For most of my life I remember praying, even begging, for God to fix me. I just knew that if God would take away my pride or my selfishness, if God would take away my junk I would be free. I even convinced myself that I wanted it so that I could “serve Him better.”
The past several weeks has been filled with God bringing a lot of my issues to the surface. I’ve been seeing more and more of the junk that comes with being human. I’ve been more aware than ever of my pride, my selfishness, my judgmental thoughts, etc… Through all of this I’ve been pleading with God to fix it. Take it away from me God.
Yet through all of this I heard God say, “Ryan, stop asking for adequacy, and ask for dependence.”
That is big for me. That goes against my years and years of striving to be good enough. As Christians we are offered and we offer steps: “14 Steps to a Better Marriage”, “11 Steps to Humility”, “26 Ways to Love Your Neighbors”, but in all of this we tend to neglect what Jesus truly called us to.
In John 5:19 Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”
Jesus got it. He knew that his power was in the Father. He knew that his life was in the Father. Here we are running around trying to do life on our own, and Jesus is walking in relationship, in restful intimacy with the Father. When I take time to look at my motives for asking God to rid me of my pride it becomes pretty clear to me that I was striving for adequacy, to be able to do it on my own.
Living a life of dependence on God is a lot harder than living by steps, rules, and regulations. As humans, we gravitate to formulas and cookie cutter rules. Sure it’s easy, but there is no life in it. There is no relationship in it.
One of my favorite quotes is in “Wild at Heart” by John Eldridge:
“The problem with modern Christianity’s obsession with principles is that it removes any real conversation with God. Find a principle, apply the principle—what do we need God for?”
God never intended us to live by right and wrong. He intended us to live dependent on Himself as Jesus did in intimate relationship. In a world where independence is freedom, God is calling us to new levels of freedom in utter dependence on Him.
