How to Help Hurting Friends BY William Boekestein for Core Christianity
I was once hiking in Colorado with a friend and two of my kids. Way past dark we saw a single faint light meandering down the mountain toward our basecamp at 12,000 feet. It turned out to be a cell phone held by a young woman who had been hiking alone. She had run out of daylight, lost track of the trail, and took several bad falls. Her body was sore and dirty. Her hands were bloody. Her face was tear-stained. She was traumatized and disoriented. If she hadn’t found us and stayed with us for the night, what might have happened?
Hear Ecclesiastes: If two people “fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!” (4:10). God commands us, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). In fact, “Helping fellow believers carry the weight of their worldly troubles is one of the chief practical duties that ought to consume every Christian.”[i] In the war for wellness, friends are a front-line defense.
So how can we be the friends who help keep others from wandering off the trail? How can we comfort the bruised and battered? How can we help bear the pack of the weak?
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We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
See the Struggles of Others
“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:4). Paul’s word for “look” is powerful: It means to contemplate, fix one’s eyes upon, direct one’s attention to. The Bible uses this metaphor to describe God’s help of his children: “The Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter” (2 Kings 14:26). God calls us to mirror him by noticing what others are going through. To be a helper you have to be a seer.
Sometimes the struggles of other believers are obvious. But because people hide their hurts and mask their pain, we might have to look hard for signs of our friend’s struggles. Some of our friends might self-harm in an unhealthy attempt to honor invisible pain. Others may reveal their hurt through uncharacteristic apathy, lethargy, or cynicism. Sometimes hurt shows itself through misbehavior—God’s command of burden-bearing explicitly addresses “transgression” (Gal. 6:1). Christians should look out for any sign of guilt, worry, sorrow, anxiety, depression, physical handicap, unconfessed sin, and other burdens that we might help carry.
