Quotes & Sayings About Dependence On God

God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your 'thorn' uncomplainingly - that is, sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel weak - is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace. — J.I. Packer

Hope is not a granted wish or a favor performed; no it is far greater than that. It is a zany, unpredictable dependence on a God who loves to surprise us out of our socks. — Max Lucado

If productivity, efficiency, and rationality are not the ways God gauges a human person's value, then they are not the ways I should measure it, eiher. If childlike dependence on God is the mark of a great soul, then there are great souls hidden in all sorts of places where the world sees only disability, decay, and despair. — Colleen Carroll Campbell

Trials are used by God to teach you dependence on His grace rather than on your strength. — Jim George

The end and design of all that is written in Scripture is to call us back from the spirit of Satan, the flesh, and the world, to full dependence on and obedience to the Spirit of God. — Andrew Murray

When we renounce our fear of life and give up trying to have it under our control - that is, when we acknowledge our contingency and utter dependence on God - then God comes to us and turns us toward Himself. — Donald Spoto

Prayer and dependence on God has been our history. How unfortunate it is now that an unaccountable and unelected and misguided judge from Wisconsin, Judge Barbara Crabb, has declared National Days of Prayer - established by the Congress - to be unconstitutional. — James Dobson

Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue. And so pride, or the loss of this humility, is the root of every sin and evil. — Andrew Murray

It is the duty of mankind on all suitable occasions to acknowledge their dependence on the Divine Being ... Almighty God would mercifully interpose and still the rage of war among the nations ... He would take this province under His protection, confound the designs and defeat the attempts of its enemies, and unite our hearts and strengthen our hands in every undertaking that may be for the public good, and for our defense and security in this time of danger. — Benjamin Franklin

We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and the parting day linger and play on its summit! — Daniel Webster

You know, we can't keep talking about our dependence on foreign oil and the need to deal with global warming and the challenge that it poses to our climate and to God's creation and just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people. — Hillary Clinton

We unjustly defraud God of his right, unless each of us lives and dies in dependence on His sovereign pleasure. — John Calvin

Pain does not indicate the absence of God. Pain invites us into communion with Jesus and greater dependence on him, as we yearn for his coming while sharing in his sufferings — Anonymous

A source of cheerfulness to a good mind is the consideration of that Being on whom we have our dependence, and in whom, though we behold Him as yet but in the first faint discoveries of His perfections, we see everything that we can imagine as great glorious, or amiable. We find ourselves everywhere upheld by His goodness and surrounded by an immensity of love and mercy. — Joseph Addison

If a person does not emerge from incestuous attachment to mother, clan, nation, if he retains the childish dependence on a punishing and rewarding father, or any other authority, he cannot develop a more mature love for God; then his religion is that of the earlier phase of religion, in which God was experienced as an all-protective mother or a punishing rewarding father. In — Erich Fromm

The thing is to rely on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small price to pay for having been brought to that dependence. Meanwhile, the trouble is that relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing has yet been done. — C.S. Lewis

Christianity cannot erase man's need for pleasure, nor can it eradicate the various sources of pleasure. What it can do, however, and what it has been extremely effective in accomplishing, is to inculcate guilt in connection with pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure, when accompanied by guilt, becomes a means of perpetuating chronic guilt, and this serves to reinforce one's dependence on God. — George H. Smith

The church grew because Jesus had just given His life as the penalty for our sins. The gospel was the answer, the method, and the model. Churches today have incorporated so many models and methods and programs that our dependence upon the execution of those things often overshadows our dependence on God to show up and do something supernatural. We have bought into the lie of the enemy that we must have something for everyone in order to grow. Unfortunately, we forsake the gospel in the process of trying to appease everyone, and in this process, we end up dying in our pursuit of growing. — Nathan Lorick

God is looking for imperfect men and women who have learned to walk in moment-by-momen t dependence on the Holy Spirit. Christians who have come to terms with their inadequacies, fears, and failures. Believers who have become discontent with 'surviving' and have taken the time to investigate everything God has to offer in this life. — Charles Stanley

As we mature in faith, our willingness is tested, expanded, and refined. We become more conscious of our limitations and turn to God. The necessity of God's grace becomes clearer as we become more attuned and accurate in our recognition of our dependence on God and less sure of anything that causes us to describe ourselves self-righteously. At times, when confronted by the less-than-ideal behavior of others, we may recognize that we are capable of similar actions and give thankds to God for helping us avoid unwelcome pitfalls. Scripture instructs us to be holy as God is holy, yet we increasingly realize the impossibility of holy behavior unless it is brought about by the Spirit's empowerment and our willing responsiveness and cooperation. Many people use spiritual direction as a window through which to notice and attend to their own expectations of willingness and willfulness. — Jeannette A. Bakke

