By Andrew Greenhalgh, Life Group leader, Jubilee Church Wirral

“HELP! I need somebody. HELP! Not just anybody. HELP! You know I need someone. HELP!”

As I may have mentioned before, I like the Beatles. So it was inevitable that Help! should pop into my head when I sat down to write this blog.

The Fab Four’s 1965 single Help! is one of the most honest and desperate songs to ever top the UK charts. It was a heartfelt plea for, well, help. From one of the four richest, most famous and most popular men on the planet at that time.

The reason Help! is so unusual and, nearly 50 years on, remains one of the most honest and desperate songs to ever top the UK charts is that we don’t like asking for help, do we?

Maybe we see it as a sign of weakness. Maybe we don’t like to impose on others. Maybe, whisper it, we don’t think anybody else can do it quite as well as we can.

There are many, many reasons why we need to be ready to ask for help more often than we do. Firstly, people like to help. I’ll give you an example.

On Sunday, at Jubilee, I had finished setting up the youth session ahead of the meeting. It was about 9.50am. I wandered through the hall where Mrs Frodsham was busy chopping up Danish pastries and laying them out. I asked if I could help and duly got stuck in, as did one of our younger Flames-age members.

I say this not to elicit praise but because being able to help Nicki was a huge blessing for me. I love helping. I’m not a practical chap so when I can help in any way, I love being able to do it. It gives me joy and brings me closer to God. I’m not joking!

I’m quite confident about offering to help, but others aren’t, even though they might want to. So by not asking for help we’re actually not helping them to share their gifts – of helping or of doing whatever it is that they are gifted to do.

Secondly, it is good to ask for help because it shows humility. If you don’t believe me, then look at it from this perspective: If you don’t, you are basically saying to the world that you can do absolutely anything better than anybody else in the whole world. Why should you need anyone’s help?

Thirdly, somebody else will almost certainly have a different way of looking at something from you. A way that might just help you. A problem shared is a problem halved and all that.

Finally, because if you don’t ask for help, how are you going to ask God for help? He wants you to ask Him!

Just to make sure we don’t miss it, God sprinkles verses about asking for help through the Bible like confetti.

This one, for example, from Matthew 7: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

Or this one, from John 14: “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” Or maybe this one, from Psalms 121: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.”

Promise me you’ll do at least one of these two things in the next week.

1. Ask God for help with something and tell me what happened.
2. Ask someone else in your life for some help with something and tell me what happened.
3. Ask someone in your life if you can help them.

I want to hear back from you.

Comment on this post, find me at church on Sunday or email me at andrew@beeswebsites.co.uk

Andrew Greenhalgh with his wife Julie