Articles
“Offering and Accepting Help”
By Don Case
My loving wife was a wonderful mother, active Christian, artist, and PTA president. At the age of 29 she was misdiagnosed as having arthritis (it was actually bone cancer). For nine months her bones were deteriorating and fracturing resulting in the worst pain her doctor had seen in any of his patients. With all of this going on, I realized that I faced tremendous difficulties being a single father of a six and nine year old daughters. During that difficult time, I received many offers of help but I believed that with God's help alone I could meet the challenges. Consequently, I routinely declined the many kind offers of brethren.
A friend told me that by declining offers of help I was interfering in God's plan and denying my fellow Christians the blessings of helping. After careful consideration I came to the conclusion that Christians want, need, and benefit from helping others. I believe that God was using His servants and my fellow brethren to help me and I was refusing it, not allowing His perfect plan to work. As Christians we all need help and need to help others. Throughout our lives we each will have times when assistance is beneficial and times when we can offer others love and support. We all have illnesses, lose those that we love, have issues related to our employment, and many other difficult situations. As Christians we realize we have our church family for loving support. Every time we are able to help someone we receive are richly blessed and feel a great sense of satisfaction. This ought not be a surprise as this is the way God has made us!
ASK YOURSELF... WHEN I HELP SOMEONE IN NEED, WHO BENEFITS?
