07/30/2024
It takes truth to combat a lie. Satan's strategies haven't ever changed. He is still the father of lies, fear and darkness. The biggest lie that has messed all of us up since the beginning is the lie of self-sufficiency AKA "Independence." God created us to be 100% dependent on him, but most of us spin our wheels trying to show God and each other that we are big girls and boys and can handle life just fine without Him or anyone else. We live in a world where independence, self-reliance and apathetic rebellion and pride are touted as confident, admirable and in fact the GOAL.
As a true follower of the Holy Spirit, our lives function very differently than the world. We decrease so that he will increase, we trust and acknowledge Him in all of our ways and He directs us. His power is made perfect in our weakness. We realize as we mature in Christ, our dependence on Him increases as well.
This lie of “Maturity Equals Independence” is especially true among believers/religious folks. Most of us in the religious realm start out with a humble and broken heart. After we've gained a little knowledge and successfully accomplished a few religious acts many of us become arrogant, forgetting not only where we came from but more importantly who is truly in charge and most important!
Some examples of this very human condition are Cain (in the story of Cain and Abel God had no regard for Cain’s offering and it ticked Cain off. He thought he deserved more. He was comparing himself to his brother.), Pharaoh (story of Moses’ Exodus), Miriam (Numbers 12 She thought she knew better than Moses regarding his wife. Moses spoke with God directly! Hello?! *Leprosy 7 days!), Haman (insisted the Jews bow to him *Hung on his own gallows), King Nebuchadnezzar (Thought of himself as God), Pharisees and Sadducees (Thought they were better than most everyone), Martha (distracted with much serving *She missed relationship with Jesus!), Ananias and Sapphira (They agreed together to test the Spirit of God *Died immediately), Judas (Knew Jesus intimately, but traded his relationship with Him for money)
When pride fully settles into our hearts we begin to give ourselves credit and seemingly dismiss God's hand in virtually everything, because now we are "Good" boys and girls and no longer need to be cleaned up. Furthermore, we do not need relationship with anyone else, as we have our life put together well. This mentality couldn't be any more false. Satan is still questioning us with the same question "Did God really say?" And He is still making the same false statements "You will NOT surely die! You will be like God knowing (what is) good and evil (for your own life)."
Being dependent on God is well illustrated in the act of saving a drowning person. Only when the drowning one relinquishes control is he/she able to be saved. We must stop striving to save ourselves (religion). We must let go of any preconceived notions about who we are and accept who He says that we are. “We are human beings, not human doings.” There is nothing that we can do to earn his love and nothing that we ever do will separate us from His love.
Many of us fight God’s love like we would fight a lifeguard who is trying to save us, which doesn’t make any good sense if we want to live! We fight His love for us by striving after what we believe is good and Godly (our own definition.) Or we compare ourselves to each other and model ourselves after someone else instead of embracing who He has made inside of each of us. As we accept his hand and his words into our daily lives we find out there's no need to strive or fight for survival any longer.
Jesus can't do anything apart from His Father (John 5:30) and we can't do anything apart from Jesus! (John 15:5)
May I suggest we spend our lives finding out who God is so that we can combat this lie that we don’t need Him. As we pursue God we realize we are made in his image, but we are not and will never be God. There is only one God. And without Him we don’t exist. He is more holy, perfect, amazing, phenomenal, spectacular, and more IN CONTROL of the world then any human will ever be.
Satan's plan is to isolate us from God by convincing us that we don’t need Him or anyone else. He uses our performance driven mentalities to steer us straight into a self-sufficient brick wall! As we drift further and further away from our Father, Creator and Lover of our souls God becomes a distant audience that we perform for (who may or may not like our performance) instead of an intimate Savior, Comforter and Father that we can't live without. He desires a humble and contrite heart and isn’t interested in our performance, but rather our heart.
He desires childlike faith. He compares us to sheep and He is our shepherd. He died and was resurrected because we just couldn't cut it on our own. WHY are we still trying?! A life fully surrendered doesn't see equality with God as something that could ever be obtained, but rather knows that every breath we use is His, not ours. Jesus was equal with God and still chose to surrender His deity while on earth. (Philippians 2:1-11)
The perfect God of the universe has already set the standard for the humans that he created. The standard is this: He is God. We are not. He can live without us. We cannot live one moment without Him. We are TOTALLY dependent on Him whether we choose it or not. God does not have an identity problem He knows exactly who He is and is confident in that.
