Total Dependence

God is constantly reminding me we must be dependent upon Him for - well everything!  If we are honest with ourselves, there have been times we believed we could make our plans and then ask God to bless them.  Perhaps you have tried to talk Him into approving of what you really wanted to do.  I believe that we have a tendency to try to get everything - including God to revolve around us.

Jesus told us in John 15:5,  “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."  It is simple.  Without Him we can do nothing.  We need Him for everything.  This idea frustrates us and our nature cries out for us to resist!  Surely there are things we can do - there must be things that we are capable of!  We resist this so strongly we import our independence into our faith.  In "Men On Their Knees, Kenneth Eaton wrote,

"Christianity becomes corrupted when we try to make life and 

God revolve around our little desires, and try to harness the vast energies 

of the divine resource to our plans and our dreams unrevised and 

unpurified by reference to the will of our Creator."

When our faith is corrupted in this way we find our lives void of the real power of God and our churches struggle to see God move in any significant way.  We live in a world that desperately needs to know God.  They need to see Him at work within us.  If we truly desire to see God at work both in and through us we must become totally dependent upon Him!