Helping Goes Both Ways

"The biggest and dangerous mistake you can make in this life you live is that you spend your life giving to others to better them and never better yourself. It's the sad thing to wake up one morning and see that everyone has grown except you. Helping someone is never wrong but the question is have you helped yourself. This creates nothing but misery and regret resulting in bitterness..make it a goal to never sink lower trying to build someone else up"-Unknown

What an interesting quote right? I know what it seems like but honestly have you heard the saying "too much of anything can kill you"? Or how about this saying "everything must be done in moderation"? Christ made his life and his ministry (really one in the same) about helping humanity but at no point did he compromise his character or his standard of life. Sometimes when you want so badly to help others you get so caught in the help part that you forget about the purpose. Helping them simply means your aiding them and not hindering them. When you reach the point when you have traded places...and you are where they were and they are now where you were there is a problem. At no point where you to downgrade to help they rather the idea was for them to raise themselves up to where you are. That is how you elevate them, your not helping them when you take on their characteristics in order to "relate" to them. The true mark of the Christian believer is the model that Christ set. Christ met  Mary Magdalene after she had been caught in the act of fornication, but surely he didn't engage in the act with her did he? John 8:1-11 "¹But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ²At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. ³The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group⁴and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. ⁵In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" ⁶They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

   But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. ⁷When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."⁸Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
 ⁹At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. ¹⁰Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
 ¹¹"No one, sir," she said.
      "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin." The premise is he overlooked her sin and then even helped her out and sent her on her way encouraging to repent from sin. I can say that my testimony is this...I have spent most of my young adult life helping or trying to help people desiring for people to know Christ in a very real way. I realized that I had exerted so much energy into seeing people with God that I start slacking, not reading, not praying, as much because I was too busy trying to give them advice. The most effective part of Christ ministry was that he was living out his ministry. Helping ALWAYS GOES BOTH WAYS. The inability to lead by example enables a position when you being to slack in your walk. Funny thing is when your focus became about helping people for gain because honestly that's what it is about, you wanted them to say "look how much you have done for me" the whole time they were learning the lessons of the bible. When Peter saw the wind he got scared and begin to sink.  Not only was his faith lingering but his focus was on the wrong thing. When you get distracted by doing a good for the wrong reasons your not helping yourself. God is using you even still to bless them. You end up frustrated and questioning whats going on with you? The idea is everything you do is for God. The minute you allow yourself to be led away from God even when doing his work you need to stop and readjust your focus. If the only way someone will listen to you is if you meet them at the club, smoke with them, go to compromising places then they don't really want the help. You don't want to wake up one day and see your growth come to a halt, because the reality is if your not careful everyone your helping may end up in heaven as you head straight to hell. My brother told me all the time and still does "the road to hell was paved with good intentions". I currently was convicted by this and am now in a position where I have to steal away from people to study, and pray because I noticed I was not in the right mind or living as I used to. It is truly to possible to be out of fellowship with God even when you look like (outward) you aren't. 1 Samuel 16:7 simply says this "But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, ^(A)