How to help people if sometimes you yourself need help? Why is charity associated with material support? When is the time to help another and how to understand it? If you want to learn how to help others, but do it intelligently - here you will find your answer. Help is a relationship between people that is built on trust. How to awaken the warmth in yourself, learn gratitude? We offer advice for all occasions.

How to help people or what is humanity?

You walk down the street and see these poor animals who are looking for food, you look at pensioners who beg for alms and ... you pass by. You go online and see a banner asking you to help the orphanage, you go to social media, and there they are looking for volunteers to clean the forest. How to stop being indifferent and be able to overcome selfishness? The eternal thought that they must work social services, the authorities should help - this is millions of people.

But the truth says: "Help your neighbor, and you will be rewarded twice." How to help people without looking for excuses with a light heart? Critical situations can happen to anyone, so no one is immune. Particularly affected are the children whom she brought to orphanage, the elderly who live their lives in poverty. Everyone needs support, compassion to some extent, but not everyone sees someone else's pain.

Help is a voluntary act. Few pay attention to the problems environment if you don't pay attention to it. Few people will think about the disabled, if not to say it by word of mouth. People always find a way to communicate, adapt, but good deeds nobody canceled!

The answer to the question "how to help people?" it is very easy to find - he sleeps in the person himself. The ability to see the truth that was hidden under the mass of negativity and selfishness is simple!

Elementary ways to help your neighbor.

How to help people without leaving home? We will find everything on the Internet, where global life is constantly in full swing. Learn about problems in a neighboring country, read the news in your city, talk to the person who posted the “I need help!” post. It is enough to be interested in the topic, as we immediately find hundreds of options to make a contribution. Why "immediately"? Now everything is freely available, and people are actively disseminating information. Why not teach English in schools for free? And what about the idea of ​​participating in landscaping, cleaning parks in your city? A person is able to direct his efforts in a positive direction. The main thing is to want to change the world around.

Helping others can take many forms. An animal protection organization needs pet food, a social video needs to be created, a global problem needs to be highlighted - such activities stimulate action. Many do not think about how helping others makes a person happy. Inside, he feels needed, takes root in the work and fills himself with great knowledge.

Do you want to support orphans? You can make cute cards for them, buy fruits, sweets and take them to Orphanage. There is a dream to travel, but with meaning - a great option is to take care of elephants, feed turtles in Asian countries, help the deaf and dumb in Europe, etc. Such activity not only stimulates our consciousness, but also includes. The probability of being in the negative and saying “I have nothing to do, I’m bored” definitely disappears!

How to help people? First of all, pay attention to the circle of close people. Did you manage to move away from your parents, but rarely keep in touch with them? It is worth asking what they need, how they are doing, to bestow care. It is important to sincerely want to contribute to their lives. From the outside it seems that everything is fine with friends, but in reality they have nowhere to turn. Do elderly neighbors live nearby? It would be worth buying them groceries, helping them carry their bags to the fifth floor. Words, deeds are needed not only by relatives, friends, but also by absolutely strangers. It’s elementary to give up your seat in the transport, move the old woman across the road, support the door to the loader with the goods in his hands.

Every day, each of us can be a superhero who sows the seed of good. How to help people? To fill someone's life with a meaning that will become active for you. Good deeds are possible wherever we can remember our neighbor. It is important to realize that the real is expressed not only in material values, but also in moral qualities.

How to help people?

1. Become a volunteer.

You can help the unprotected layer of the population anywhere and anytime. For example, donate blood at transfusion stations and help hospitals with the same. It is possible to be Santa Claus or the Snow Maiden in orphanages, and give sweets to orphans. Sell ​​products handmade and give the proceeds to public organizations. A volunteer is for those who are ready to donate a little of their time and efforts for the benefit of others. Volunteering is an activity that is not connected with self-interest and profit.

2. Make a financial contribution.

Today it is difficult to imagine the construction of rehabilitation centers, animal shelters, and the treatment of diseases without funding. Sometimes there is simply no time for self-help. It is optimal to allocate a certain amount for the purchase of books, clothes for orphans, the purchase of food for zoos, the distribution of food to the poor in heating centers. Sometimes you can deny yourself the purchase of another fashionable thing, and think about your neighbor.

In correspondence with a friend, did you notice that she had psychological problems? You can temporarily be a psychologist and try to solve the issue together. Personal knowledge can become saving for another. This will not only strengthen the relationship with the person, but also deepen personal knowledge.

