The Blessing of Dependence: How the Church Reminds Us of Our Need for Jesus
My prescription glasses sat on my nightstand for five years, only worn while driving through heavy rain. That wasn’t at the recommendation of my doctor but simply due to my own perception of need. However, after I began experiencing recurring headaches, my husband convinced me to finally try my glasses. I reluctantly agreed to wear them for thirty days. After two days, I couldn’t imagine another without them.
My perception of my need was humbled as everything around me became crisp, sharp, and more beautiful. This is what I was missing? My head was lighter, and my ability to think became clearer. It was as if I had walked from a cloud of fog into the radiating sun. I was suddenly thankful for the dependency.
Each of us can relate to the natural desire for perfect bodies and perfect lives. We are often slow to recognize our frailty and live in denial of our need for help. What’s worse is that our denial has eternal implications and those, too, we naturally want to ignore. Why is this?
If we are dependent on something, then we are not in control. If we are not in control, then we are not God—an issue rooted in the human heart since the Garden of Eden. Dependency reveals our pride.
The difficult truth is that our relationship with God has been severed, and we need help. The beautiful truth is that we have a divine Helper who delights to offer it. But God doesn’t just offer it, he goes above and beyond by providing a tangible mechanism for his help to be received—the church. Like my prescription glasses, God’s grace is often something we leave on the nightstand, and we need a reminder that it’s a gift, it’s available, and we need it at all times. The church does that for us. By his grace, we remind one another that we are dependent on God to overcome our sins, and that is a good and beautiful thing.
Dependence for Light
There’s a type of need humans have that can produce self-deprecating beliefs—we’ve acknowledged our need for help but feel as though someone else deserves it more or that we simply don’t deserve it at all. There was a period of my life when recurring nightmares kept me hostage under memories of my sin. I had to depend on something outside of myself to pull me up for air, to bring me out of the darkness. But when my sin felt so dark and so heavy, it was hard to believe I deserved help.
Early in my Christian walk, I needed to remember the power of his grace. There were a few prayerful, safe women who could be the sounding board when the darkness felt loud. These women didn’t just help me once, but countless times. They helped me put on my spiritual glasses to see clearly what Christ had done for me.
Scripture tells us that what we deserve is just punishment for our sins (Rom. 3:23; 6:23). We ought to feel the weight of our rebellion against a holy and good God. But our holy and good God purposed before the foundation of the world to have his judgment and cure collide. On the cross, his wrath was satisfied and mercy poured out (Isa. 53:4–6; Rom. 5:9; 1 John 4:10). Grace is the only power able to lift the weight of sin, releasing us of guilt (Eph. 2:8–9).
So long as we live in this fallen state, we need reminding that, in Christ, we are not who we once were. Our dependency on one another to sound the alarm should directly point us back to our dependency on Christ. We are not our own but were bought with a great price.
Dependence for Healing
We cannot deny there are consequences to actions, which means there are consequences to sin. The nightmares I experienced were consequences of the events that wrote them. Similarly to guilt, we can believe God is punishing us for things he has supposedly forgiven. We may find ourselves asking God, “If you’ve removed the guilt, why am I still suffering?” In asking this, we find ourselves vulnerable, dependent on someone else for an answer. Pride may tempt us to reject the reality of consequences and claim they don’t bother us. We might attempt to resolve consequences in our own power. We may even begin questioning if God is truly good.
A few years ago, I sat in a friend’s living room assessing the consequences of marital sin. Among the many, I wondered if divorce was on the list. Trust was broken, and pain, shame, insecurities, and fear flooded the home—but divorce didn’t. Grace transcended the conflict, accomplishing restoration and transformation.
In this story was the church. A gentle but bold shepherd, compassionate friends, trusted council, and loads of prayer. I wonder what the outcome would have been had this family not been part of and known by the body of Christ.
Stories like this help us answer the question we raised earlier. Suffering exists because sin exists. Every step this family took to heal was a reminder that Jesus ultimately heals. As they faced pain, Jesus provided joy. As they faced distrust, Jesus provided fulfillment. For every consequence they fought through there was a brother or sister there to remind them of Jesus. The consequence doesn’t negate the eternal removal of guilt, but it points us to the eternal removal of punishment.
Consequences are not God punishing his people. Instead, they are daily battles that test our faith and dependence on God for ultimate hope and ultimate love. For the Christian, this lasts a lifetime. The church is there to help us believe God is good in suffering. The church is there to help us see that the consequences of sin can drive us further into worship of the God who forgives horrendous evil. Jesus took the punishment, so we can step forward in faith and trust healing will come.
Dependence for Strength
Salvation in Jesus does not eradicate our fallen nature—yet. One day, we will have completely restored and glorified bodies in the Kingdom of God where there will no longer be any tears. Until then we live in a broken world and are tempted daily to sin.
As we await the future kingdom, we seek to glorify God and proclaim the gospel of our King Jesus. We may face our days free from guilt, knowing we are eternally absolved from blame and no longer facing punishment. Within that gracious freedom, we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
As we live within the church body, we must teach and admonish one another in all wisdom. We can’t pursue holiness on our own. God did not save us so that we could live isolated and individualistic lives. He saved us into a family, a body, where the head is Christ. The togetherness of our salvation is purposeful. Spiritual growth and steadfast faith develop from dependence on Christ and one another.
My latest season of motherhood offers a great example of this. For two months my newborn cried for over 8 hours a day. When failure, headaches, insecurity, anger, and shame flooded my mind, it became nearly impossible to be objective. My circumstances were paving the way for sin, and I needed help seeing it. The Lord was kind to provide a few women in similar seasons that spoke gentle yet bold truths. Through their faithfulness, I was not given the chance to let sin win. They admonished me to turn from grumbling to joy, to turn from anger to gratitude, and turn from exhaustion to humility. Our circumstances are not excuses to sin, and that’s a hard truth for pride. Thankfully, the love these women gave me reframed my circumstances in light of the gospel.
I mentioned earlier that our pride naturally wants to claim control. We saw this in the Garden of Eden. But our dependency didn’t begin with the fall, it began with our beginning. As part of creation, we are by definition dependent. We could not create ourselves, so we are reliant on the Creator. In God’s abundance, he created and called it good.
Dependency, then, is a good thing. It places God in the proper position as King and gives humanity the high calling of worship. As the church, we worship together by pointing one another to the gospel. We are designed to be dependent on one another for accountability and community. My dependence on the church reminds me of my dependence on Christ, for apart from him I can do nothing. Much like wearing my prescription glasses, being in the church ought to feel like walking out of the fog into the radiating sun. It is glorious news that light, healing, and strength are found in our Savior as a joyous gift. Therefore, in all circumstances, may our dependency be seen as a blessing.
Amy Hornbuckle is a wife, mom of two, Children’s Director, and Bible Study Teacher at The King’s Church in Lakeland, Florida. Amy loves uncovering gospel truth in the individual and communal blessing of study, conversation, and ordinary life. Find more of her writing on Instagram and teaching at In Grace and Knowledge.