God Doesn’t Help Those Who Help Themselves!
- Vicent Nemeyimana
- August 19, 2018
- Word of Life
The most barbaric lie: God helps those who help themselves!
God does not help those who help themselves, but those who do not move even an inch to help themselves. There is no single minute or second in your whole life when you can help yourself to accomplish even the ‘stupidiest’ task under the sun.
Yesterday, I heard a motivational speaker on radio saying that there are issues she deals with herself and there are those she just hands over to God and offers herself peace of mind. And that was barbaric too. For God’s sake, she does not even handle her eating or sitting herself!
The preachers of above thoughts are assuming that there are some easy issues in our lives that we can handle ourselves minus first waking up God. The preachers of ‘God helps those who help themselves’ is simply assuming that at least there are some tasks we can accomplish minus first involving God. And I ask; which tasks under this sun can you make happen minus God’s input, minus His grace?
It is very important for us to know that everything happens only because God makes it possible. Nothing, not even your moving toes, lips, eating, walking, smelling, winning a class monitor position or winning a country’s president position can happen without God’s inputs or grace. In this aspect, winning a class monitor’s position is the same as winning a nation’s president post as long as God says yes. Simple tasks and issues can be the hardest and most challenging and even fail if God does not take part. In addition, hardest tasks and issues can be as easy and weak as water as long as God says yes.
What does the Bible say? “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:3). “I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.” (Jeremiah 10:23).
Wait! Usually, verses like these and the commonest one of “with God, all things are possible” are considered to be spiritual heavyweights revealing the truth that we can’t be righteous or fulfill His commands minus His grace enabling us but the same verses can be applied literally to mean that nothing, including the worldly things we do-our evil acts too is possible without God’s inputs. And so, the Bible warns us;
“For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” (Galatians 6:3). Yeah, without God, there is nothing, no reality. This is not about being somewhere managing and overseeing things; it is about Him being the part of the substances that make things what they are. In other words, God’s disappearance would mean disappearance of reality, of soil, water, breathe, time, space, and all things as we know them. In the words of Fritz Chery;
“Without God you would have no life at all. Outside of Christ, there is no reality. There is no logic. There is no reason for anything. Everything was made for Christ. Your next breath comes from Christ and is to go back to Christ.”
Understanding this important theological concept can even help you maneuver around the issue of grace and obedience that many mingle around and end up sidelining with one more than with the other. Let’s try to think about it too; the gospel of grace says that God extends his merciful hand to us and makes us His children, deserving heaven, all good things, and He Himself, not because we are good or obedient but because of grace, undeserved favor. The gospel of obedience indeed says that our call is to obey God and staying away from all forms of sin and evil.
The confusion; which one is which; obedience or grace or both?
As Christians, don’t we have a duty to pray and obey God’s word? Bake Robert Tumuhaise likes these things. And I agree with him. We can’t say that grace is all we need (oh no, actually, it’s what we should say) and so we can live the way we want. But yes, we can say that it’s all grace that we need and not any works for indeed there can’t be works, more so pleasing works minus God’s grace.
What am I saying? I am saying that even the obedience, the ability to stand your legs and refuse to commit evil is God-given, a product of grace. In other words, you can’t even practice the obedience if it wasn’t given or made possible by God’s grace. In the end, you really have done nothing at all; it is only God’s grace at work in you.
We have written tens of articles about this at The Complete You Ministry and I hope you have been inspired. God bless you all.
www.miklahlife.com, The Complete You Ministry
