The Importance of Being God-Reliant Rather Than Self-Reliant Free Reprint Article

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The Importance of Being God-Reliant Rather Than Self-Reliant

by Max Aplin
1/06/2025 / Christian Living

As a general rule, the world is clearly very impressed by people who are self-reliant. Everywhere we look, we can find this attitude being praised and admired.

For example, there are many films that make self-reliance one of the key qualities of the hero or heroine. The audience are encouraged to think highly of and even idolise characters who can manage on their own and don’t need anyone else’s help.

The same attitude can often be found in music too. Take, for instance, the well-known song by Sister Sledge, ‘We Are Family’. This song includes the line:

‘Have faith in you and the things you do. You won’t go wrong.’

In the eyes of the vast majority of people, you could hardly find a more innocent and uncontroversial lyric as this.

Or how many times, in all sorts of contexts, have you heard a person say to someone else, ‘Believe in yourself’?

This is meant to be seen as positive encouragement that no one would disagree with.

God’s way is very different

As so often, however, the Christian way is very different from the world’s way. In fact, it is difficult to overstate how wrong self-reliance is. To be self-reliant is actually to fail completely to live as a human being should live. It is a million miles from how God designed us to be.

In reality, God made us to be completely dependent on Him for everything, to be constantly looking to Him for help and direction. We are creatures, under the hand and under the authority of our Creator who loves us, and we need to recognise that this is our place. Instead of being self-reliant, we should be God-reliant in whatever we do.

Biblical passages against self-reliance

The tone of the whole Bible is against self-reliance, even if this is not always made explicit. However, there are also many passages which more plainly show us how wrong it is.

For example, in Jeremiah 17:5 God says:

‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD.’ (ESV)

In this verse God doesn’t just say that it is a mistake to have the attitude of self-reliance. He says that someone who does this is cursed! This is pretty blunt, isn’t it?

Or take John 15:5, where Jesus tells us:

‘Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.’ (ESV)

With these words, Jesus makes it clear that self-reliance is going to be fruitless as far as doing things for Him is concerned.

Similarly, in 2 Corinthians 12:9 the apostle Paul refers to an occasion when Jesus said to him:

‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ (ESV)

And then in the next verse he remarks:

‘For when I am weak, then I am strong.’ (ESV)

To be in a position of weakness is a far cry from any form of self-reliance.

This list of Bible passages could be continued at length.

Doing everything with Jesus

In order to become more God-reliant and less self-reliant, one thing we can do is make it our goal to do everything we do with Jesus. I don’t just mean that we should try to tackle every problem we encounter with the Lord’s help. I mean that we should aim to treat everything we do as a joint venture with Him, whether or not there is anything difficult about it.

That is not to say that we should try to be constantly conscious in our minds of doing everything with the Lord. I think that would be unrealistic and would probably be exhausting. I just mean that deeper down, in our spirits, we should attempt to rest constantly in Him and do everything we do with Him.

Believing that we can do what God enables us to do

Despite all I have said so far, there is a sense in which sometimes Christians need to believe that they can do more than they think.

For example, there are times when God has given a Christian a gift, but this person wrongly thinks that they are not able to do what they are actually able to do. They then need to be encouraged to believe that they are able to do it.

But this is very different from self-reliance. This is really about understanding what God has done in us, and how He can work through us.