sort through without getting ourselves all bogged down in someone else’s quagmire. And, unless we are called to it, this probably isn’t going to be a regular, ongoing thing in most of our lives. It may be that we can’t handle more than one in-depth situation at a time, and that’s okay. But if God has positioned you to be able to do good for another person like this, it’s probably because He wants you to do that good for them. “When it is in your power, don’t withhold good from the one to whom it belongs.” If you can do it, you need to consider carefully and prayerfully whether you ought to be doing it.

If someone comes asking for help and you have it, that’s another good sign that God has positioned you to be His hands and feet in that person’s life in the moment. “Don’t say to your neighbor, ‘Go away! Come back later. I’ll give it tomorrow’—when it is there with you.” In that moment you are either being selfish or dishonest. That kind of an attitude doesn’t honor God.

That said, allow me to offer a small caveat. If you are dealing with someone who is a serial abuser of your help, it is okay to put healthy boundaries in place. Remember: help can and should be helpful, and helpful help is not enabling help. If someone is coming to you looking for you to simply enable their ability to continue making the sinful choices that have resulted in their being in the situation they are in, you don’t have to do that. In fact, you shouldn’t do that. It could be that they need more help tackling an addiction than you are equipped to give, and you need to direct them to the care of a ministry or organization that is so equipped.

As the pastor of a church, we occasionally get calls from people looking for help, although we don’t get nearly as many as we once did. Early in my ministry, at my former church, we handled these on a case-by-case basis. I had a member then who was a retired police officer with a deep faith and a great compassion. He would investigate each case and decide whether or not the help we were going to give was going to be helpful or merely enabling, and we would make a decision from there. This is because there wasn’t any kind of a larger compassion ministry in our area to whom we could refer folks for more comprehensive help.

Where I am serving now, we have a fantastic ministry that is practically in our backyard with whom we have a terrific relationship. Their director is a good friend and has both incredible compassion, but also great wisdom in offering help in ways that are helpful. We partner with them, and any aid calls we get, I direct their way because I know they will not only receive the help they need, but they will receive it with the intentional love of Christ and in ways that are designed and intended to be empowering. Now, not everyone wants this kind of help. Some folks just want to be enabled. They’re not a big fan of this and have sometimes let me know that. But Gospel help both shows the compassion of Christ and also calls and enables people to leave their sins behind to make better choices than the ones that have landed them in their current situation. Both of those are necessary.

Gospel help isn’t always easy to give, but it truly lifts up those who are fallen, and it glorifies God. This should always be our aim.