Dependence

Comprehending something of our real and absolute dependence on God is foundational to everything in the Christian life. It is where Paul began with the Athenians when, after proclaiming that God was their Creator, he asserted that “he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Ac.17:25). That is a kind of moment-by-moment, breath-by-breath involvement of God that seems to be easily forgotten by most Christians these days. And yet, this is certainly not because the Bible doesn’t persistently declare God’s involvement.

We see it from the beginning, when it is said that humanity commenced with God’s personal issuance of “the breath of life” (Gen.2:7). It is sung in the Psalter of Israel that God himself “is the fountain of life” (Ps.36:9). Job said that if God “should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together and man would return to the dust” (34:14-15). Paul told the Colossians that it is Christ who “is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (1:17).

So when we are tempted to think that the triune God is distant or disconnected from our lives, we need to remember that nothing could be further from the truth. He not only created us, he actively sustains us. Were he to ignore us, even for a moment, we would cease to exist. So then, especially as Christians, we must live with a perpetual awareness that God “is not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’” (Ac.17:27-28).