“Self-reliance is weakness.”
If you are a human male, that statement should cause you to bristle a bit. We need to be self-reliant, right? If a man does not work, he does not eat. A man should not be lazy. A man should protect what he loves. A man should know how to change a tire.
Self-reliance on the side of the highway is different than spiritual self-reliance. A bus is barreling towards us, and we need to jump out of its way.
In an entirely predictable turn of events, the abandonment of society’s institutions by faithful Christian men led to something else filling the void. Something dark.
Here’s the “strong man” as portrayed by this new movement of anti-woke man-boy culture warriors:
He thanks only himself for bringing home the metaphorical and literal bacon.
He has no desire to be led, taught, or mentored by experienced men.
He hates it when the guy at work demonstrates a better way of doing something, and he’ll avoid doing it that way out of pride.
If he shows up at church at all, his blood boils when the pastor charges him to repent.
He reads passages of Scripture like “when I am weak, then I am strong,” and scoffs.
This is where self-reliance leads. It wears armor engraved with images of ourselves as god and king. You and I, at our worst, are this man. It is a truly fearful place to be.
Let’s look at a different kind of Man.
He relied on the power of the Spirit and the love of the Father for His daily bread.
He was taught everything He knew by His Father.
He was led into the wilderness to be tempted by another, and overcame that temptation by Another.
He said, in the most critical moment of His earthly life, “not my will, but Yours be done.”
What was it that enabled Christ to achieve these feats of faith? It wasn’t self-reliance, but dependence on Another: the Holy Spirit.
Do we think we can survive this dangerous pilgrim journey with any less dependence on the Spirit than the Man who was God in the flesh?
It won’t work to depend on the Holy Spirit in broad feel-good ways. We depend on simple things all the time, like the car starting when we turn the key or the ladder rung supporting our weight as we climb it. We must be more than just dependent.
We must be fiercely dependent.
Ferociously dependent. Relentlessly dependent. Violently dependent. We must attack and kill every nook and cranny of our hearts that desires to rely on ourselves and our own ability.
We need to itemize every part of our day and ask the Spirit to insert Himself into it. We must take our minds captive to the obedience of Christ, who Himself was obedient to the Spirit. It says in the book of Romans that the Spirit of God searches the mind of God and knows the will of God. He may not manifest to you in the form of feelings you can trace, but the fact that you are submitting to Him pleases Him. He will guide your thoughts and decision-making.
When you submit your life to Him, the Spirit will test you. He will also give you what you need to overcome the test triumphantly. The Spirit that led Jesus into the wilderness is the same Spirit who brought to mind the Scriptures needed to counterattack the assaults the devil threw at Him.
David screamed through his psalmist pen that he needed the living God as much as a deer in the desert needed water. You die in three to five days without water. If we need God as desperately as water, it follows that our soul dies without the Spirit.
You have that Holy Spirit living inside of you. Rest on Him. Lean on Him. Submit to Him. Rely on Him. Be covered by Him. Do not lean on your own understanding, for “when you are weak, then you are strong.”1
Praise and arrows.
2 Corinthians 12:10