You can't help everyone

They say that unity is strength and division is weakness according to the famous Swahili proverb. When we come together great things happen because no great man has ever reached the top alone. Life has not been designed to be done solo. It all began in the Bible when God said it clear in the first book that it is not good for man to be alone. It’s selfish to only have yourself in every season of your life. There’s more power and more wins when people unite in agreement and make a team purposed for a common vision because two are better than one, and they cannot walk together unless they agree.

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

The spirit and nature of teamwork impact people in a way they live for a purpose greater than themselves and for the good of everyone and the things around them. I call them world changers. This often intrigues most successful people to the obligation of giving back to the people behind them or to the ones who are not yet successful, because they believe service to humanity is service to God.

Life is progressive and it’s always an error when we don’t make changes. We need to rise, and the prerequisite of rising higher is by lifting others. What you do for yourself dies with you but what you do for others lives on and it’s immortal, but, sometimes such moves don’t produce the intended results. Question, what could be the reason? Answer, the power of choice.

The power of choice is one of the most powerful tools a human possesses. As the late Dr. Myles Munroe puts it, “God didn’t create a rich person or a poor person, God created a person, some chose to be rich while some chose to be poor.”  Meaning that to be rich or to be poor is always a matter of choice. You become what you choose to be and as a man thinks so is he. You become what you think you are. You become what you think you can. Thoughts are controlled by choices. You choose what to think. You choose what to feed your mind with, you choose what to associate yourself with. Life is all about choices.

They say that you are who you surround yourself with, well that’s true but it could be more true only if you choose to. This means that it’s possible to be surrounded by millionaires but fail to become one or even get close. You can have all the resources around to make you great but fail to become one, simply because of the power of choices.

Choice and motive work the same way. You can choose to be great but your motive is for selfish gains. This can’t work, it’s like doing the right thing for the wrong reason. This also applies to helping people, you can choose to help someone but if your motive is for the wrong reasons, disappointment is inevitable.

Life is full of infinite possibilities with people who are equal but disparate in making choices. People are at different levels in life doing different stuff in different places. It reaches a point in life when we as human beings feel obligated to help others. It’s a conviction that most people feel at a certain level in life or when they achieve something great. This conviction often puts us on a mission of trying to or finding ways on how we can at least give back. But the most disappointing fact is that you can’t help everyone even the ones you think deserve to.

Surprisingly, some folks are comfortable with being cowards or living a mediocre life. On the other hand, some are comfortable with being sick or living with their untapped potential and don’t see a problem with that. Trying to help will either drain you or make you their kind or even worse than that not to mention time wastage and misplaced priorities.

To sum up, we need to realize the fact that not every gifted person wants to make the most out of their gift. Not every poor person wants to be rich, not every average person wants to rise beyond that level, and not every sick person wants to be healed, some want to die. It’s like saving someone who’s committing suicide. Before Jesus performed a miracle, He used to ask questions like, “Do you want to be made well? Do you want to see? The main reason was to let the person exercise the power of choice. You cannot make a lame to walk without asking him if he wants to, because you assume he wants to. Assumption is the root of most of the disappointments when helping people.

Discernment and letting people exercise the liberty of choice is key to helping people.  Some people are not ready or don’t deserve to be helped. When the student is ready the teacher appears. When the time is right the Lord will make it happen. Life is in seasons. There’s a time for everything under the sun. There’s a time to help people and there’s a time to let them figure out if they need to be helped. Master the timing in every season before you take action. What looks like a problem to you doesn’t mean it’s a problem to the bearer. Solving someone’s problem who doesn’t see it as a problem will create a problem that never existed.