Last Updated on September 1, 2021 by Stacy Averette
“I can do it by myself.”
I remember when my kids first began to say that as toddlers. Nearly broke my heart.
Then, as teens, they said it when I’d try to do something for them that I’d taught them to do for themselves or something they wanted to learn to do for themselves. It’s part of growing up.
The bittersweet truth is we want our kids to grow up and be independent. They outgrow needing us in many of the ways they need us as children. Our relationship will continue to change and grow.
But I’ve been reminded today that while that may be true of the parent/child relationship it is not true of our relationship with our Heavenly Father.
We must grow more and more dependent on God with each passing year. In every relationship and role, we must cling fiercely to Him.
I cannot do it—-any of it—-by myself.
But I try. Every day. In some way.
I go on my merry way parenting, teaching, managing, friending, wife-ing,—-acting as if I can do it by myself.
Epic fail.
“I think I can, I think can” might have helped the Little Engine in a child’s book but it’s a shallow, useless philosophy for life.
The pages of God’s Word reveal heartbreaking examples of men and women trying to do life independent of God.
But the Bible also reveals the blessed life lived through the One Who Died in Our Place.
I can do all things, if I do all things through Christ, the Apostle Paul reminds us in Philippians 4:13.
We can parent, teach, grieve, manage, help, suffer, lead, serve, wait . . .
Whatever life requires of us, we can do if we do it all through Christ.
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:16-19
May we teach and train and model for our children (however old they are), a life of total dependence on God.
It’s a lesson we’ll never outgrow.