Help! Please. I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up (aka ‘Hosanna’)
Help! Please. I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up (aka ‘Hosanna’)
I’ll never forget the classic television commercial for Life Alert. It showed an older woman walking through a dark hallway or reaching for a high shelf in her kitchen. Then, the scene would cut to her lying on the ground, struggling, crying out: “Help me! I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”
As a kid, I thought it was funny. The dramatization seemed over-the-top, and the repetition of the commercial made it ripe for parody. But as an adult—after spending a few years working in an assisted living facility—I understand that a fall can be a life-threatening situation if there’s no way to get help. The Life Alert necklace became a lifeline, a simple button to summon assistance when someone couldn’t help themselves.
If only we had a button like that for ministry.
As missionaries and ministry leaders, we don’t always know how to ask for help—or maybe more honestly, we’re too slow to do it. At least, I know I am. I tell myself it’s because I don’t know how to ask effectively or that I’m unsure what to ask for specifically or even that I don’t want to burden anyone else with ‘my’ concerns. But when I dig deeper, I realize it often comes down to fear and pride.
Fear of rejection. Fear of disappointment. Pride, with its deceptive whisper that I should be able to pull myself up by my bootstraps—and, by extension, pull everyone else up too.
But here’s the truth: we need to learn how to ask for help.
The Enemy of Abundant Life
"The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly." – John 10:10
I remember learning about Dr. Jack Kevorkian as a kid. He was infamously known as the "death doctor," someone who facilitated assisted suicides. At the time, it seemed like one of the clearest examples of evil I could imagine—someone profiting off despair and destruction. But what shocked me even more was the idea that people were willing to ask for help to end their own lives.
Now, as an adult, I see things through a more nuanced and painful lens. I’ve experienced mental health challenges personally, and I’ve buried my father after his suicide. I know too well the deep brokenness that can lead someone to destruction.
When I was younger, I thought Jesus’ words in John 10:10 were metaphorical or merely spiritual. Now, I see them as vividly real. The thief—the enemy of our souls—truly comes to steal, kill, and destroy in ways that are both internal and external, spiritual and physical. But Jesus offers a radical alternative: abundant life.
Yet that abundance requires something many of us struggle with. We have to ask for help.
HOSANNA!
The people of Jerusalem who welcomed Jesus into town with the royal reception, cried out ‘Hosanna! Hosanna!’. Up until my most recent reading of the Gospels, and partially because of some popular song lyrics, I had mistakenly thought of that word as some kind of praise to Jesus. I assumed it was some linguistic cousin to Hallelujah, which means ‘praise Yahweh’, and the context – at least in my imagining - seemed to confirm such an interpretation.
Once the people finally began to understand that Jesus was the one in charge of things, however, the cry of their lips wasn’t praise, but a passionate plea! Hosanna means ‘Help us!’
They recognized the injustice of their city and knew deeply their need for a savior. They begged Jesus to help them because of their belief in His ability to do so.
A Better Kind of Help
Dr. Kevorkian’s story is an inverted example of humanity’s deep need for help—one that leads to destruction. But Jesus, in His infinite grace, offers the opposite. He gives us his life, his very Spirit, to help us.
It’s not just that he provides help. He also knows that we are weak. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Hebrews 4:15 (ESV). He knows exactly how it feels to be weak and at the limits of human patience in hope. He gives us the Spirit as a helper in our weakness.
Romans 8:24-26 speaks directly to this:
" For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (ESV)
Most of the mission leaders I speak with have been rooted in a hope for something that has not yet come to pass. It’s ironic to call it ‘vision’, but appropriate. This hope is perceived with clarity by the one standing in the place of hope while not yet seen by others. When we step even for a moment outside of hope, we can also lose sight and lose vision. The word on patience here hits so deep for me and for everyone that has been called to hope in the Kingdom of God. The challenge with patience is that ours has limits… and for me personally, it sometimes degrades into what can rightly be called ‘weakness’. This ‘weakness’ sometimes manifests in an inability for me to articulate hope, vision, or even prayers. This passage reminds us that even when we don’t have the words or energy to pray, Holy Spirit is there—interceding, advocating, groaning on our behalf. When we’ve fallen and can’t get up, the Spirit is the one who pushes the button, summoning the help we so desperately need.
Two Ways to Ask for Help
So, what do we do when we reach the end of our strength? When our patience runs thin and the hope that’s been planted in us hasn’t yet materialized?
Ask the Holy Spirit for help.
Sometimes we don’t even know what we need, much less how to pray for it. That’s okay. The Spirit is here to fill in the gaps, to groan the prayers we can’t articulate. Let’s humble ourselves and bring our confusion, exhaustion, and need to God in earnest prayer. Schedule time for it.Ask one another for help.
God designed us to live in community. We are not meant to carry our burdens alone (Galatians 6:2). Yet, so often, fear and pride keep us from reaching out. We convince ourselves we’re supposed to have it all together because we’re ‘leaders’. But the truth is that we all stumble. We all fall. And sometimes, the most Christ-like thing we can do is cry out, "Help me! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
An Invitation to Grace
If you’re reading this and feel like you’re struggling on the ground, I want you to know that you’re not alone. Jesus is near, and He longs to lift you up—not just spiritually, but through the people He has placed in your life.
I also want to say this: if your feelings of “falling” are tied to ongoing sin or hidden struggles, there’s hope and a clear path. Confession, repentance, and leaning into trusted community are the first steps to freedom. “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” James 5:16. There is no pit too deep for God’s grace to reach, and there is no fall He cannot redeem.
Lean on Him and Each Other
As mission leaders, we often talk about how God is our refuge and strength. But sometimes, we forget that God also works through His people. Let’s be people who reach out when we’ve fallen and who respond with compassion when someone else expresses a need for help, even when it’s unclear how exactly we are to respond.
In the end, the abundant life Jesus offers isn’t something we achieve on our own. It’s something we receive through Him and through the body of Christ working together.
So, if you’ve fallen and feel like you can’t get up, push the button. Call out to the Spirit. Call out to a friend. And trust that help is already on the way.
You’re not alone.
I, Taylor, the one writing this Fuel article, need help. Help from Holy Spirit. Help from you. If Wildfire is going to become what God wants it to be, then it will take more than what I’m capable of to move forward. I fully acknowledge that if Wildfire is anything, it is a movement of the Holy Spirit to empower God’s people. While I’m grateful for what we have already witnessed - please join me to pray for more of the Holy Spirit to blow in this next season of harvest. Also, much of the breakthrough and success Wildfire has known up to this point has been the result of help from mission leaders, supporters, board members, and others who have stepped up to make connections, support one another in their various missions and callings, and give back to help the network continue to expand and serve. In the weeks to come, I’ll be sharing some specific ways that Wildfire needs help – stay tuned…