IronGuys Law Enforcement Ministries
"WORDS OF WISDOM"
By Police Chaplains
"Be Willing To Help"
By
Doni Daudel
Chaplain, Beaumont (CA) Police Department
1 Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself.
2 Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.
3 If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.
Galatians 6:1-3(NLT)
These verses remind us of several things. They remind us that we will all experience temptation and if we’re not careful we can be overcome and fall into sin. We’re encouraged to bear each others burdens and help someone that has been overtaken by sin. And we’re reminded to guard against being prideful, arrogant and judgmental toward someone who has fallen into sin. We should be quick to come alongside them, pick them up, help them understand why and how they fell, and get them back on the road to recovery and reconciliation with God.
Paul understood this principle well. He had done great harm to Christians and Jesus. Through his conversion, Paul experienced the immeasurable mercy, love, grace and forgiveness of God personally and spend every minute of the rest of his life preaching that message. My heart breaks today because the church has lost that passion. We’ve forgotten, become complacent or just don’t care about the unfathomable mercy, love, grace and forgiveness of God that we ourselves have received. We don’t preach it and we absolutely don’t live it. When someone falls into sin, we treat them like they’ve fallen into a grave and we try to bury them instead of picking them up and lovingly restoring them back into fellowship. Where would we be if that was how Christ treated us?
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..Romans 3:23” What do those words mean to you? They should remind us that we’re all capable of “face planting” into sin. If that happened, how would we like to be treated by the church and other believers? Would we want them to loving restore us into fellowship or would we want to be treated with unmerciful contempt and bury us like a dead carcass? We need to return to the foundations of lovingly and graciously helping each other up and out of the sin we’re all capable of committing. We never condone someone’s sin by ignoring it. We help those who have fallen by praying with them, equipping them to fight the good fight and be overcomer’s in Christ.