In a way, help is both a blessing and a curse. There is a good-news, bad-news quality to help. The bad news comes when you find yourself in such a dire situation where you absolutely, desperately need help. You’re in trouble, and your own efforts are not enough to save you. When help is what you get, that’s very good news, indeed.

Help is a three-step process:

1) Recognizing help is needed.

Denise had reached the threshold of step one; she knew she needed help. Her anger, scathing sarcasm, and bitter outlook were poisoning her life. Things were totally out of control, and Denise realized she needed help.

During my first counseling session with Denise, she spent most of the time forcefully going over why she wasn’t the sort of person who really needed help. She reminded me of a house with a plethora of “No Trespassing,” “No Soliciting,” “Do Not Enter,” and “Warning: Guard Dog on Duty” signs posted everywhere. Intrigued, I could only hope that Denise would trust me enough to allow me past her carefully constructed barriers.

Denise wanted help but she only wanted it yelled across the safety of the sidewalk — not whispered from inside the locked chamber of her heart and emotions. I needed to get inside to be able to give her the help she really needed.

2) Finding help.

Cynthia went to numerous people to try to find help for her bulimia back before most people knew what it was. There were people — professionals — who told her to “just stop it.” There were people who told her what she really needed was a man in her life. There were people who just wanted to give her a pill to make the pain go away.

She didn’t give up. Determined, she kept searching and asking questions, evaluating the answers, and trying them on for size regarding her own issues.

As a Christian, I believe that God is the ultimate source of true help. I believe that God has the ability to truly know who you are. I believe that God has the capacity to provide just the help you need. Many of the people who come to The Center for help believe in God. They believe that God can work through us to provide them with a new direction for their lives and with a renewed understanding of all that is possible, including hope.

3) Accepting help.

Unlike so many of the false promises in this world, the help God gives is effective and tailored to our needs. The help He offers can also be different from what we asked for. Denise knew she needed help from me. The help she wanted was to have more control in her life. The help I offered was for her to have less.

This is the critical third step to help. Once the need for help is acknowledged and offered, you still must make a decision to accept the help. When you do, your life becomes linked with the person who offered the help. A relationship of trust is established. Help is offered, but you must reach out, take it, and incorporate it into your life. When you do, you are changed.

EVER-PRESENT HELP

Psalm 46:1 says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” There are so many ways God has promised to provide us with help. I don’t know about your life specifically, but I know, in general, I’m always in need of help. I guess that’s why I like the phrase “ever-present” in this verse. It means to me that God is always watching, always aware, always there for me.

Hebrews 13:6 sums it up pretty well:

“So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?’ ”

Source: Chapter 13, “God Provides Help” in Gotta Have It! by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc.

It is not possible to realize and experience true contentment if you are focused on never having enough. We need to discover our “never enoughs” so we can move them out of the way and contentment can flow into our lives.

The Bible is filled with examples of “never enough” behaviors. We’ll just look at one example right now, from Isaiah:

“They are dogs with mighty appetites; they never have enough. They are shepherds who lack understanding; they all turn to their own way, each seeks his own gain (56:11).”

This passage is directed to the elders of Israel who turned aside from how they were supposed to act — as protectors, leaders, and guides to their flock — and went off on their own way, seeking their own gain. This is a textbook example of how excessities get turned around into “never enoughs.”

Often the behavior of an excessity starts out as harmless, even beneficial. Hobbies, for example, can be recreational and completely appropriate. Pursuing your career can be productive and positive. Eating and drinking in moderation are beneficial. Relationships can be giving and loving.

At some point, however, each of these activities can turn out a different way.

A hobby becomes an all-consuming obsession. Working becomes workaholism. Eating becomes gluttony. Drinking becomes drunkenness. Relationships become twisted. When you start down this road without a proper understanding of the dangers, they can end up turning on you, spiraling back down into themselves. At some point the behavior becomes an excessity. When it does, you no longer have control over it.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DOROTHY

I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz. I especially liked it as a kid because I lived in Kansas. The movie would play almost every holiday, usually when kids were home from school on break and parents needed a few extra hours to finish up with holiday preparations. I watched it so many times I could run the dialogue.

Even as a kid, there was one part near the end that always drew my attention, though I didn’t really understand it at the time.

