Nothing on My Own
When the inevitable round of new-year-new-you articles and advertisements come out, my inbox fills with guilt-inducing, wishful-thinking, low-monthly-payment plans for transformation.
Jesus has His own plan for change. He started His earthly ministry with the message: “change your thinking.” This is much more slippery to grasp than a five-step plan to get organized or twenty-one days to change my eating habits. I am thick-headed and self-righteous enough that it usually takes an angry confrontation before I even begin to consider what might be wrong in my thinking.
Most of what is wrong in my thinking is independence: the belief that I can do it on my own. Alone. Solo. I have been taught from the time I was tiny that independence was the goal. It is every toddler’s battle-cry: “I do it!” “Do it self!” How relieved we are as parents when we no longer have to bend all the way down and tie little shoe-laces! And how proud when the child can ride a two-wheeler (and terrifying when he gets a driver’s license!)!
We do (and should) encourage and champion the survival skills that are needed for life, but operating as if we can to get to be as good as Jesus on our own is ridiculous! Jesus Himself lived His life on this planet in continual reliance on God for every need, every joy, every calling, every decision. He says: “the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing;” “I can do nothing on my own.”
From the account of creation to the shout at the end of Revelation, God’s desire, His pursuit, indeed His whole focus is relationship…with us. He is not after a personal improvement plan designed to “lift us up where we belong,” but after an interpersonal transformation that results in us, you and me, living in continuous conversation with and dependence on Him!
Keep reminding me of that, will you?
0 Comments