The Christian life has been nothing more and nothing less than a daily dependence on and a rediscovery of God's grace. — Tullian Tchividjian

God allows us to dace difficulties so that our faith will be stretched and refined. The trials we face provide an excellent opportunity for us to declare our dependence on God and not on ourselves. The way we win the battle with discouragement is by humbling ourselves before God and telling Him that we need Him. There is only one way to do this, and it is through prayer. — Charles Stanley

The followers of Jesus will begin to demonstrate a new set of horizons for human life to their neighbors and even to their enemies - the horizons of shalom, the horizons of true humanity living in dependence on God. — Andy Crouch

It is a law of man's nature, written into his very essence, and just as much a part of him as the desire to build houses and cultivate the land and marry and have children and read books and sing songs, that he should want to stand together with other men in order to acknowledge their common dependence on God, their Father and Creator. — Thomas Merton

Initially, all idols seem to deliver exactly this escape from mere goodness into transcendent greatness. Consider the weather. In our scientific age, amidst the technological achievements of modernity, we have lost much of our reverence for and sense of helpless dependence on the weather. But imagine the sense of mastery and awe that must have overwhelmed the first people who pounded out an exuberant and desperate dance, in hopes of cajoling the sky god into bringing rain, when they were rewarded by an unexpected cloudburst an hour or a day later. Or the sense of awed gratitude and newfound power when a libation poured out on the ground seemed to deliver an abundant harvest. There must have been some such moments - how else would the rituals have become credible? — Andy Crouch

We want all the benefits of the resurrection without acknowledging our dependence on God as mortal creatures. — Matthew Lee Anderson

Every revival has had a revelation of God's grace. Each awakening has possessed an acute awareness of man's need to forsake independence and acknowledge his dependence on God. Therefore, anyone desiring revival today must start with recognizing their own complete inability to produce right relationship with God through human effort and good works - both in the initial born-again experience and in day-to-day maintenance. — Andrew Wommack

When we developed still more, we discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself. We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where nothing else would. If we really depended upon God, we couldn't very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care. — Alcoholics Anonymous

Prayer is our Christian duty. It is an expression of submission to God and dependence upon Him. For that matter, prayer is arguably the most objective measurement of our dependence upon God. The things you pray about are the things you trust God to handle. The things you neglect to pray about are the things you trust you can handle on your own. — H.B. Charles Jr.

When we look to God as provider, we are surrendering our independence and trusting someone else to meet our needs, over which we have no control. Letting go of our 'dependence on independence' and letting someone else take control goes against natural human instinct. We need to fight the urge to take over and just let God be God, because He can provide for us better than we can. — Corallie Buchanan

Good faith doesn't mean memorizing a script but cultivating a quiet dependence on the God of the universe to meet you in the difficult conversations he brings your way. — David Kinnaman

Everything is a gift from God: it is only by recognizing this crucial dependence on the Creator that we will find freedom and peace. — Pope Benedict XVI

If God did not exist, He would have to be invented. But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it. — Voltaire

Trails are used by God to teach you humility and dependence on His grace rather than your own strength. — Jim George

Every true Christian should feel deep in his bones an utter dependence on God's self-revelation in the Scriptures. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4). — Kevin DeYoung

The only science that gives purpose to every other science is the science of religion - the science of our happy relationship with, and our providential dependence on God and our neighbor. — Solanus Casey

There is a poverty of the average human's life, who is unnoticed by the world. It is the poverty of the commonplace. There is nothing heroic about it; it is the poverty of the common lot, devoid of ecstasy. Jesus was poor in this way. He was no model figure for humanists, no great artist or statesman, no diffident genius. He was a frighteningly simple man, whose only talent was to do good. The one great passion in his life was "the Father." Yet it was precisely in this way that he demonstrated "the wonder of empty hands" (Bernanos), the great potential of the person on the street, whose radical dependence on God is no different from anyone else's. He has no talent but that of his own heart, no contribution to make except self-abandonment, no consolation save God alone. — Johann Baptist Metz

But when you doubt that you have anything to offer, you question God's ability to use you beyond your own weakness. Your usefulness in the lives of others is not dependent on your own intellectual or creative abilities, though God will use your talents whatever they are. Your usefulness to God and his people is connected with your dependence on God and his Word and your love for his people. — Joe Thorn

Humility is dependence on God as pride is independence of Him. The humble soul is always the thankful soul. — Fulton J. Sheen

David knew that all the question marks of his life were in the hand of God. He knew it was impossible to be in God's hand and in the enemy's hand at the same time. The gloom begins to disappear and fear departs as faith emerges in glorious triumph. This man is rising out of his testing and adversity to learn to put his utter dependence on the Lord. — Alan Redpath