Dorothy has just returned from Oz, and she’s telling her uncle’s hired hands what she’s learned during her journey. Dorothy says she’s learned that “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard; because if it isn’t here I never really lost it to begin with.”

The gospel according to Dorothy tells me that contentment isn’t something external, found in circumstances or even adventures. Contentment is an internal condition, something you shouldn’t need to look for because its rightful home is in your heart. Dorothy learned to recognize the value of what she had instead of seeking after the promise of what she didn’t.

The ability to capture true contentment comes from recognizing what you have instead of focusing on what you don’t.

The writer of Hebrews put it this way:

“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake’ ” (13:5).

Removing “the love of money” in this passage, each one of us could substitute our own particular desire that fuels our excessity.

“Keep[ing] [our] lives free” would be difficult to do if it weren’t for the “because” statement that follows. Why can you put down your desire, your longing, your need, your excessity? Because by saying no to it, you are saying yes to God, knowing that through His love He has promised never to leave you, never to forsake you.

Source: Chapter 10, “God Provides Contentment” in Gotta Have It! by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc

Through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone. ~Prov. 25:15

In today’s society, we have come to expect the instantaneous, the rapid, the quick, the get-it-done-now. We are simply impatient people. We used to have a higher capacity for patience, but it keeps getting whacked off — primarily as a result of advances in technology. Cell phones, email, texting, and twittering create their own expectation momentum. What used to be considered just waiting now must be endured with patience. Patience really means being put off. Nobody likes being put off.

Excessities are at war with patience.

The Gotta Have It! cry of an excessity is generally followed by the unspoken command of Now! The longer you are required to wait, the louder that command becomes until it’s so shrill that it’s all you hear. The internal clamor of the excessity creates its own urgency. What was a desire becomes a ncessity. And a necessity deferred becomes an emergency. Once you’ve declared your own emergency, you have provided built-in justification for whatever measures are required to satisfy your Gotta Have It! At this point, patience is a hindrance, a barrier between you and your excessity.

LORI’S STORY

Lori didn’t like barriers to what she wanted. She never had.

she saw what she wanted so clearly and perceived her need so acutely, Lori took barriers personally. Her family learned it was never a good idea to get between Lori and something she wanted. They tended to scatter whenever she was in one of her “moods.” Her work subordinates learned to keep their heads down, their mouths shut, and their hands busy doing whatever Lori wanted.

Capable and driven, Lori was able to accomplish a great deal in a small amount of time. It was something she was known for and something she took a great deal of pride in.

If you asked Lori, she’d say she had a great deal of patience.

She would relate numerous occasions where she’d patiently endured the incompetence, inattention, and lack of caring of people around her. She could be patient long enough for the microwave to heat up her food. She could be patient long enough for her computer to boot up. She could be patient long enough for her gas tank to fill. These were Lori’s ideas of patience, and she bore them with stoic, if resentful, patience.

Then the ground underneath Lori shifted. Her husband was diagnosed with cancer, and Lori learned she really wasn’t patient after all. Cancer taught her how to wait. She had to wait for test results to be done. She had to wait for doctors and medical personnel to do their work. She had to wait for her husband’s strength to return after each agonizing round of chemotherapy or radiation. She had to wait for hope to return after each setback.

When it became clear he would not revcover, Lori had a decision to make.

Before, Lori had always traded time for results. Now, the only result time would yield was the loss of her husband. Before, Lori couldn’t wait for life to move fast enough. Now, all she wanted to do was slow it down. Before whatever was happening right now in Lori’s life was overshadowed by what could or would happen in the future, with what needed to be done. Lori’s life before was a relentless race from the now to the next.

With the next thing being the impending death of her husband, Lori’s life came to an abrupt halt.

She cut back at work so she could spend more time with him. As a result, she spent more time with her children, who desperately needed her. It was impossible for her to stop the clock, to slow the progression of the disease, to keep her husband alive longer. So instead, Lori learned to wring every possible drop of value and joy out of each moment they were together. She stopped being resentful of time and began to live within it.

Lori had always lived impatiently for what she wanted. Now, she learned to live patiently for what she didn’t.

Source: Chapter 8, “God Provides Patience” in Gotta Have It! by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc