As a general rule, the world is clearly very impressed by people who are self-reliant. Everywhere we look, we can find this attitude being praised and admired.
For example, there
are many films that make self-reliance one of the key qualities of the hero or
heroine. The audience are encouraged to think highly of and even idolise
characters who can manage on their own and don’t need anyone else’s help.
The same attitude can
often be found in music too. Take, for instance, the well-known song by Sister
Sledge, ‘We Are Family’. This song includes the line:
‘Have faith in you
and the things you do. You won’t go wrong.’
In the eyes of the
vast majority of people, you could hardly find a more innocent and uncontroversial
lyric as this.
Or how many times, in
all sorts of contexts, have you heard a person say to someone else, ‘Believe in
yourself’?
This is meant to be
seen as positive encouragement that no one would disagree with.
God’s way is
very different
As so often, however,
the Christian way is very different from the world’s way. In fact, it is
difficult to overstate how wrong self-reliance is. To be self-reliant is actually
to fail completely to live as a human being should live. It is a million miles
from how God designed us to be.
In reality, God made us to be completely dependent on Him for
everything, to be constantly looking to Him for help and direction. We are creatures, under the hand and under the
authority of our Creator who loves us, and we need to recognise that this is
our place. Instead of being self-reliant, we should be God-reliant in whatever
we do.
Biblical passages
against self-reliance
The tone of the whole
Bible is against self-reliance, even if this is not always made explicit. However,
there are also many passages which more plainly show us how wrong it is.
For example, in
Jeremiah 17:5 God says:
‘Cursed
is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns
away from the LORD.’ (ESV)
In this verse God doesn’t just say that it is a mistake
to have the attitude of self-reliance. He says that someone who does this is
cursed! This is pretty blunt, isn’t it?
Or take John 15:5,
where Jesus tells us:
‘Whoever
abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me
you can do nothing.’ (ESV)
With these words,
Jesus makes it clear that self-reliance is going to be fruitless as far as
doing things for Him is concerned.
Similarly, in 2
Corinthians 12:9 the apostle Paul refers to an occasion when Jesus said to him:
‘My
grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ (ESV)
And then in the next verse he remarks:
‘For when I am weak, then I am strong.’ (ESV)
To be in a position of weakness is a far cry from any
form of self-reliance.
This list of Bible passages could be continued at length.
Doing everything with Jesus
In order to become
more God-reliant and less self-reliant, one thing we can do is make it our goal
to do everything we do with Jesus. I don’t just mean that we should try to
tackle every problem we encounter with the Lord’s help. I mean that we should
aim to treat everything we do as a joint venture with Him, whether or not there
is anything difficult about it.
That is not to say that we should try to be constantly
conscious in our minds of doing everything with the Lord. I think that would be
unrealistic and would probably be exhausting. I just mean that deeper down, in
our spirits, we should attempt to rest constantly in Him and do everything we
do with Him.
Believing that
we can do what God enables us to do
Despite all I have
said so far, there is a sense in which sometimes Christians
need to believe that they can do more than they think.
For example, there
are times when God has given a Christian a gift, but this person wrongly thinks
that they are not able to do what they are actually able to do. They then
need to be encouraged to believe that they are able to do it.
But this is very different
from self-reliance. This is really about understanding what God has done in us,
and how He can work through us.
See also:
Getting
into the Habit of Doing Everything with Jesus
The
Gravity of the Sin of Pride
Trusting
God When We Are Not Sure What to Do
