Most of us have received a life-time of messages which suggest that it is not okay to need help or to ask for help. On a cultural level, we live in a society that values individualism and self containment and which shames interdependence and need. On a more personal level, if basic emotional or psychological needs were not met in childhood,

we may have learned that having such needs is a bad or shameful thing. This combination of cultural messages and family messages can leave us believing that we must be strong, independent and self-reliant in order to gain love and approval. When we believe this, we have a powerful motivation to hide our weakness and need - often even from ourselves. As a result, finding the courage to expose our need and to ask for help can be a difficult process.

God has a very different perspective about what it means for us to have needs. Doing great things for God is not the heart of the spiritual life. It is not leaping tall buildings in a single bound, not flying faster than a speeding bullet that attracts God’s blessing. It is, rather, coming to the end our own resources - it is recognizing our need and asking for help - that is the beginning and foundation of the Christian life. The biblical text is clear about the spiritual meaning of our weakness. God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. This is no mere Hallmark one-liner. It is one of the foundations for all spiritual growth. If we insist on navigating our spiritual life within the relative safety of our gifts and strengths, we will stay in the shallows. It is only when we launch out into waters far deeper and more treacherous than our own resources can handle that we will encounter God’s strength and provision. It is when we lean into our weakness rather than running from it, that we experience things unimaginable in the safety of our comfort zones.

Jesus put it simply and unmistakably. “If you are well,” he said, “you don’t need a Physician.” Jesus was saying that until we acknowledge our need and ask for help, God cannot help us. Rather than saying it’s okay to need help and to ask for it, it would be more accurate to say that it is essential that we acknowledge our need and ask for help. It is essential because until we do so we shut God out. It is essential to acknowledge our need for help because that is what’s real. It is what is honest. Anything short of this is self deceit and pretense - from which no healing can come. Any attempts to save ourselves or heal ourselves by ourselves are attempts at playing God. What is true is that we need help. We need God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. To acknowledge this is simply to tell the truth. And when we acknowledge the truth, we open the way for God to respond.

Contrary to all of our instincts, then, the neediness which can be so terrifying to us is, in reality, the opportunity which makes it possible for the Physician of Wounded Souls to begin the healing process.