GODLY DEPENDENCE - The Low Road to the High Road

Did you ever wonder what Yeshua actually prayed after John baptized Him?  The Bible tells us, “…it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized and while he prayed, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended….” (John 3:21, 22).  We don’t doubt that He knew exactly what His calling was and what God expected of Him.  So I wonder, was He frightened now that He was actually stepping not only into the water of mikveh (baptism) but into His profound destiny on earth?  Was He even a tiny bit overwhelmed with a sense of being fully in touch with human weakness at the magnitude of what was before Him? 

Being fully human, did He pray out of a desperate need for God’s anointing to carry this out? Or was He overjoyed at finally entering into the ministry for which He was born?  Did He know His Father would send the Holy Spirit?  I would expect so but perhaps not so visibly. Was He surprised at His Father’s Voice coming from heaven confirming how pleased He was with Yeshua and confirming Him as His Son, saying “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”   Mark says it as God saying it to Yeshua while John says as God saying it about Yeshua.  Either way, God is pleased and Yeshua receives the Holy Spirit and all the power and anointing that goes with His presence. 

Wondering about this, I asked the Lord what He was praying. (I ask Him a lot of questions. The answers, when they come, often turn into these articles.) Immediately what came to my mind was, “Dependence, and a passion for the fulfillment of God’s Word and His desire.”  I responded, “No fear, Lord?” And this is what I felt was God’s response to my question:  No, no fear. Fear of that kind is of the Fall. Dependence does not have to be based on fear – not on fear of failure, or rejection, of suffering, or of death. Dependence upon God is based on the awareness that He is “all” and “all” we ever need is found in Him.  

And just as it was God working through Yeshua by His Spirit and Grace, He will also work through us the same way to accomplish His will in our lives. Dependence is the awareness of our need of God. Our need to be dependent upon Him is a fact. He created us to live in tandem with Him this way. This kind of godly dependence is based on confidence in His love and faithfulness to enable us to follow through in all He has for us to do and to be.  We can rejoice in our dependency upon Him, in restful humility before Him, with full confidence that He is faithful and will keep us safe “in Him” and enable us to fulfill His will in our lives.

Godly dependence is based upon the character and nature of God in all His goodness, love and truth – which can be fully depended upon!  In our dependence upon Him, we can remain confident of His will being accomplished in each of our lives knowing that His will is always consistent with His goodness and grace. That’s the kind of faith God’s always been talking about!!    

Well, doesn’t that bring something into contrast?  When the devil tempted Eve, what he convinced her of was that she couldn’t really depend on God to act in her best interest.  He undermined her trust and therefore her dependency upon God.  We’re so used to having our “trusters” broken that full and entire dependence is hard for us. It may take a long time to find out that God is fully trustworthy and always there for us so that we completely depend upon Him. But it doesn’t have to. We can choose to put our trust and dependence upon Him now, today, even if it’s new to us. God created us to be dependent upon Him, to say it again. 

Godly dependence  is a Kingdom revelation and revelation bring transformation.   We receive the most help from God when we depend upon Him the most, and act accordingly, as in “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13). 

Blessings come out of dependence upon Him and curses or trouble come out of independence – an “I’ll do it my way” mindset. Call it obedience or disobedience, each from the heart. This understanding has kept me pretty dependent upon Him – for everything. What a rest there is in that.  But I hadn’t thought of Yeshua having to be dependent upon Him in the same way, being sinless and all. But when God was showing me this, I saw that Yeshua, being sinless, was entirely and fully dependent upon God.  My dependence, as much as I want to give Him my full trust, is at best spotty. Every time I worry or feel rejected or want to do something to fix a relationship or situation on my own, I forget for a short while to depend upon Him for wisdom, or to do the fixin’ Himself. 

We pray for God’s will to be “done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10) In heaven there is no need of anything because all is complete and perfect and entirely fulfilling in every way.  We’re told that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil.3:20).  It struck me in church this Sunday as my pastor was enthusiastically declaring the glories of God and His abounding mercies to us that I really don’t belong here. I’m not “of” here. I’m really “of” heaven.  I can declare this too as an anthem over my life: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3, 20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12 – did you know it says “heavenly places” related to our lives that many times in Ephesians? Take note!). 

There’s nothing but blissful dependence upon God in heaven. No one ever works for or worries about anything. Even though we must “do” here on earth, our hearts are trusting in God in whom we depend to provide all things, even if He uses what we “do” to do it. His will is being done on earth as it is in heaven in our lives when we trust Him fully and completely.

Back to Yeshua and His dependency, if He was entirely dependent upon His Father, doesn’t that mean there was nothing of Him trying to work to gain God’s acceptance or His approval or His commitment to take care of Him? Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, to think of Yeshua involved in ‘works’ to earn His Father’s favor?  If we are “in Him,” then the same relationship applies between us and God.  We cannot be “in” the one in Whom God was well pleased and still have to work to please Him? We’d be trying to get to where we already are. But we can depend upon God that what Yeshua did has already placed us in His favor by removing the curses of sin which previously separated us.

Let’s take this just one step further.  Yeshua in His dependence was the quintessential absolutely perfect follower of Torah. Every part of His life was aligned with the Word of God, right?  It was through His life as well as His obedient death that He fulfilled all of Torah, that is to say He filled every requirement entirely. And He did so as He lived a fully dependent life before God.  He was still a man and still had to deal with human frailties on certain levels. Torah defines just about every aspect of life. In every one of those areas, Yeshua never once violated the covenant which God gave to Israel through Moses. 

Now, consider this: If He walked out His life in perfect accord with Torah, and there were no “works” that He did in His life to gain God’s favor, doesn’t it stand to reason that Torah was not designed for mankind to work or to do to earn God's favor, but to live according to Torah in confident dependence upon Him, doing His will with joy and His grace?  A common misunderstanding of the church is that Torah is about works and the Jews were constantly trying to earn God’s favor.  Neither is the truth.  Jews were already chosen by God, they didn’t (and don’t) think they had to work to gain His favor.  The “instructions” or “teachings” of Torah (“law” is an unfortunate mistranslation) were to aid Israel to live according to the “chosenness” that was already theirs as the people of God on the earth. When Israel remained dependent upon God they enjoyed His safekeeping, prosperity and blessings. When they drifted or stampeded into independence, they came out from under the umbrella of His protection and safety.  And also with us! 

The worldly self-defined, self-sufficient, self-seeking generation in which we live detests the idea of dependence upon God. They see it as the low road, but in God, the low road is the high road. Nothing could have looked lower than Yeshua on the Cross. But it was the highest achievement of both God and one Man to lift the world high above the devastating entrapment of sin. The low road of dependence leads to the high places of joy, rest and strength for God's  people. I invite you to give much thought to this issue of dependence upon our loving all powerful God and see if there are places of independence in your life that needs to be brought under His lordship, for your good and for the good of those whom you will affect for good in your life.  There is much work to "do" before He returns.