4. Do charity work.

How to help others if you are not interested in global, social problems? Charity is a broader concept than volunteering. It covers simultaneously all areas of life where funding is required. Financial support plays a key role here, of course. There are entire charity exchanges where anyone can choose a project and help it.

5. Support the person.

A colleague may have been experiencing difficulties at the workplace for several months, a friend is in after a breakup. It is worth looking around, as a strong shoulder, compassion, attention can not only save the “victim” from difficulties, but also give her the desire to live on.

6. Smile.

How can you do nothing but give a person pleasant feelings? It is enough to carry it in yourself, reflecting it in your behavior. No need to build a sour face that seems to say "don't come closer, so I have a lot of my own problems." A slightly perceptible smile, calm movements, friendliness - all this attracts the attention of the gray mass, which needs such energy recharging.

There is nothing secret how to help people and be yourself. It's never too late to start good things, and it's even useful. When you yourself feel lonely, you should look at the problems of others and understand "yes, I'm happy, I have everything." Reach heights, share experience and give opportunities to those who need it. Liked the article? Share it with your friends on social. networks.

Being helpful to others is the simplest and best solution. It will turn any situation into a positive one. So when you feel lost, frustrated, or unproductive, do something for others. In this way, you will not only help others, but also yourself.

Getting angry and lashing out at others will not benefit anyone. Being helpful is much easier than it looks. There are many ways to help others in some way. Here are three of them.

Share knowledge

Pass on what you know. It's never too early to learn. There is always someone who will need your advice or life hacks.

Solve a small problem

Help someone deal with difficulties. Even if it's not global problem but something small. Maybe your colleagues need help? Think about the difficulties they have. If your knowledge and experience can solve them in 15-30 minutes, do it. Don't expect rewards or reciprocal favors. Just genuinely help the other person.

Of course, this is hard to decide. Some people, having received help once, wait for it all the time. But it’s better to immediately find out who from your environment behaves this way, and.

Do something even if it's not your responsibility

It is always a pleasure to work with people who can handle any situation. It's just important to keep a balance. Do not be afraid to perform tasks outside of your duties, but do not dig into the little things. Most importantly, don't be the one who identified the problem but didn't even try to solve it, because that's not his job.

It's one thing to just do what's assigned, and another thing to make an effort to be helpful. This is a highly underrated skill.

People who want to be helpful ask the right questions, not just wait for an answer. They create something of value for others.

This does not require specific . If you can't help with something highly specialized, bring your colleagues coffee and donuts. They will surely rejoice. If you work in an office, clean your office, water the flowers, or hang a picture. Even small things like this are helpful to others.

Think about what you can do to help. Let it be at least a little help if you have a lot of things to do. But you will sleep peacefully, knowing that the day was not in vain.

When is it not worth helping people and why even sincere help can lead to undesirable consequences?

Selfless help is good. That's how we were all taught in elementary school. But how right were the teachers and parents when they tried to instill this “truth” in us?

Of course, mercy and a hospitable desire to help the needy are worthy of praise. But such altruism is not always useful in real life. We are not talking about situations where universal assistance is meant (donations for an orphanage or a piece of bread given to a starving person). We are talking about situations in which self-serving people "unwind" us on free help in this or that matter, putting pressure on pity. This may be a request to help with business advice, or a ride to business meeting to the other end of the city in bad weather and so on.

And then, when such requests become regular, and only the one who asks benefits from them, it is urgent to think about it. Are you doing everything right? Let's talk about this in more detail. So, why not help people who can use your sincerity for purely personal purposes?

Do people really need help?

Extremes are always fatal. You can’t put an end to any help, saying to yourself once, as if cutting off: “Never help people!” and continue to enjoy your selfish life.

However, it is worth learning to single out from the general mass those individuals whose gratuitous assistance will cause damage to you personally and does not benefit him. First of all, if your personal time and finances are at the expense.

How often have you been asked for some small things by people with whom you are not at all in a particularly close relationship? And how often did they not even express their gratitude to you after getting what they wanted, or got off with an artificial smile? Agree, such situations were in the life of everyone.

And again - helping someone, you spend your own precious time, which could be converted into a specific amount of money.

Try to think this dogma. After all, it is unlikely that the person who turned to you with a request for a meeting will pay this amount after a joint tea party, at which you, having actualized all your own strengths, are looking for ways to develop it or solve its problems.

