Are you too proud to ask for help? Continuing our series of resources for Christian men, Jack Zavada of Inspiration-for-Singles.com ponders the male tendency to avoid asking for help. If pride is keeping you from asking God for help, your Christian life won't stand a chance. This article will help you learn how to break the cycle of pride and get into the habit of asking God for help.
Too Proud to Ask for Help
In the 2005 film Cinderella Man, struggling prizefighter James J. Braddock, played by Russell Crowe, has to make a hard choice.
It’s the heart of the Great Depression. He can’t find work, the electricity has been turned off in their cramped apartment, and his wife and three children are going hungry. Reluctantly, Braddock goes to the government relief office. A clerk hands him money to pay the bills and buy food.
We Christian men can be like that: too proud to ask for help. Except it’s not the relief office we’re afraid to go to. It’s God.
Somewhere along the way we got the idea that it’s wrong to ask for help, that it’s something no real man should do. I was raised on John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies, where tough guys made their own way. They didn’t need anybody’s help, and even if John Wayne did have to bring in his buddies, they were a bunch of hard, macho types who volunteered for the fight. He never had to humiliate himself and ask them.
You Won’t Stand a Chance
But you can’t live the Christian life that way. It’s impossible. You can’t go it alone and resist temptation, make wise decisions, and get back up when you get knocked down. If you don’t ask God for help, you won’t stand a chance.Pride is a funny thing. Psalm 10:4 (NIV) tells us: "In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God." The psalmist recognized this shortcoming in men thousands of years ago. It hasn’t gotten any better since.
Women joke that men will drive around lost for an hour rather than stop and ask directions. We’re that way in the rest of our life as well. God, the source of all wisdom, is eager to give us the direction we need, yet we’ll take one dead end after another rather than ask him for help.
Jesus was different from us. He constantly sought his Father’s leading. His character was flawless, free from the pride we display. Instead of trying to make it on his own, he depended heavily on the Father and the Holy Spirit.
If our pride weren’t bad enough, we men are also slow learners. We refuse God’s help, mess things up, then a year or five years or ten years later we do the same thing. It’s hard for us to overcome our need for independence.
How to Break the Cycle
How do we break this cycle of pride? How do we get into the habit of asking God for help, not just in big things but every single day?First, we remember what Christ has already done for us. He saved us from our sins, something we could never do on our own. He became the pure, spotless sacrifice we could never be, the only offering that would satisfy God’s perfect justice. His willingness to die in our place proves his immense love. That kind of love will deny us no good thing.
Second, we reflect on our need for help. Every Christian man has enough failures in his past to remind him that going it alone simply hasn’t worked. We shouldn’t be embarrassed by our failures; we should be embarrassed because we were too arrogant to accept God’s help. But it’s never too late to remedy that.
Third, we should learn from other Christian men who have humbled themselves and daily rely on God for help. We can see the victories in their lives. We can marvel at their maturity, their calmness, their faith in a trustworthy God. Those same admirable qualities can become ours, too.
There’s hope for every one of us. We can live the life we’ve always dreamed of. Pride is a sin we can overcome, and we start by asking God for help.
Also from Jack Zavada for Christian Men:
• Life's Toughest Decision
• Lessons from a Carpenter
• How to Survive a Power Failure
• Is Ambition Unbiblical?
• Can Christian Men Succeed in the Workplace?
More from Jack Zavada:
• Loneliness: Toothache of the Soul
• The Christian Response to Disappointment
• Time to Take Out the Trash
• Lifestyles of the Poor and Unknown
• A Message Meant for Only One Person
• Mathematical Proof of God?
Jack Zavada, a career writer and guest contributor for About.com, is host to a Christian Web site for singles. Never married, Jack feels that the hard-won lessons he has learned may help other Christian singles make sense of their lives. His articles and ebooks offer great hope and encouragement. To contact him or for more information, visit Jack's Bio Page.
