CRAZINESS: Increase my helplessness

My youngest daughter just turned 1, which means she’s crawling, beginning to go up the stairs, eating more and different types of foods, and playing with baby dolls. In these small ways she’s beginning to become less dependent on her mother and father. Yet, the one thing she does that I totally love, is when she gets on her knees, stretches out her arms and squeezes her little hands together. She wants to be picked up, but she is also totally dependent upon me to pick her up.

How many times have you and I prayed for God to make us stronger, wiser and better? In other words, ways by which we would feel better prepared to live and face this life. This type of prayer is good and necessary. But what if I suggested to you that you also pray for God to increase your helplessness? Does that sound like craziness?! It does, since today our world and our mentality is to become less and less dependent on others. For some, their whole life is spent on making themselves so stable that if everything else falls around them, they have everything they need in themselves and their wisdom, and in their possessions and at their disposal. But this is not the Christian life. Ironically, the more mature a Christian grows the more dependent he becomes upon God. In our helplessness God has opportunity to strengthen us, but more importantly to change us.

In Luke 10:21, Jesus rejoices that God the Father has hidden the Kingdom of God from the wise and understanding. This means that God has not revealed His purposes to those who are self-sufficient. Why? Because the self-sufficient have no need for a Savior. They do not perceive that they are in fact utterly helpless. At the same time, verse 21 says, Jesus rejoices that the Kingdom of God has been revealed to little children. This means that God has revealed His purposes to those that are not self-sufficient, but instead to those, who like infants, are wholly and fully dependent. They do perceive that they are in fact totally helpless. And what is it that they need? They need to depend upon Him, Jesus, the One who will die on the Cross for the sins of the world. Jesus, the Savior, rejoices that the self-sufficient cannot find Him and He rejoices that the helpless and dependent will find Him. This is because God will be most glorified, not when He is treated as something that we need, but when He is perceived as everything that we need.

Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. We must recognize that our helplessness before God does not end when we believe in Jesus and what He did on the Cross. It continues on throughout all our life, so that in every circumstance we need to be praying, “God, increase my helplessness.” Why? Because depending upon Him guarantees our help and strength. This might not mean getting through the circumstance immediately or supernaturally. It may mean getting through slowly and patiently, day in and day out. But it is our helplessness, not our self-sufficiency, that God reaches down to touch with His faithfulness.

We must all be like my daughter, who though she is growing, still reaches up to have me pick her up. Somehow she knows that unless I reach down she could never reach me.