Help!

 

 

One of the biggest sections in a bookshop nowadays is the self-help rack. There are books on everything, every problem you might face in life, every way to get to the top, every technique to be fitter, more successful, how to win friends and influence people. How to be more in control of others, of life, of you.

 

It seems we’ve never been more in need of help. And we’ve never looked to more people to help get us out of the hole we’re in, regardless of how qualified they might be to actually do us any good. Many of these books are helpful and can help us master techniques to deal with modern life. There’s an awful lot to handle out there, and there’s clearly a need or the bookshops would be giving them all shelf space. The growing number of books that seem to appear every other day is symptomatic of a world that’s crying out for help!

 

It’s a multi-million dollar industry geared towards making us feel we are in control of our own destiny. Yet we’ve seen this year that we’re actually in control of very little. Most self-help books fail to set us right for one important reason. The pastor and writer Eugene Peterson put it best:

 

‘Most, if not all, of what and who we are has to do with God. If we try to understand and form ourselves by ourselves we leave out most of ourselves’[1]

 

There is true help at hand, and interestingly we can read about it. It’s not in the self-help section for a good reason.

 

It’s not self-help. It’s God-help, and it is a book and a person. A book about a person.

 

The Bible says that Jesus came to lift us up out of the messes we find ourselves in, not by giving us clichés that tell us ‘you can do it’ but by telling us that, on our own, we really can’t do it. Oh, we can improve our lot at times and for a while, for sure. But it’s not permanent

 

Being apart from God is the cause of our helplessness - Jesus offers lasting help by reconciling us to God, if we will accept that help and submit to Him.

 

As the Beatles said, ‘Help! I need somebody. Help! Not just anybody.’

 

Not just anybody.

 

Just Jesus.


[1] Peterson, E. Eat This Book, Hodder & Stoughton, 2008

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