A few years ago, when I was particularly in need of God’s guidance on a daily basis, Proverbs 3:5–7 became my favourite verses. Here is The Message version: Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume you know it all.
The longer I am a Christian the more I realise that the only way to live even vaguely well is with an attitude of total dependency on God. This is hard for people who are not naturally dependent, although we all know that life has a way of forcing most of us at some point to recognise our deep need of help. It’s just a shame when we have to learn it the hard way.
The odd thing about being in a dependent relationship with God is that he also wants to empower us – empower us to do what we do well, and empower us to be gifted people. So we receive gifts and talents from him in the first place, and then we start to use them (with his help), and then we start to think we might be pretty good at it! And the thing is, we probably are getting ‘good’ at something, but only as good as the connection we have with the one who gave us the gifts in the first place and who helps us to use them well.
