I Am The One Who Helps

You are the one people call.

The funeral. The move. The hospital run. The friend whose marriage went. You have been in more crises than anybody you know and you have been useful in every one of them.

And there is nobody you could call about this.

Not because people would refuse. Because there is no version of you in anybody's head that needs calling about. You have spent twenty years building a position in every relationship you have, and the position is helper, and the position does not have a door on the other side.

I want to say what that has cost, because I do not think anybody ever has.

It has cost you the ability to be known. Not liked, not appreciated, not thanked. Known. Because a person who is only ever on one side of a relationship is only ever half in it.

And I say that as somebody who is not going to tell you to stop helping, because helping is not a flaw and I am not going to treat it as one.

It is more blessed to give

There is a sentence Paul quotes from Jesus that appears nowhere in the Gospels.

I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. (Acts 20:35, King James Version)

More blessed to give than to receive.

Now that verse is usually read at people to get them to give more, and I want to read it the other way round for a minute, because there is something in it that gets missed.

It says giving is more blessed. It does not say receiving is unblessed. It puts both in the sentence, and it compares them, and a comparison requires two real things. If receiving were worthless there would be nothing to compare.

You have been holding the better half of every friendship you have, and no comparison in that verse has ever once required one side to be worthless. Acts 20:35 puts both giving and receiving inside a single blessed sentence, and the Spirit of God is the one who opens a category that has been shut for twenty years.

So receiving is blessed. Less, according to the verse, but blessed. And it is a category that exists, which is more than can be said for the arrangement of the last twenty years, where it does not exist at all.

And there is something else. If giving is the more blessed thing, then every refusal to receive keeps the more blessed thing away from somebody else. It holds the better half and hands nobody the worse one.

You are not required to stay on one side of this, and Acts 20:35 has never once described receiving as something outside the blessing. It is written as a comparison between two real things, and the Holy Spirit is the one who opens a category in a person's life that has been closed for twenty years.

You have been keeping the more blessed thing for yourself every single time you said you were fine. The word puts giving and receiving in one sentence, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a helper stand on the other side without losing who they are.

Being helped once does not change your position

Now the fear, and it is real and I want to name it rather than talk past it.

If you tell somebody, you stop being the strong one. And a great many things in your life are held together by you being the strong one, including some things that would genuinely fall over.

I do not think that is true and here is why. Position is built over years and is not undone by one message. Twenty years of being the person people call does not get deleted by one text saying the house is bad, any more than one favor deletes a friendship. A house is a record of what a hard stretch cost, and it is not a verdict on the woman living in it.

What it does do is make you a whole person to one other human being. Which is not the same as becoming somebody who needs looking after.

You were never going to lose your place by telling one person a true thing, and there has never once been a friendship that was undone by somebody in it being real. Acts 20:35 keeps both giving and receiving in one life, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a person's position steady while they say something honest.

So tonight is one message and it asks for nothing.

You are permitted to be on the receiving side of one sentence, and one sentence has never once changed who you are to anybody. It is written that both are blessed and only compared, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a helper tells somebody the truth.

Text one person

So here is the whole of what I am asking.

You are standing on the other side tonight, and one honest message has never once cost anybody the place they built over twenty years. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds a person's position steady while they say something true, and it is written that both the giving and the receiving belong in one life.

Pick one person. Preferably somebody who has been helped by you, because that person has been waiting years for a way to give something back and has never once been given one.

Send them: the house is bad and I am working on it.

Do not add the words I am fine. Do not add the words I do not need anything. Those clauses are the position reasserting itself, and they cancel the message.

Then put the phone down and clean nothing.

You are able to send one honest sentence tonight, and sending it has never once required you to ask for help. Acts 20:35 puts both sides in one life, and the Spirit of God is present in a message from somebody who has never sent one like it.