How can I help others when I can't help myself?

This question is one that I faced in my early ministry and one that I am asked by almost every new leader that I recruit, "How can I help others when I can not help myself?"  It is a valid question.  How can one hope to help another through a situation when truthfully we are going through that exact same situation in our own life and have not yet figured out how to overcome it.  The question that I asked myself when I struggled with this question before entering into a commitment to serve was, "so then when will I have it together enough to serve?"  The answer to that question began with painting a picture of someone who knew what they were doing and had been through it all.  It quickly moved to a picture of someone that would be unattainable.  None of us are perfect.  No one truly has it all together. Everyone struggles.  If we only were able to help people when we had it all going on, I would only be able to help people about four minutes of everyday, the four minutes before I wake up (because I kind of feel rested then and the day's problems have not hit me yet).
In Jesus' day, the best people were the Pharisees.  They were the ones that seemed to have their act together.  The truth was though that the Pharisees were living a lie.  The Pharisees had located their goodness on their actions and behaviors.  They had set up a system of managing behaviors and actions through careful reasoning and rule following in order attain goodness.  The problem with this system though was that at some point every Pharisee would fail to do what is right.  Now, their measure of goodness had to be redefined, re-described or explained differently.  In most cases, their failure was just hidden away.  All too often, this is how we view our lives.  We are unable to help others because we have not yet managed our goodness in such a way as to be seen by others or even ourselves as having it together.  We see ourselves as unable to offer anything to anyone else.
But Jesus never asked us to serve out of our perfection.  We are called to serve out of our love (Gal 5:13).  We are to serve, not out of ourselves but rather, out of the Spirit of God.  The fruit of the Spirit, from which we serve, does not consist of actions, but rather lies in our attitudes or personality traits.  Galatians 5:22 states that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  These are all adjectives that we use to describe a person's inner self or motivation for their actions.  God has equipped us with the fruit of the Spirit, not that we might have it together before we serve, but rather that we would serve out of our dependence upon him.  Now, through our weakness and struggles we can serve because our service is out of our faithfulness to God.  We can now serve in the midst of our pain because we have joy in the Lord.  We can now serve in the midst of great personal tragedy because of the patience that God gives us.  When it is the fruit of the Spirit that moves us to serve and not our right actions, God receives the glory for our service and we are able to help others even though we do not have it together.