How not to help people who absolutely do not appreciate help?

In order to maintain a cool, judicious mind in such situations, it is necessary to be guided by the following principles.

Other people don't need help. We need to cooperate with them

Just so that help does not make one side worse off, there are a few easy-to-understand rules:

1. Never help people if they can't appreciate it!

   Each one had a story when you want to sincerely lend a helping hand to someone around you. It happens that you from the outside find something in the life of another person that prevents him from achieving success in one area or another. Many of us wanted to point out the problem to a friend at such a moment. But does it need to be done?

   As a rule, after you demonstrate to a person his shortcomings, he will take this demonstration with hostility. Few people know how to take criticism and use it to their advantage. Perhaps your communication will come to naught after this. This scenario brings the most valuable lesson into your life - give advice only when it is asked for. After all, often even the most sincere help will be accepted by others as a desire to convict the person himself of some kind of weakness.

   Even if you clearly know how to act for another person in order to improve his life or succeed in some business, give him the opportunity to make mistakes, do not impose your recommendations if you are not asked for them. Let even close people go their own way, even the wrong one from your point of view.

2. You should not help people for free if it directly concerns your field of activity.

   Where does this rule apply? Take, for example, the situation: you are an interior designer and your job is the development and visualization of interiors. In addition to the fact that such creative work It can often seem to outsiders and people not familiar with the field of design something simple and not taking much time, so such acquaintances also have a habit of asking you to design an interior for themselves personally. For what reward? Naturally, free of charge, “out of old friendship”. After all, in their opinion, this is normal. This is where the trick lies.

   The main skill that you need here is the ability to clearly and politely refuse. And this is not rudeness - this is a necessary measure without which your capital risks decreasing. Do not evade the request, hiding behind the fact that “now there is no time” - “later” will come and you will hear the same request again. The best move here is to act as openly as possible, if possible, to offer a discount on that very “old friendship”.

3. Do not help people if you are not confident in your own abilities.

   You may notice that this advice is a little out of the general outline of the topic under consideration. But it is no less important than all that has been stated above. It happens that we sincerely want to help a person dear to us and are eager to do it as soon as possible. Often such a sincere desire does not allow a sober assessment - but can we really provide a person with truly qualified assistance? Shall we hurt?

   The essence of the described principle is extremely simple - you should not rush into battle if you probably don’t know what to do. Having the brightest motives and undertaking to help people in what you yourself are not very familiar with, you can decently “break wood”. Then time will be wasted, and even your own reputation may deteriorate in the eyes of a person you respect. Especially when the result cannot be achieved, and the person will not be able to evaluate the attempt itself.

How not to help people who do not appreciate help, and not to live with remorse?

Not when you pull him out by the collar, not when you “love him to death”, not even when you selflessly do everything without expecting anything in return.

If a person with whom neither time nor desire connects you with any benefits awaits you, be sure of your refusals and do not be afraid to upset anyone because of the norms of politeness. And if you undertake to lend a helping hand, voice an honest price for this very help. People do not need to help when your help is not a way to solve the situation, but an excuse to throw problems.

My mother taught me not to give too much advice or try to help someone unless the person asks for it. I always thought that she was out of harm. But as I grew up, I realized that my mother was right after all. And yes, she is one of the kindest and warmest people I have ever known.

Society says that you need to help people. I agree with that. It is believed that we should unconditionally strive to help others, and even when they do not expect it. No, everything is right here, sudden acts of kindness can sometimes change lives. However, the coin has two sides. And you should know what such philanthropy can turn into.

Of course, not everything is so sad, but not so rosy either. There is good in bad, and there is bad in good. While helping people isn't the worst idea, it's still not the best. There are three instances in which I personally tend to refuse to help, and I strongly encourage you to do the same.

Don't help people who don't deserve your help

It's not that simple. We have been taught all our lives to help others, but now forget about it.

When you grow up, you will understand that you have only two hands: one is for helping yourself, the other is for helping others.

Sam Levenson

These guys don't understand that I have a family to feed, bills to pay, urgent things to deal with on time. They don't realize that I'll have to make up for the time spent talking to them by staying up late at work. Since they do not value my time, then I am not going to waste it on them.

If people don't care about you, you don't have to help them. They just don't deserve it.

Now I'm just saying how much an hour of my time is worth. Severely, yes, but life has become easier, and I am happier. People take me much more seriously. If my services seem too expensive to someone, I offer other ways to compensate for the time spent.

