Before You Heal Someone, Ask This Question

Hey team. All right, so here we are. It’s another beautiful day. I’m excited about what’s going on—summer is coming, and school’s going to be out soon. My boys are excited. Hard to believe Jonathan’s going to be in the sixth grade next year.

I had this quote that came across my desk. I saw it and I was like, “Wow, that’s pretty good.” It reminded me of a couple things, and one of those I just wanted to unpack and give you a little bit of behind-the-scenes information.

It said, “Before you heal someone, ask them if they’re willing to give up what made them sick.”

That’s kind of helpful advice. Are you willing to give up what’s making you unwell?

I had a friend who’s in law enforcement. He got shot in the hand. It ended up destroying the middle knuckle in his right hand, way back here, which meant that the middle finger wouldn’t work. A neurosurgeon came into his hospital room a few hours after it had taken place and said, “Hey, I think I can fix all this. You could end up with probably a pretty good amount of grip left and everything. But in order to do that, I’m going to need to know if you can quit chewing tobacco.”

He had seen on the intake form that my friend chewed tobacco, and told him, “You’re going to have to be able to quit chewing because that’s going to mess up your recovery and healing. Before I go into the process—cutting off your toe, using the bones and tendons to graft into your hand—I need to know. Because it won’t work. It won’t last. It would just be a waste of time, and we’d be right back to where we started.”

Now, for my friend, that ended up working. He quit chewing tobacco. All those things happened.

How many times have you gone into a situation and maybe had somebody offer you advice—and it might have been sound advice—but you weren’t willing to hear it? Or maybe you offered advice. Maybe you’ve been in that situation. You saw a friend, saw something going on in their lives, and you went to offer them advice, but you didn’t realize they weren’t willing to help themselves.

I’ve seen this in financial situations. Somebody comes to you and asks for money. You gladly give them the money to help them out of their situation, only to find out that they’re in a deeper or bigger situation of the same caliber—because they weren’t willing to stop doing what got them into the trap in the first place.

This is not me telling you not to help people. It’s just that you need to make sure, when you’re helping someone, that they really want to be helped—and that they want to solve their long-term issue. Are they willing to quit doing the things that get them there?

I saw a video one time of a sheep. A farmer helps pull it out of a ditch, and the sheep darts around, runs, and jumps back into the ditch. If you’re going to keep jumping back into the pit—the problem that got you there—what good does it do to help you out? Why get yourself all covered in mud? Why deal with all those things?

And I know that sometimes it’s because we care. It’s because we love. It’s because we really want to help.

But are we helping in those situations?

Helping a person out—it’s one thing to help somebody for a minute, with a small thing. But if they have a repeating pattern of those issues, what then are you truly doing? Are you helping a person out of their problem, or are you enabling them—entitling them—to stay in the problem because you’ll always be there to help them back out?

“Before you heal someone, ask them if they’re willing to give up what made them sick.” Something to think about on this beautiful day and this beautiful month.

God bless you. Have a wonderful week. Talk to you next week. Bye. See you.