Next time you see a homeless person with a sign for help, you might want to think twice about handing them some of your spare change, Rhona Mahl says. It may do more harm than good.
Mahl should know. Formerly homeless herself, the founder of the Braking Cycles ministry in Portland, Oregon, has worked with at-risk youth in the Portland area for 20 years. She says meeting an instant need is simply “a drop in the bucket,” and that giving that small amount of money may just be what Satan wants you to do.
“If a plate of food is actually going to keep a kid on the street another day, then we’re actually sometimes feeding into the enemy’s plan,” Mahl said on a recent episode of “Charisma Connection” on the Charisma Podcast Network. “We have to step back and take a look at the bigger picture and realize that there are principalities and strongholds that are keeping people in place, right in the enemy’s web.
“Jesus is the answer. For us, if all we ever do is meet a basic need and giving a kid a meal or a sleeping bag, we are contributing to the enemy’s plan to keep them stuck there. The question that we as Spirit-filled believers have to ask ourselves is not ‘How we can help?’, it’s ‘How can we love?’ How we love someone is going to look a lot different than handing them $2 out of the car window. Loving them is not leaving them on that street corner.”
For more of Mahl’s story and how Braking Cycles is helping at-risk youth find Jesus, listen to the podcast below.