Rule 1: Never offer anything for free.

Rule 2. Never forget rule 1.

People will always try to exploit you if you let them. You don't have time to help everyone. Support only those who truly deserve it.

Don't help people who can't appreciate your help.

My biggest weakness is that I really like to help. I support people whether they asked for it or not. This approach can sometimes backfire in the most unexpected way.

One of my clients was doing very badly. My team and I killed a few days to study the data with trends and understand what the problem is. This was not part of our assignment, and therefore was not included in the bill, we just sincerely worried about the success of the client. My team uncovered some serious problems with his business model and strategy. We told him about it, and he fired us.

We have done work beyond the scope of duty, just out of empathy. We told the client things that he did not want to hear from us. We lost a client because we were trying to help. Finally, now he hates us simply because we voiced our professional opinion.

A sure way to turn a friend into a fierce enemy is to tell him something that he does not want to hear.

I stopped helping people who don't want to. Minimum drama, maximum time for yourself.

Don't help if you can't do it well

Here is the most important thing. Offering support when you are not really ready to give it is not immediately. NO. I have done this several times and still regret it.

One day my father and mother were going abroad and asked me to look after their house. I had no idea how to water the flowers. Some I flooded, and some I dried out. When the parents returned a month later, all their plants had already died. If I had not offered my help, there would have been someone knowledgeable in this, and my dad's precious flowers would have been alive to this day. By the way, my parents forbade me from even touching the plants with my finger.

If you want to help without the skills or time, your help will be of no use.

Finally, everything can be good or bad. It is important for us to find a balance between these extremes. Evaluate everything carefully before lending a helping hand. If you don't, you're wasting your time and money, and endangering important relationships, whether personal or professional.

A random act of kindness can change someone's life, or it can break it. If you help the wrong people, you will miss the chance to support people who really deserve it. Think before you help.

Unpopular Virtue

The virtue of compassion is not listed among the main Christian virtues, but it is a manifestation of the most important Christian virtue - love.

It is impossible to love people and at the same time not participate in their lives, remain indifferent to what happens to them. Perhaps right now they need our help, they need just what is called participation.

Meanwhile, it often happens that a person who considers himself a zealous Christian locks himself in his church life on those deeds of piety that he himself considers the only ones necessary for salvation.

He regularly goes to church, confesses and takes communion, performs the evening and morning prayer rules at home, reads the holy fathers, but at the same time he completely withdraws, moves away from those people who surround him in Everyday life. There is a seemingly plausible and even natural explanation for this - the surrounding people are of a different, non-Christian spirit.

Indeed, it is not uncommon that a person begins to live a church life, and the people who make up his social circle still remain non-church. They have different interests, and then ideas about life, and in this it is easy enough to find an excuse for yourself to move away from these people.

A person moves away from them, and from the worries that they live with, and from what happens to them, but there are no other people around him. And it turns out that he becomes a stranger in a world alien to him, that he no longer lives a living life - natural, normal for a believer, because for this you need to come into contact with people, to delve into what is happening to them, and he, as it were, glides over the surface, it passes by. So, imperceptibly for himself, the most important thing leaves his life - this is love for other people, indifference to them.

Why is it so important? Let's remember what we know about God? We know from the catechism that God is omnipotent, we know that God is good, that He created everything that exists. But it is not only difficult for a limited, created being to penetrate the mystery of Divine existence, but, by and large, it is impossible.

And at the same time, there are things that we know about God for sure. For example, the fact that He loves a person and that there is nothing in human life that would not concern God: every little thing, every insignificant event connected with us is everything, as Holy Scripture and the Tradition of the Orthodox Church testify, God is most directly interested in , and in all this the Lord necessarily participates, because He does not despise even the slightest human need.

If God treats people this way, then it is quite obvious that He expects the same attitude towards each other from us. And it is quite natural that if God descends from His ineffable heights to the everyday, elementary manifestations of human life, then we should not ignore this either.

So one can even say this: if a person remains indifferent, indifferent to the needs, sorrows, experiences of the people who surround him, then he cannot be a good Christian, he cannot be a Christian in principle. By and large, he can be called a person with a very big stretch.

General quality of saints

If we look at those who have been glorified throughout the history of the Church as saints, we will see that they were very different people - with different temperaments, with different life experiences, with different, as we would say today, educational level and social status; but there is one thing in common: among the saints there was not a single indifferent and indifferent person.

