{"id":383,"date":"2018-12-05T09:46:57","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T17:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/migrate.bettersermons.org\/?p=383"},"modified":"2020-06-01T11:39:32","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T18:39:32","slug":"helping-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/helping-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Helping Others"},"content":{"rendered":"
Helping Others<\/span><\/div>\n

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“Working for justice, peace, and dignity (by fighting oppression, poverty and corruption) is just as certainly a spiritual discipline as are prayer and fasting. Perhaps more.”<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

–Chris Blake<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Jesus made it clear that we are not to spend our time building\u00a0a hypothetical faith\u00a0and think that by doing so we have somehow “practiced” religion. The parable of the sheep and the goats forcefully illustrates the mandate for\u00a0Christ’s followers to be personally involved in helping others.<\/p>\n

Question:<\/b>\u00a0Should we do it even if our motives are selfish?<\/p>\n

Do we\u00a0help others\u00a0because\u00a0Jesus said to, or because we are motivated to by His love? There is a sense in which it doesn’t matter because it’s not about us, but about the people out there and around us who need our help. It does matter in that our service will be more caring and focused when it springs from a heart that is centered in Christ.<\/p>\n

If the feelings aren’t there,\u00a0try acting\u00a0on the principle that “people need help, and\u00a0I have something to offer.” You cannot manufacture feelings of compassion. Just help others because you can, and ask God to give you a heart of compassion.
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\nComments by Rich DuBose.\u00a0BetterSermons \u00a9 2009. All rights reserved. Use of this material is subject tousage guidelines<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0View main index<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Helping Others “Working for justice, peace, and dignity (by fighting oppression, poverty and corruption) is just as certainly a spiritual discipline as are prayer and fasting. Perhaps more.” –Chris Blake …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}