Imagine hiking up a mountain and there are a few people climbing behind you. Your destination is the top of the mountain. As you’re climbing up that mountain, you see that someone has slipped. Do you try to climb down and help the person that is about to fall, or do you keep climbing upward? After all, you’re trying to reach the top of the mountain yourself. You’re at a good spot where you’re at. You’re comfortable and you don’t want to go back down. I think sometimes we can get caught up in ourselves while we are in the church. It’s like we have been saved for so long and we’re comfortable in the four walls of the church that we forget that there are people around us that need our help.

We come to church every Sunday and we sit in comfortable seats and for the most part we are pretty satisfied with our lives. Yes, we have bumps in the road, but overall life seems comfortable to us. But, what about that person in your family, that friend, or that co-worker, or even a stranger that is struggling with life? Maybe they backslid and don’t know how to find their way back to the church house. Are you going to climb back down the mountain and encourage them, pray with them, and help them? Or are you going to stay where you are and just keep moving forward with your own journey. We should never get to a place that we are so comfortable in our own journey that we forget about those around us that are struggling with their own personal demons. We should try to help them. 

Imagine being trapped in a room full of people and somehow you manage to find a way out. Are you going to go back and help those that are still trapped or are you going to just leave them there to die and not come back? Afterall, you got out. I think sometimes we do that. We leave people in their sins and expect them to find a way out on their own. We expect them to figure out how to come to church and to figure out how to get it together. Some of the things that people are struggling with are rooted so deep that just telling them to come to church won’t help. 

We were there at one point. We needed someone to help lift us up and encourage us and we should do the same for others. I think about movies that I’ve seen with soldiers. If there is an explosion and one solider gets knocked down, you’ll see another solider who was previously out of the line of fire run back into the line for fire to help that solider that is wounded or down. You will see that solider carry the other solider on their shoulders and run out of the danger zone. We as believers need to make sure we are helping those around us get out of the danger zone. Also, I do believe that there are times that we’ve done everything that we could do. That is when you have to take your hands off the situation and give it to God. Allow God to work on that person and help them. Remember it is also not our job to judge what others are struggling with. It is so important to remember that number one you still don’t have it all together and that there was a time that you yourself struggled and needed someone else’s help to get you through your dark times.