At the beginning of my walk with God, I noticed that I needed to work on my dependence upon Him. If I needed help on something that would be nearly impossible to get, I would immediately involve God and ask Him. But if I had an issue that I thought I could handle, I would try to do it myself.
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The first time I realized that behavior was when I visited a church and the pastor was preaching about this topic. He used an illustration in his sermon that opened my eyes.
He told us about when his young daughter wanted to eat a candy, but it was wrapped, and she was trying to unwrap it by herself. But she was too young and he knew that she wouldn’t be able to do it.
He offered several times to help her and she refused. She was stubborn and insisted until she realized that there was no way she could do it alone, and she finally gave in and handed the candy to him. He quickly solved her problem and she was able to finally enjoy the candy.
He said that we do the same thing with God: we struggle thinking that we can do it ourselves. We ask for strength, wisdom, patience, but sometimes we forget to just ask Him for help.
I realized that I had more in common with that toddler than I wanted to admit. When I thought about my own behavior, I realized that I always thought that I had a legitimate point in trying to give it a shot first, before “bothering” God with it.
I also noticed that sometimes my pride was the reason that I didn’t go to the Lord right away. I wanted to feel capable of doing things myself.
What I learned is that God wants to participate in all aspects of our lives, He wants to be involved. When we get God involved, He will do what we can’t and show us what we can and should do. So we can focus our energy on what we can really handle.
I am most grateful to God that He is so loving and patient with me and He is always willing to teach me about Himself. This was one of the things He had to teach me about.
Sometimes He still has to refresh the lesson, tough…