Focal passage: 2 Chronicles 14:9-15
In a previous lesson I mentioned doing a preceptorship as a part of my nursing training. During that time, I would work with a practicing nurse, watching what he did to take care of patients. He would gradually hand over more and more responsibility to me until, finally, I was ready to take care of patients on my own. I could always call on him when I needed him for something, but the expectation was for me to do things on my own.
Many people treat their relationship with God like that. They think that spiritual maturity is growing to the point of doing more and more on their own. In reality, spiritual maturity is not becoming less and less dependent on God, but rather growing more and more in our dependence on Him.
We must daily train ourselves to depend on, trust in and walk with Him. We must never see Him simply as our “safety valve” to call on when we get ourselves in over our head. Through consistent prayer and submission, we must keep ourselves in a posture of dependence. That way, when a major crisis arises, we will run the well-trod path to our Father we depend on, rather than responding in our flesh and our own strength, trying to work it out on our own until we become totally desperate.
King Asa was faced with an impossible situation, humanly speaking, facing an army twice his size. Rather than slinking into hopelessness or trying to walk in self-reliance, he responded by taking his situation to God in prayer. He acknowledged that God is the one to whom every person should turn – those with great strength and those with none. He helps “the mighty and those without strength.”
He calls each to depend on Him.
Have you established the daily pattern of depending on God as you submit to Him and seek Him in prayer? Have you beaten down that daily path such that when difficulty comes, you will do what you’ve trained your heart to do, call out to the one on whom your life depends?