Depending on God
“It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was Your right hand, Your arm, and the light of Your face, for You loved them.” (Psalm 44:3)
It’s God who transforms. We need to look to Him for wisdom, provision, and supernatural intervention. Our human efforts and resources are just not enough.
God Transforms
Real transformation—from brokenness to God’s intentions—only happens through God’s power. Without divine intervention, we may see good results, but not sustainable transformation that impacts every part of life. While we all agree this is true, an audit on our time, money and activities seems to show we actually believe it’s programs that transform. Ninety percent of all that happens in development is raising funds for programs, hiring people to do programs, traveling abroad to do programs, and implementing programs. So what does it mean that it’s God who transforms, and how should that impact our work?
Leaders Must Depend on God
We must, first and foremost, learn to truly depend on God ourselves—never letting busyness crowd out spending time with Him. Jesus says, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Each day we are faced with a list of urgent “must do” tasks on one hand and our Father’s call to be still and wait on Him on the other. Choosing to spend daily time in prayer and listening to God is an act of obedience and an act of faith that says we trust God to fulfill His promise to provide all we need. Beyond our personal time with God, we must lead our organisations to take seriously God’s call to fast and pray. And we should seek a solid base of prayer support, knowing that prayer is even more essential than finances and strategic plans. When we take these steps of dependence, God responds in remarkable ways—solving problems that have kept us awake at night, giving insight and inspiration to both us and our partners, and smoothing out a myriad of daily annoyances and distractions.
One of the great temptations is to subtly shift our focus from depending on God to depending on a great program. When we hear of a program with amazing transformational success, it’s all too easy to start to think of it as “the answer.” However, we need to take time to pause and pray, “Is this really the solution that You have for this need?” Maybe God has a better plan than we can imagine.
Point Vulnerable People to God
Next, if we are to see real transformation, we must lead vulnerable people to depend on God rather than us. Our role is to help them look to Him for answers to problems and resources for projects. When people come to us with questions, our response ought to be, “Have you prayed about it? What did God say?” Along with encouraging our partners to pray, we ought to be praying for them (not just ourselves) to have wisdom, just as Paul prayed for the churches he planted. The truth is, when we provide answers, solutions, and resources for our partners, we are subtly teaching them to look to us when they ought to be looking to God. His answers are always best, and His resources are infinite!
Leave Space for God
Finally, we need to leave room in our plans for God to do the unexpected, because, when we are looking to Him, He is faithful to show up in the most amazing ways! God is incredibly responsive to His people when we honestly seek Him. However, for many of us, learning to let go of control is hard. Pointing people to God will get messy. Yet it is the only way we can hope to see God bring the transformation we long for.
