Four things to learn Part 2 090214
Dependence upon God.
Come on guys, we, as believers KNOW that everything depends upon God. There is very little doubt in our hearts and minds that everything lies in His hands. Right?
So, why do we think and feel and even live as though it didn’t? OK, I’m not proposing we sit around on our hands waiting for Him to get ‘er done. Certainly He graciously has a role for us to play in His providence but we seem to wobble between dependency and independence all too often.
Perhaps it’s an echo of all the expectations we were raised with, the conditional praise and affection we are so used to working for. Perhaps it’s that old monster “significance,” or “value” that we spend so much time chasing.
Regardless of what specific name we give it the root cause is, of course, sin. It’s that dark streak we inherited from Adam and which the world, the flesh and the Devil consistently and constantly affirm as a good thing. So- duhhhh - we need to identify the roots of this in our individual lives and we need to be busy about repenting.
But, how do we build that sense of dependence so that we are less prone to “do our own thing,” and thing we can handle it all?
After a lot of thought I can only come up with one way I believe will help us (help because the Holy Spirit is the real force behind any growth and change we experience).
The key - I think - is prayer. Not the routine kind of payer we’re all encouraged to engage in but constant intentional determined prayer. I have found the it is in prayer that i can connect with my dependence upon God. Bible reading is good, worship is good, works of kindness are good - but it is in real down and dirty prayer that I think we will be strengthened and encouraged and more aware of our dependence upon Him.
The good old Bible question, “what do you have that you have not received,” plays in my mind as I consider my dependence upon God. Of course, the answer is NOTHING and as that is true we need to be working (depending upon the Spirit) to keep that question always in the front of our minds.
We all know the other Bible challenge, “pray without ceasing.” Well there is good reason to put these two statements together and pray.
Consider just one day of your life. What has God blessed you with? How have you seen His hand? If your brakes worked every time you used them; if that chicken sandwich didn’t have some bacteria in it to make you sick or if you passed through a simple trial - He made it possible. So what can we be but grateful and prayerful?
Remember that old song , Count Your Blessings? Ever tried that? No, I don;t mean just enumerating the “biggies” but all of them - even the common and mundane blessings!
I look back over the past two months and sure, I can see some really, really, really big blessings - incredible blessings. But I can also see the common and mundane (mundane to us) blessing. There are so many simple and common blessings that we have enjoyed.
The yard sale is one. Oh how i hated the thought of doing that. I was willing to just to take it all to Goodwill and give it away instead of doing all the stuff a yard sale demands. But you know, I didn;t have to do any of that stuff. All I had to do was get it to the home a our friends who were hosting it and they just took over (thanks Mel).
Instead of an anxious day of yard-selling I was able to relax and enjoy the process as God blessed me with folks who were willing to step into my place and get ‘er done. That to me is a common and mundane blessing that can be easily overlooked. I can be thought of as the efforts of others or myself instead of the blessing it was.
Do you get my point? We need to really work at learning to see the hand of God in everything - both the mundane and the magnificent. As we labor to identify and acknowledge that God is at work in the tremendous and the trivial I think our propensity to independence will diminish.
God is not just God when we are facing something bigger than us. He is God even when we’re faced with something we figure we can handle. Not only is He still God but He is intimately involved as well. I mean really, you think He’s numbered the hairs on your head for fun?
I believe that the remedy we can apply to our propensity towards independence is to pay attention to and enumerate (and give thanks for) all the blessing we experience. Prayer, for me is the place and time to really do this. AND I don’t mean “prayer time,” I mean prayer in the moment - prayer without ceasing. Prayer of thanks when you get that parking place, prayer of thanks when your brakes work, prayer of thanks when you experience a gentle kindness from another.
I’ve committed myself to work on this “prayer without ceasing,” process. I want to be constantly and consistently thinking, “God is in this,” no matter how small or trivial I would otherwise have thought.
In all things give thanks-pray without ceasing - because what do you have that you have not received?