A broken person understands she needs rescue, and she depends on God to resurrect and deliver. And she also understands that even if God chooses not to deliver, His ways are higher and more amazing then what we can fathom. — Mary E. DeMuth

Prayer is the very way God Himself has chosen for us to express our conscious need of Him and our humble dependence on Him. — John Stott

It is our own arrogance and pride that cause pain. The more that we think that we can do anything, the less we realize our complete dependence on God, and the worse the pain becomes. — Reshad Feild

Our independence shall be our total dependence on the Divine Being, God. — Lailah Gifty Akita

God has made us so that we must be mutually dependent. We may ignore our own dependence, or refuse to acknowledge that others depend upon us in more respects than the payment of weekly wages; but the thing must be, nevertheless. Neither you nor any other master can help yourselves. The most proudly independent man depends on those around him for their insensible influence on his character - his life. — Elizabeth Gaskell

The first type of captivity consists in man's dependence on creatures, animate or inanimate, when he loves them without reference to God. — Johannes Tauler

When programs, methods, and money produce impressive results, there is an inclination to confuse human success with divine blessing. Christians can actually behave like practical humanists, living as if God were not necessary. When that happens, passionate longing for God and yearning for His help will be missing - along with His empowerment. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

The wilderness was the testing ground - the deciding place. It was a place of God revealing himself in a whole new and deeper way. Would his people trust him completely, confident in his goodness, wisdom, and power? Those who believed God to be who he said he was moved on into the promised land; many did not. — Amy Layne Litzelman

I've never made football my priority. My priorities are my faith and my dependence on God. — Bobby Bowden

It's not my perfect performance that captures God's attention. It's my complete dependence on Him that He notices. — Lysa TerKeurst

Experience has taught me that I connect best with others when I connect with the core of myself. When I allow God to liberate me from unhealthy dependence on people, I listen more attentively, love more unselfishly, and am more compassionate and playful. I take myself less seriously, become aware that the breath of the Father is on my face. — Brennan Manning

A truly humble man is sensible of his natural distance from God; of his dependence on Him; of the insufficiency of his own power and wisdom; and that it is by God's power that he is upheld and provided for, and that he needs God's wisdom to lead and guide him, and His might to enable him to do what he ought to do for Him. — Jonathan Edwards

unless you fully recognize your complete dependence on God, you cannot know the real power of the Son in his true relationship with the Father. The specialness of God's Sons does not stem from exclusion but from inclusion. All my brothers are special. If they believe they are deprived of anything, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships. — Foundation For Inner Peace

Religions centered on the worship of a male God create "moods" and "motivations" that keep women in a state of psychological dependence on men and male authority, while at the same legitimating the political and social authority of fathers and sons in the institutions of society. — Carol P. Christ

Here then are the choices we all face moment by moment: Will we aim to be impressive? Will we expect to be in complete control? Will we ensure that we always come out on top as winners? Or will we be happy for the power of Christ to rest upon us in our endless weakness? 'No man can give at once the impressions that he himself is clever and that Jesus Christ is mighty to save.' Neither can any church. — Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.

Jesus said, "I am the vine; you are the branches."3 All you gotta do is let the life that flows through the vine, flow into the branch - you. You don't have to do anything. You've just got to get out of the way and stop doing all the things that keep God from doing what He wants to do in your life. What Paul means by "walk by the Spirit" is essentially "live in dependence on God's Spirit. — James MacDonald

The true felicity of life is to be free from anxieties and pertubations; to understand and do our duties to God and man, and to enjoy the present without any serious dependence on the future. — Seneca The Younger

Do not become self-sufficient . Self-sufficienc y is Satan's net where he catches men, like poor silly fish, and destroys them. Be not self-sufficient . The way to grow strong in Christ is to become weak in yourself. God pours no power into man's heart till man's power is all poured out. Live, then, daily, a life of dependence on the grace of God. — Charles Spurgeon

The art of humility begins with a recognition of our dependence on others and an appreciation of God's gift of life. — Wilferd Peterson

Our greatest priority as Christian parents is to gradually transfer our children's dependence away from us until it rests solely on God. — Craig Groeschel

Grace is not a shortcut around our effort; it is the divine blessing on efforts that are undertaken in dependence and trust on God. — Andy Crouch

True humility means total dependence on God for everything. — T. B. Joshua

To character and success, two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together ... humble dependence on God and manly reliance on self. — William Wordsworth

The life God bestows is imparted not once for all, but each moment continuously, by the unceasing operation of His mighty power. Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is, from the very nature of things, the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue. And so pride, — Andrew Murray

A general rule for the good use of time is to accustom oneself to live in a continual dependence on the Spirit of God. — Francois Fenelon