Even if we read about hermits who avoided the company of people who did not communicate with them, then, having become acquainted with their life a little more deeply, we can understand that the time spent in hermitage and silence was filled not only with a prayer for God's mercy to them, but but it has always been a prayer for the whole world and for the people living in it.

There is such a case in the life of the Monk Arseny the Great: people who would like to see him come to him, and among them the then Archbishop of Alexandria. In the end, they could not see him: he did not come out to them, because he did not want to violate the seclusion that he had set for himself at that time as the rule of life, and they retired with great sorrow.

Subsequently, they came again, and they already had the opportunity to meet him. And so they complained: “Last time we left you with nothing, having taken such a path, you did not even see us.” He said, “Yes, but when you went home, you had some time on the road and the opportunity to repent of your sins. You stopped to sleep, to eat, and I stood and prayed for you until you got home.”

There is also a similar episode in "Answers to the Questions of the Disciples" by St. Barsanuphius the Great and John the Prophet. We are talking about the disasters that are coming to the world of that time, and the Monk Barsanuphius says that this world would have had a bad time if it were not for the prayers of three holy men who rise like a kind of fiery pillar from the earth and meet before the Throne of God.

This slightly opens the veil over the life of the saints, reveals to us the secret of their inner life and explains that, despite their apparent indifference to anything, they participated with all their hearts.

Don't reach out - reach out the staff

Since we, on our part, cannot offer such participation in the existence of the world - our life is not like that, our prayer is not like that, we must participate in it by deed. And here elementary common sense should be of great help to us.

When we try to render a person some kind of service, we try to help him in something, then, naturally, we should not do this against his will and against his desire (unless, of course, we are talking about a person who, for example, is drowning , - it still needs to be pulled out of the water). Our job is to start helping a person, to offer him our help, and if he rejects it, to retreat without imposing our participation.

After all, of course, there is such an extreme: believers, pious people want to make someone happy without his desire. Of course, nothing good comes from this intention, but on the contrary, it turns out only temptation, grief and frustration.

In general, when we want to help another person, it is extremely important to try to understand what he needs, and to help precisely in this, and not in what it gives us pleasure to help him. In a word, it is important that our help coincides with his ideas about help.

And, of course, helping people does not imply any indulgence in their sinful skills and passions. Here we can give an elementary and fairly common example: a heavy drinker and, possibly, a person living on the street comes up to us on the street and asks for money to get him drunk.

Naturally, he does not need to give money for this; it is wiser, if he is hungry, to buy food - buy it yourself and give it to your hands so that he will not be tempted to buy alcohol. Of course, you can say: don’t you understand, we will buy him food, but he will go and still find somewhere for a drink. Well, what to do with it - let him die of hunger? So this should not be treated in any way.

Continuing the theme of the limits of help that should not be crossed: there is another limit - the extent to which one can give this help to people at all.

The same St. Barsanuphius the Great has this image: if a person has fallen into a pit, do not stretch out your hand to him - stretch out your staff to him. And he explains why. If you stretch out your hand to him, and instead of getting out of the hole, he will pull you towards him, then you will fall into the same hole. And if you stretched out the staff, then a person who wants to get out of the pit will grab the staff and get out with your help; if the fallen one does not want to get out and pulls the staff towards him, then you will simply let go of the staff.

In my opinion, this is a kind of ideal model of what kind of help should be, because it happens that a person begins to help someone and as a result his family, his relatives suffer. In the end, he himself comes to such destruction own life that then he cannot put it back together again - and of course, such sympathy is hardly justified.

The apostle Paul says that our abundance should be the filling of someone else's deficiency and vice versa. It must be so, because everything else is a little absurd.

If a person is not just looking for help, not just not coping with the situation, but is looking for someone, figuratively speaking, to sit on his neck and wave his legs at the same time, then, of course, he should not be given such an opportunity, because in this way we will do a disservice.

By doing something for a person, and not with him, we corrupt him. The same thing happens in raising a child: if parents do everything for him, then they will raise a capricious, spoiled and completely unadapted person.

If they just help him and do something with him, then this is a completely different matter. The child is gradually learning, and the measure of participation of mom and dad in his life is gradually decreasing. It should be the same in our relationships with adults, with others.

