The significance of being dependent/finite

It is obvious we are dependent beings. We see this demonstrated on a daily basis. We must have food, air, water and shelter to remain alive. If any one of these are not available we will perish physically.

We are also dependent beings spiritually and emotionally. This is evidenced by our constant need and ongoing attempt to find a sense of value, purpose and meaning. 

Why is this significant?

*This shows we must have/need meaning otherwise why the constant seeking of it.

*It also shows our attempts at acquiring it on our own, independent of God, are inadequate.

Our constant focus on self instead of God is the result and indication of our rebellion to this dependence/design.

God is the source of love, life and all things, we are not. We are designed to be consciously and deliberately connected with him and nothing else as our source for true, lasting meaning.

And if he is, to think we can find life outside and apart from him is harmful in the greatest possible way. It is like being on a road you hope and believe leads to the best possible destination when its doing exactly the opposite. It is the ultimate deception that leads to our greatest harm.

When we rebel from our design of finding true life in, through and from our Creator, we are in a *deep and constant state of pain/feeling worthless, without lasting meaning and purpose. We unsuccessfully seek to fill this void without God, when only God alone can fill it.

The good news is in His kindness, God made a way to restore and reconnect us, if we will receive his offer i.e. stop our rebellion (distrust) and start trusting him.

If we refuse his offer to reconnect-unite and find true life in him we remain in our state of pain-feeling worthless without lasting meaning and purpose. This leads ultimately to our greatest harm, not to mention dishonoring to God.
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*we are often not fully aware of our painful longing for meaning-purpose-value until we are pressed beyond our natural ability to cope i.e. when using whatever it is we use and depend on to find meaning, independent of God - our true source - is no longer possible.

For a further discussion click here.

Being freed of brokenness

In our attempts to 

1. Make life work best 

2. Get what we ¹need or want

 

3. Protect ourselves -- e.g. self-defense mechanisms... 

We develop unsound patterns of behavior from the ²earliest stages of life. These patterns become embedded into our personality and character early on - i.e. how we relate to life and others - in such a deep and subtle way, we are not fully ²conscious of them and how broken we and these patterns are i.e. we have unconsciously developed deeply imbedded patterns of brokenness by which we operate.

Only over time, as we come to see and trust in the fullness of God's infinite love for us, are we able to acknowledge, turn from and no longer allow these broken patterns to hold us back and cripple us with shame and self-condemnation but ultimately be freed from them.

However, seeing them is only the first step to overcoming them. But a vital step. We can not rise above and overcome a destructive behavior pattern or character flaw if we first don't know it exists.

These tendencies are also so embedded they never completely go away. They become a fixed part of our personality.

Once we are ³aware of these patterns and begin to be freed from them by God's love, we can easily ⁴slip back into these default tendencies, if we do not remain diligent and alert (guard our hearts) in our trust in God and His infinite love for us.

But neither do these tendencies have to control and dominate us. As we come to know and trust in God's infinite love, God becomes the dominant force/driver in our life/conduct instead of these deeply embedded and broken patterns. Though the tendencies and our inclination to them remain, we are increasingly freed from our brokenness and empowered to rise above and overcome it through our constantly growing trust in God's unrelenting love. It is our trust in His love that enables us to overcome these tendencies. As our trust grows, so does our ability to break free. God's love, instead of our broken attempts of self-love and self-deliverance, becomes the primary influence/force/drive behind our behavior.

As we learn to trust his infinite love we find it superior to our finite self-loving (expressed in and through our embedded tendencies and broken patterns of living and relating to the world and others) and we become more and more freed from these attempts to secure life for and by ourselves.

Awareness of these areas of brokenness and God's ceaseless super-abounding love in spite of them is key to being free.

Ironically even though these tendencies are always with us, ³lurking just underneath the potentially more powerful influence of God's love, they are not a bad thing but good. Once we are aware of these tendencies, these patterns of brokenness require us to more diligently and constantly look to God to remind ourselves of his love to continually overcome and rise above them. Where we are weakest (in natural resources to live as we are called and designed i.e. for the glory of God) we must be strongest in God's power/love to do so. 

To say it another way, our points of brokenness/greatest weakness also become the points at which we must depend on God most to overcome them, which is a good thing, not bad.

"...where sin increased, grace abounded all the more," Rom 5:20b

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¹think of an infant crying when they are hungry, tired, or need a dry diaper. The crying itself is not wrong (no more than praying is). It is how we let others know our needs before we can speak. How we use the crying i.e. why we cry (and later use our words or actions) is the issue. Do these become a means to simply convey our needs or an attempt to control our world in an unhealthy way i.e. to manipulate and control others to meet our needs?

At our earliest stages, we learn patterns of behavior to get/take what we need. God is not part of the equation in this development (unless our parents lovingly, constantly, and patiently point us to God as the ultimate source of all we need and they as the initial, primary means by which God meets those needs) i.e. we come into the world naturally inclined (even determined) to make life work the best we can without God. 

²There is even a field of study called Affectology that purports that we develop patterns of how to respond to our world prenatally. These responses develop and become embedded in us emotionally, not verbally, since we develop verbal skills months or years after we are born. These embedded patterns of responding are called preverbal scripts.  i.e. emotional, nonverbal (vs verbal) messages that embed within us emotionally (vs rationally) in response to negative emotional or physical input from the world outside of us (which is why parents are encouraged by some to give positive input - sing to them, play music to them, talk to them etc - to the child developing inside. The emotional state of the mom and her environment is also being conveyed to her child within. Mom being in a state of peace, contentment, fear or worry communicate to the child emotionally). Once these scripts are set in place, we replay in our hearts lies about who we are and how we can best meet our need for love i.e that we are not image-bearers of God designed to find in Him all we need, but we are our own gods who must (and will) find life independent of God the best way we know-how. Incredibly, this field of study shows that even in the womb, we are bent away from God. 

