Journey into Lightl

My wife is a very sweet person. She is easy to love. Yet, for a long time I often found my self-centeredness blocking me from making her feel loved. So, I would redouble my efforts to love her better. But alas, she would tell me time after time that this or that did not make her feel loved.

I finally concluded that I was not going to make her feel loved without some outside help. I felt helpless!

Also, for all my life I have relied on my body as being indestructible. I could rely on it supporting me in whatever I did. But nine months ago it began to wobble on me. After four hospital stays in the last nine months I have finally concluded that my body is not indestructible. Where do I go for physical security? I feel helpless!

What It Means to be Helpless

It means that we know deeply that we can’t do what we need to do without God’s help.

A few years ago I finally realized that I couldn’t help people grow spiritually without God working, no matter how skilled and knowledgeable I became.

Why Knowing Our Helplessness Is Good

It is good to know our helplessness because we will often not rely on God to help us unless we know deeply that we can’t do it. If there is even the slightest chance we can avoid dependency on God, our independent spirit will tend to go it alone.

And if this is what we do often, we are wasting our lives- for only that which is done in obedience to God’s will, in his power (as a result of knowing our helplessness) and for his purposes will be rewarded in heaven (I Corinthians 3:10-15).

I am currently mentoring a small group of medical students. I told them this week how hard it will be down the road for them to accept their helplessness so that they may receive God’s supernatural power.

They will have to deal with the temptations that will come from being gifted intellectually, the respect and approval they will get from society, and their material status. They will be sorely tempted to be motivated to forgo the humbling process of accepting their helplessness and God’s help and instead rely on their resources to earn worth, approval, and security.

But it doesn’t have to be that way for them, or for the rest of us.

How We Can Live in the Reality of Our Helplessness

We live in the reality of our helplessness by depending on the importance of admitting our helplessness, so the door to receiving God’s Almighty strength is opened.

This happens as we ask and depend on God changing us so that we can accept our helplessness and rely on his presence and strength.

We can learn like Paul did you to rejoice in our helplessness.

“And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in [helplessness].’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my [helplessness], so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with [helplessness], with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am [helpless] then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-11).

So, rather than running away from the truth of our helplessness, we need to embrace it. We need to face the reality that to live for God we need to become content with our helplessness.

But accepting our helplessness is so painful. It’s much easier to live in the illusion of self-sufficiency that the world tries to get us to buy into. But the truth is that we are helpless to live the wonderful life that God has designed for us to live (Ephesians 2:10).

The verse that helps me the most to accept my helplessness is Jesus’ reminder in John 15:5 that “apart from Me you can do nothing of [eternal benefit].”