Submitting self to God is the only real freedom - because the deepest slavery is self-dependence, self-reliance. When you live your life believing that everything (family, finances, relationships, career) depends primarily on you, you're enslaved to your strengths and weaknesses. You're trying to be your own savior. Freedom comes when we start trusting in God's abilities and wisdom instead of our own. Real life begins when we transfer our trust from our own efforts to the efforts of Christ. — Tullian Tchividjian

Humility: The realization of our dependence on God. I have always had strong feelings about that word regardless of what anyone's background might be. One of the common denominators of greatness is acknowledging that dependence. As power comes from Charity, power also comes from knowing who you are, a divine offspring of a divine being. — Hyrum W. Smith

It is striking how many spiritual writers react to the specificity of real prayer. It runs deeper than Greek Neoplatonism and the influence of Buddhist spirituality. Frankly, God makes us nervous when he gets too close. We don't want a physical dependence on him. It feels hokey, like we are controlling God. Deep down we just don't like grace. We don't want to risk our prayer not being answered. We prefer the safety of isolation to engaging the living God. To embrace the Father and thus prayer is to accept what one pastor called "the sting of particularity."4 Our dislike of asking is rooted in our desire for independence. — Paul E. Miller

[Disestablishment was] the best thing that ever happened to the state of Connecticut. It cut the churches loose from dependence on state support. It threw them wholly on their own resources and on God. — Lyman Beecher

Living for Christ is a day-to-day going on with Him. It is a continuous dependence upon the Spirit of God. It is believing in His faithfulness. — Billy Graham

I was born like everyone else, and a man must not live in dependence on anyone except God; — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Knowing when and how to rest is knowing when and how to acknowledge your limitations and your dependence on God. — Craig Groeschel

But God does give us responsibility, and it takes biblical faith to do those things in dependence on God. — Craig Groeschel

Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual ... Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us. — John Hancock

Dependence on the Lord is wisdom and self-reliance is foolishness. But dependence on the Lord does not mean laziness, it means prayerful action and patient perseverance ... — Katie Kiesler

The way to misuse our possessions is to use them as an insurance against the morrow. Anxiety is always directed to the morrow, whereas goods are in the strictest sense meant to be used only for to-day. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Let us think of the human race as if it were a single human being," Ibn Rushd proposed. "A child understands nothing, and clings to faith because it lacks knowledge. The battle between reason and superstition may be seen as mankind's long adolescence, and the triumph of reason will be its coming of age. It is not that God does not exist but that like any proud parent he awaits the day when his child can stand on its own two feet, make its own way in the world, and be free of its dependence upon him. — Salman Rushdie

Prayer is an acknowledgement of your dependence on God and His direction for your life. — Elizabeth George

True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man; to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence on the future; not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient. — Seneca.

True humility is absolute obedience and dependence on God. It puts Him first, others second, and ourselves third in all things. — John Bevere

Notice how people can sit for hours and talk to one another, but call us to pray and we find it to be great difficulty. Why is this so? 1) Lack of desperation (realizing our dependence on God), 2) The wrestlings of the flesh, 3) Lack of faith to believe not only that God hears us but that He will move on our behalf. — David Wallace

A will whose maxims necessarily coincide with the laws of autonomy is a holy will, good absolutely. The dependence of a will not absolutely good on the principle of autonomy (moral necessitation) is obligation. This, then, cannot be applied to a holy being. The objective necessity of actions from obligation is called duty. From what has just been said, it is easy to see how it happens that, although the conception of duty implies subjection to the law, we yet ascribe a certain dignity and sublimity to the person who fulfills all his duties. There is not, indeed, any sublimity in him, so far as he is subject to the moral law; but inasmuch as in regard to that very law he is likewise a legislator, and on that account alone subject to it, he has sublimity. We have also shown above that neither fear nor inclination, but simply respect for the law, is the spring which can give actions a moral worth. — Immanuel Kant

If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the old knights in war time, we must sleep with helmet and breastplate buckled on, for the arch-deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

He also believed that the richest fruit of God's work in our hearts would be evidenced by increasing humility and dependence on Christ for everything, rather than in a victorious Christian life. — Barbara R. Duguid

To wait on God is to live a life of desire towards him, delight in him, dependence on him, and devotedness to him. — Matthew Henry

I think vision is highly overrated today. I think what really blesses a ministry is, if you want the power of God in your life, its humility and integrity. I'll take a person who's humble and has integrity over a person who has vision any day. A lot of people have vision just based on ego, but it's in that dependence upon God that we get His vision and develop more trust in Him. — Rick Warren

True Christianity is to manifest genuinely Christ-like behavior by dependence on the working of the Spirit of God within. — Ray Stedman

If we fully rely on God, He guarantees our success. — Sunday Adelaja