What is the one thing that we most often take for granted and take advantage of? I believe it to be independence. As one who has personally had it and lost it, I can say it is a priceless gift that has it's disadvantages. We all get a taste of the loss of independence when we have car trouble, illness for a few days, or our plans just not working out how we wanted them to. Oh how we want to break out the violin and play our sad song, because we feel a little less in control.
Independence is really a facade and a self sufficient lie that we believe of our selves. People claim all the credit of their successes but nothing is accomplished without God's intervention. NOTHING. Both our losses and gains are part of the work He is doing in our lives.
God gave us independence when He gave us freewill to choose Him as Lord of our lives, and not ourselves. Our life should be a journey of 'less of me and more of Jesus.' As I have progressively become weaker physically in my life, I see my dependence on God clearer than the light of day. He has provided for my needs that my body can no longer supply because He has not finished the work He started in me.
You may be as strong as an ox and feel as if you're in the prime of your life, but you are mere dust returning to dust without God's breath into you. You didn't create yourself so don't live as tho you alone are sustaining yourself.
Romans 9;16-18 ''It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.''
We are part of God's agenda and fulfilling His purpose through us, and not the other way around.
We are the clay, He is the potter, we will be what He wants us to be. We are just one accident, disease, or tragedy from independence to total dependence if that is His desire. Great Blog!! Love you.....
ReplyDeleteDad
Well……I wouldn’t say that God gave us independence --- I mean, look at us --- at ALL that God created! We are totally dependent on Him for EVERYthing! And this ‘we’ includes non-believers!!!
ReplyDeleteIf the sun didn’t rise……if the rain didn’t fall….. just those two things alone, which God alone sustains, would wipe us all off the face of the earth!
God alone is independent. He depends on nothing/no-one for His existence. He exists by His power alone. Man is totally dependent on God, for everything, though in his folly he recognizes/admits it not.
God gave us a will --- the capacity to choose. He gave us the ability to choose to know Him, to love Him, to obey Him or not. And it’s in choosing to not know Him, to not love Him, to not obey Him that man seeks to live independently of God.
lesley
I love that: "independence is a priceless gift that has its disadvantages." I think AMericans tend to look at independence as our perfect right, not gift, and one that has no disadvantages. We feel that independence (the right to work where we want to work, go where we want to go, do what we want to do) is necessary to really living. While dependence on others is at best inconvenient and at worst a theft of some sort - as in life has stolen something that rightfully belongs to us. But the truth is that we belong to God. And we often don't feel our need for Him until we come up against a wall that we can't climb over.
ReplyDeleteJohn the Baptist, when his disciples complained that Jesus was getting the notoriety, said to them, "He must increase, but I must decrease." Oh, that we would be so humble to recognize His ability and our disabilities!
ReplyDeleteWhat an encouraging blog! You are such an example! I could just go on and on.. what a blessing.
ReplyDeletesusan f.