Self-confidence Vs. God-reliance

Self-confidence Vs. God-reliance

We were crushed and completely overwhelmed, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we learned not to rely on ourselves, but on God who can raise the dead. –2 Corinthians 1:8-9

I was in a conversation with a woman who is grieving for all the ways caring for her hydrocephalic daughter has affected her family and especially her marriage. She was especially dreading the increase in seizures the medical experts had told her to expect over the coming months. And then she said something I’ve heard many times: “But I know God will not give me more than I can handle.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” I told her. “That little quip is based on a misunderstanding of 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says that God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can withstand, but God never promised not to give you more difficulty or distress than you are able to handle on your own. In fact, I think he often gives us much more than we can handle so our eyes will be opened to how desperate we are for him.”

The ethos of our world is to bury our natural sense of inadequacy and inability in an avalanche of pep talks, telling ourselves, I can do it. I just need to believe in myself. Although we’re aiming for increased self-confidence, most of us fail in our efforts to appear self-reliant and self-assured, cool and in control (which is why falling or failing in public is so humiliating). But this failure is good for us. It helps us to stop kidding ourselves. Rather than seeking to become more self-confident, we need to strive to become more God-reliant, and if we want to do that, we have to root out our desire to appear all together and in control. This desire has deep roots. As we see in 2 Corinthians 1, it was so deeply rooted in Paul that God was still using hardship to increase his God-reliance twenty years into his missionary ministry.

What difference would it make in your attitude toward your struggles if you saw them as valued lessons in God-dependency? When you come to the end of your rope, can you see that you’ve finally arrived just where God wants you? At the end of your own intellectual, physical, and emotional resources, you can more fully depend on his. This is what he wants for you.

All-sufficient Savior, here I am at the end of myself, and now I find out this is just where you want me to be. Here I find you. Use the struggles in my life to make me less self-confident and self-reliant and more God-dependent.

DIGGING DEEPER