Only constant reminders of God's love and promised care coupled with trust in these can overcome these messages (lies) and the resulting broken and embedded patterns of distrust.

³Being challenged beyond our “natural” abilities to cope, surfaces these broken patterns revealing them and their inadequacy to aid us in handling challenges.

I have natural in quotations because these broken patterns are coping mechanisms we have developed by using our natural abilities along with any external resources to help us cope.

These challenges can be as extreme pain and suffering beyond our natural ability to endure or obedience (exertion) beyond our natural ability to carry it out.

⁴As our confidence in God's love exceeds our dependence on our broken patterns of relating, God's love becomes the new driving force in our life and behavior. When our confidence in God's love drops below - is less influential than our dependence on these default behavior patterns to make life work without God, we fall back into those tendencies and patterns.

Over time, as our faith matures, our confidence in God's love becomes more consistent so that we are less inclined to fall back into our broken default patterns. But those patterns are always there. What changes is our confidence in God's love...it increases, i.e. The primary force that drives our behavior is no longer dependent on the old broken, default patterns but instead on God's love.

prayer...evidence of humility

When we pray God always gives us what we need most. If he doesn't give what we request, it's either not what we need most or we are not sufficiently humbling ourselves (i.e. praying) to receive it.

To say it another way, we may need humility more than what we are asking for or think we need or want, so keep praying and when you are truly humble/dependent on God he ¹may grant it. 

Prayer isn't about "getting things" from God for ourselves, it's about being in a posture -- of humility -- to receive things so we might advance God's kingdom and glory more effectively. 

Our greatest need is God himself. The primary disposition necessary to experience him to the fullest of his infinite glory is humility expressed in or by our dependence i.e. a sense of desperate need for God above a need for anything and everything else. Prayer is the greatest evidence of this humility/dependence.

If God withholds providing for our secondary needs, it is to strengthen awareness of our primary need for Him, thereby increasing a closer union/communion with Him.

The greatest evidence of our awareness of a primary need for him is prayer. Prayer is the language/expression/fruit of humility. You may have tremendous gifts, skills, and resources, but if you do not have humility you can not truly walk with God as you were designed to. He is the infinite Creator, we are his finite/dependent creatures. 

A focus on others

The best way to know we are truly dependent on God is when we seek (pray for) things for the honor/benefit of others; Christ first and our neighbors second.

We can ²not focus on others if we are not drawing from the love of God first. We must receive God's (sacrificial) love to give/love sacrificially.

The more connected we are to God the more love we have and the more lovely (more able to love sacrificially) we become.

And we are not drawing from the love of God unless we are in union/harmony with him.

And we are not in union with him without humility.

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¹actually he will grant it when we are truly humble. I say "may" only because God alone knows when our hearts are truly in a sufficient posture of humility to receive it as God intends; we just think we know. And if we think we are when we are not, we will wrongly expect what we are praying for.

This is why we are encouraged to persevere in prayer. Our persistence itself is a humbling process. If we persist long enough we will be sufficiently humbled to receive the answer we seek or over time God will show us what we are seeking is not honoring to God and we will stop asking.

Often what we seek is not the issue to why our prayers go unanswered. Sufficient humility is i.e. our disposition in asking and seeking it.

²Why is this? We were never designed to be the source of love but rather conduits of the true Source i.e. God. Unless and until we are "plugged in" to the Source, infinite love cannot flow to and through us. 

We can love -- give and receive it -- because we are like God. But we are recipients and responders to love, not the cause or source of it. 

Everything is a gift

If something is given with clear instructions on how to correctly use it and we accept that gift under those conditions but use it as we see fit, what will likely happen?

To the gift: 

It would not operate properly and likely will eventually break.

To us: 

We would not gain the maximum benefit intended from its use.

Our relation to the giver: 

We would be dishonoring (disrespecting) the giver

The givers relation to us: 

1. The giver may allow us to experience the full consequences of not using the gift as designed since instructions were clearly given but ignored. 

2. The giver also may rightfully withhold future gifts since we have demonstrated our word is not honorable/trustworthy. 

Everything we have and are is a gift; our time, skills as well as all external resources (food, water, shelter, air, material goods etc).

Misuse of God's good gifts is contrary to us as well as the gifts, not just to God, whether we agree or not.

Everything has a design, function and purpose and if we are to see it operate at its optimal level and fulfill its optimal purpose, we must use it accordingly.  

The one who knows best why they exist and how they operate is the designer of those things/gifts. 

To operate things according to the designer's/giver's will is to also operate according to God's design of things and therefore to operate at an optimal level.  

The designer of those gifts is always the one who best knows how their creations work and must always be rightfully heeded and confided in for the best results/outcome.

How are we created and designed to operate? 

We were designed to love God with everything we have and are and our neighbor as ourselves i.e. To know God and to make him known; to spread his renown/glory so others might also live as designed for God's highest glory and their maximum joy and benefit.

Knowing and loving God is not something we initiate but the fruit of being known and loved by God i.e. We are not love initiators but love responders. To say it succinctly, we love him because he first loves us.