About unwashed floors and missionary talk

Should our sympathy be manifested in the desire, the desire to bring our loved ones to the temple? On the one hand, of course, yes, because it is unnatural when a person who has found for himself the most important thing in life - a priceless bead of faith in Christ, is indifferent to the fact that this bead turned out to be unnoticed by people dear to him.

There is even a doubt whether he loves them, because we are talking, no less, about the eternal fate. On the other hand, any attempts to directly influence loved ones in this regard, as a rule, turn out to be unsuccessful and ineffective. The people around us are more convinced by our example: they see that some changes are taking place in us, they see that what they have tried unsuccessfully to achieve from us for many years suddenly happens as if by itself ...

Here lived a man who never cleaned his house, did not wash the dishes, did not buy groceries, let alone cook something. And all of a sudden he starts doing it. The family is amazed: what happened to him? And there is an interest in the good that their loved one has been opened to them in such a new way.

And if a man, as before, enters a dirty apartment in exactly the same way and does not sweep the floors, but waits for his wife to do it for him, after that he can convince her of anything, but he will not convince her of anything except that some new whim appeared for him.

And it also happens that a person who wants to attract his loved ones to life in the Church acts very rudely and authoritatively, so that it becomes clear that this is not about love, but about some exactingness: “this is mine, and everyone should accept it ".

And this also never leads to good: quarrels, strife, accusations begin. As a rule, such conversations end with something like: “You don’t listen to me - you will burn in fiery hell.” What can be said about this...

There is also such a situation: a believer, a church person is preparing to receive the Holy Mysteries of Christ, and he has a lot of things to do: he needs to read the following for communion, he needs to fast, he needs to go to the service in the evening.

And so, when he begins to prepare, his relatives, relatives, and friends suddenly begin to distract him from this. And not just somewhere they call him for a walk or offer to have fun, but one thing happened to one, another happened to another, the third requires some kind of heartfelt participation, conversation.

It begins to seem to a person that all this is some kind of interference - he gets annoyed, annoyed, tries to move away from all this and does not understand at all that this is the same element of preparation for communion. Participation in the lives of other people, helping them, including sometimes with a conversation and some kind of heartfelt sympathy, are deeds of love: perhaps, in the person of these people, the Lord Himself addressed a person, came, but he did not notice Him, and at the same time wants to be involved in His Body and Blood.

Of course, this is a completely wrong attitude. In some cases, the question arises: “yes, but what to do”? Yes, this is how it should be: take part in another person, give him the necessary time and strength, and if you really want to take communion, read the rule at night, perform at least once such a feat of both Christian love and Christian piety.

Help, and then understand yourself

It must be remembered that sympathy is not human pleasing, and not a way to satisfy vanity; we can distinguish one from the other primarily by the intention that lies in our heart. Why are we doing this or that? You should get into the habit of asking yourself this question.

Sometimes a person asks: “What if I see narcissism in the first place? Should I give up on this?" No, the deed still needs to be done, and I'll explain why. Because there is another person, there is his need, there is some kind of his grief, and he, by and large, does not care about what we are going to help him with.

This is our inner experience - vanity, narcissism or something else. These are our problems. Therefore, if such a situation arises and we cannot deal with our feelings, we must postpone this trial, help the person, and then repent that vanity or something else was present in this or that act.

If we already have some experience in the spiritual life, we can try to go the way of correction already in our intention, right away. Here a person appeared before us, his need arose, a desire to help appeared, we realized that in the first place there was some kind of desire to please our vanity. Vanity aside, business is a necessity, we do it. Such a skill is developed in a person in due time, with the acquisition of spiritual experience.

And the second question that you need to ask yourself is: “Who do I want to please with my actions: man or God?”. Or at least like this: “Is what I do pleasing to God, or not?”. If this question arises, as it were, by itself, it means that a certain attitude towards pleasing God is already present in us. And our conscience often tells us whether this matter is really pleasing to God or not.

When we ask such a question, it is very important to have in ourselves a certain guarantee of obedience to God: after all, the Lord may not allow us to do the work that we want (even, it would seem, very good), may prevent it.

If a person is ready to retreat from his intention, if the Lord shows him that it is wrong, then the Lord, as a rule, shows, in some obvious way gives an answer. We get confused in something, we do not understand something when we are not ready to accept and fulfill the will of God.

When this readiness exists, a person almost always recognizes it one way or another. And this, in fact, is not some kind of secret, not some kind of secret. This is truth and reality.

Prepared by Elena Sapaeva