Note from Team LO: We are SO excited to bring you this month’s post from our LO sister member, Stacie Dewitt! If you want to be a part of this incredible community, you can join today and get your first week FREE! Find out more about this online sisterhood HERE. And for more info about what LO sister is all about, visit our Instagram Page!

Now, enjoy today’s post from Stacie 🙂 

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Independence has been a battle cry and a point of pride for me for as long as I can remember. It has shaped who I thought I was and how I viewed my relationship with others. I thought because my dad was an alcoholic and absent from my life that I needed to be independent. Maybe you’ve had someone like that in your life. Because time and time again he or she wasn’t there when you needed them or better yet, when you wanted them, you made sure you would work to become someone who didn’t need anything from anyone. You believed you could be self-sufficient for physical needs, emotional needs and relational needs. You believed that you could take care of you! But the truth is that has turned out to be a false reality.  Turns out it’s a lie. As much as we’d like to believe that we’re “Miss independent, Miss self-sufficient…” the truth is, we’re not. As humans, we need a lot of things that, no matter how hard we try, we can’t provide all by ourselves.

We need air.

We need water.

We need nourishment.

We need love.

We need protection.

We need friendship.

We need purpose.

Over time and because of God’s grace, I have learned that I am not independent but instead, completely dependent. We were actually created to depend on the only one who actually is independent.

The amazing thing about God is that He is not human. He’s not even a super-human, He is wholly “other.” God does not need anything or anyone. He is completely self-sufficient. He is completely independent. He doesn’t need anything from creation because He created everything from nothing.

In Acts 17:24-28 Paul says it like this:

²⁴ “The God who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples built by human hands. ²⁵ Nor is He served by human hands, as if He needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. ²⁶ From one man He made every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation. ²⁷ God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. ²⁸ ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’”

Knowing that God is completely independent and needs nothing and no one gives us security and hope that He can’t and won’t be corrupted. God does not function out of necessity. He doesn’t need to do anything for the sake of survival, to fulfill a need or out of bondage to anyone. He has no outside influence which means he is free to be himself. The good news is God to his core is good. Being good and being free means he will do what is perfect and right and good all of the time.

Knowing that God needs nothing form us reveals how much He loves us. He does not need our love but He has given us love. He does not need our existence but He has breathed life into us. He does not need our work here on this earth but he has chosen to have us participate in His grand design. He does not need our worship but he has given us voice and song. He doesn’t need anything that we create but he has given us the capacity to think, design and build.

If God does not need us then why did He create us? Paul tells us that He has created each of us uniquely and purposefully in our time and place so that we would know Him. Isn’t it freeing to know that God does not need you and that the only reason you were created is that you would get to know Him? That is so freeing! Many of us carry the burden on our shoulders of “working” for God. We feel that we will disappoint Him if we don’t perform. We worry that we’re not fulfilling our purpose because we’re not doing whatever it is we feel we should be doing. The truth that Paul tells us here is that God created man simply to know Him. You were created to know God. So you can stop striving, working, looking for your purpose! Your purpose is to know God. You were created by a good God who only wants your heart.

He is so good that not only did He give us life, He gives us Himself.

Out of His mercy He’s given Himself to us. He’s given us His word so that we can know His character and the essence of who He is. He’s given us the Holy Spirit so that we can hear His call in our hearts. He has gifted us eternity with Him through the life, death and resurrection of our savior Jesus Christ. He is not an unknown god but instead, a God that can be known! Paul tells us that He is not far from you. He delights in you as His child. He loves you. He has chosen you. He created you so that you would know Him. He does not need you to be or do anything, He just wants a relationship with you so take a rest from the striving and just get to know your God.

You don’t need to be independent. What you actually need is to be completely dependent on the only one who fully knows you, the only one who is absolutely reliable and the only one who is always good because He is absolutely independent.