Real Christians are not Self Reliant!, Ben Stovall

As a young male in my early twenties coping with the fact that, although I had been waiting for the chance to be out on my own for a coming time, living on my own was not all that pleasant. While trying to pay for tuition, books, rent, and all the other things that come along when you move away from home, and not to mention having to make all your own decisions, life started to become rather difficult for the first time.

Couple this with the fact that although my parents had raised me and my sisters to know the Bible and the Lord as a person, I had not chosen that life for myself. Nor was I so sure that their path was right for me. I was bound and determined to prove to myself and to them that I was capable and I could do whatever I needed to do to succeed in this world.

Unfortunately, the next two years of my life proved the very opposite. After beginning to drink heavily and losing my girlfriend, my grades began to fall rapidly. Soon the weight of the fact that maybe I wasn't self sufficient was apparent. One morning after losing most of a night of sleep due to anxiety and the mounting depression that follows failure, I began to weep, knowing that God had been with me all along and that I merely needed to ask for His help, yet my desires to be self-reliant had kept me from Him. As my weeping persisted, my search for help began and I grabbed a Bible that had rarely been used. Opening the Bible I found myself at a verse, Hebrews 4:12. Right away I began to read this verse; “For the word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Immediately, as I read these words, I felt a flood, something so remarkable, hit me like a gigantic wave toppling a high rise building. In that instant I knew that all the anger and fervence to do everything myself had fallen. I gave up.

Although seemingly the end, I realized that this was merely the beginning. The beginning of what?, you might ask. If you would like to know, just read chapter 6, “Surrendering” in Watchman Nee's: The Overcoming Life, (available at most local Christian book stores.) - Then you too will have to give up.--