Real Help Is Often Inconvenient

Read these passages first: | 2 Samuel 15:13-21 | Ruth 1:1-17

When committing to help someone in need, if your purpose is to serve them in their time of need, there is a good chance you’ll be inconvenienced.

Shallow, surface-level help, which is most common in the world we live in today, is often self-serving.

One will:

- donate old clothes to the less fortunate

- give a few dollars to a homeless person

- drop a few dimes on the court

- send someone an encouraging text when they are going through it.

While that satisfies our craving to feel like a good person and provides good optics if we are able to maybe capture it on camera so we can be validated by the world around us while not being inconvenienced, I don’t believe that is real help done with a servant’s heart.

Collectively, you all know what real help is. My challenge, and I believe God’s challenge for you is to carry that same energy as it relates to real help that you have on the court, (you know the help that allows you to win a championship) into the world around you.

Your coach is not the only coach who leads you to buy into providing one another with committed help to win big. Your eternal Coach, God, is calling you (daily) to provide real, committed help (with a servant’s heart) in order for the world around you to win big as well.

As you all know, in hoops, the more effort you can preserve on defense when your man doesn’t have the ball, the more legs and “pop” you will have on offense for opportunities to score. With that said, to be of (real) help to your teammates when they are overwhelmed by the opponent, it requires you to inconvenience yourself and make an extraordinary effort to support them.

A committed (real) helper will urgently help in the time of need, with no regard for preserving energy so they can get buckets on the other end because being a ride or die for their teammate is what matters most.

On the other hand, a teammate that is only willing to help when it’s convenient will not rotate over and make the effort needed when his teammate needs it because if he does, he may be winded on the offensive end, and that may affect his ability to score.

I say all that to say that there’s no secret to your success in basketball; successful teams are made up of committed and real helpers that are more than willing to inconvenience themselves and sacrifice looking good individually for the sake of collective success.

Just as you all are the example of what real help is in the context of team defense, Ruth and Ittai were during Biblical days.

Ittai in 2 Samuel barely knew King David, yet he provided real help, even if it meant losing his life. Much the same, Ruth sacrificed an easier path to individual happiness to ride or die, literally for her mother-in-law, Naomi. Instead of abandoning Naomi to grieve by herself, she told her, “Wherever you go, I’m going… Wherever you die, I will die.” Like I said, literally she was a ride or die.

Wrapping up, I am expecting all of us to, in life because of our commitment to our Coach, to rotate over and routinely make the winning effort when our friends, siblings, strangers in our community, teammates, or for anyone else who is overwhelmed and overmatched, even if it inconveniences us.

📖 Philippians 2:3-4 New Living Translation - Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

📖 Philippians 2:3-4 - MSG - 1-4 If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

📖 Galatians 6:2-3 - The Message -1-3 Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.