Idolatry of Self Reliance

Madi Ford
Oct 11, 2020
10 min read

Updated: Sep 9, 2021

Last semester I got the opportunity to speak at Women's Chapel, the breakout (smaller, more community-focused) chapel I am a part of on campus. Our breakout chapels happen on Thursday Mornings and though none of us knew it when we woke up that day this Thursday happened to be the last day we would be in classes for the whole semester. The following is the message the Lord put on my heart to share on that oh so special opportunity with some of my favorite ladies.

When Shannon first asked me to share today and encouraged me to shared part of my testimony, the first voice in my head was, "surely my story is not of importance" and "surely, no one will care to hear what I have to say". Those inclinations, doubting the Lord's workings in each and every one of us is just absolutely of the enemy, and in need of being rebuked. To be honest, as of recent I have really felt down and worn in my faith, so I thought surely the timing wasn't right because I bet none of you can relate to feeling worn in your faith?

What I thought I'd share today is something I have felt the Lord imparting on me throughout the season I have been walking through as of late. That way, at least, even if I am in a valley right now maybe you are in a similar place and we can walk through and past it together. And that is replacing the idolatry of self-reliance with a life of complete surrender to the Lord– dying to our mortal, earthly selves to live the resurrected lives the Lord has called us to.

The Idolatry of Self Reliance is the "I can do it on my own" attitude, believe me, I am as bullheaded as it gets. One of the deepest desires of my flesh is to be self-sufficient and independent, I despise having to ask for help. To me, that equates to admitting to defeat. Idolatry crops up when we set aside Christ and give the owed authority over to anything else, making that thing instead Lord of our Life. For me, that looked like me making MY will, MY goals, and MY desires Lord of my life over Christ. For so long, way longer than I would like to admit did I let my career aspirations or the goals I had for my social life guide my path than submission to the Lord's will and letting holiness, righteousness, and the cares and aspiration of the Father guide my path.

The other manifestation of the idolatry of self-reliance in my life that I have seen is that too often my faith is not in the Lord, but rather in what Madi can accomplish; and let me just tell you something Madi can't do squat. It's a whole lot easier to proclaim faith than to practice it when the rubber meets the road. When it comes down to it who am I trusting to carry me through this difficult situation? If our trust is in anything of this world it will fail every single time.

This is what the Lord says:

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,

who draws strength from mere flesh

and whose heart turns away from the Lord.

That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;

they will not see prosperity when it comes.

They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,

in a salt land where no one lives.

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,

whose confidence is in him.

They will be like a tree planted by the water

that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes;

its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought

and never fails to bear fruit.”

JEREMIAH 17:5-9

Self-reliance can often be tempting because God rarely works in the ways that we are accustomed to. In this day and age, we are big fans of instant gratification, but scripture tells us that God often works gradually, and rewards perseverance through trial and temptation. In the epistle of James, he writes, “Let perseverance finish its work in you so that you may be mature and complete not lacking anything”. It's easy to hear, and I am speaking to myself so much, but again and again, when the Lord doesn't immediately deliver or give us the desires of our hearts our immediate reaction is to take things back into our own hands and revert to self-reliance.

The problem with self-reliance is that not only is it completely draining and no fun at all, but it contradicts the life that we as disciples of Christ are called to. Christ, while incarnate, was every example of humility, vulnerability, and reliance on and indwelling with the Father. John 15, one of my most treasured passages, teaches that apart from the Spirit of God we can do nothing; and that to flourish and bear much fruit we must abide and are just as connected to the Father as a branch is to the vine.

I know many of you may know at least parts of my testimony, I have shared it at Lipscomb a number of times. My journey to deeply knowing and living in a posture of sacrifice towards Christ has been one marked by strife and contention. The "SparkNotes" version if you will of my testimony is that I knew I was coming to Lipscomb in the seventh grade and then on, for five years I had complete tunnel vision, focused on Lipscomb. Notice how I didn't say six years that is, because I finessed the system and managed to come to Lipscomb a year earlier than I originally planned. As far as the details, yeah I had those meticulously planned out too (social club, student organizations, internships, on-campus jobs). I had set ridiculous and fiercely rigid standards for the form I expected my freshmen year at Lipscomb, my dream for so long, would take. Understand the absoluteness of this statement: the entirety of those expectations fell through. And believe me when I tell you it was Earth-shattering.

In light of that, there's a story that I have to tell y'all that I laugh at even now. A couple of weeks ago Krysten and I had gone to a worship night at a house not far at all from campus and we were all gathered in their living room and the owners of the home had a small dog. The thing with this dog, however, was that it did not have eyes. For whatever reason, they had had to have been surgically removed. So, this dog wasn't even equipped with the tools it needed to be able to see. The whole time we were all gathered in the living room, this probably eight-pound restless ball of fluff would not stop running into everyone's legs and the furniture, and the walls, and the fireplace. I don't know about you, I mean I have never been blind, but I would have thought that you know, an intelligent being would have figured out where the walls and furniture in its home was. You know how you can pretty much get from your bed to the bathroom at your house with the lights off, kind of like that, but I digress. Multiple times, however, all of us missing our own dogs and seeing how utterly pitiful this was attempted torch down and grab, settle and cuddle this sweet animal, but to no avail. This dog was just deviant and tenacious.

It suddenly just hit me that God looks at each and every one of us the way we were all looking at that sweet little dog. Lovingly and wanting to provide rest and care and frustrated by its disobedience. From our perspective, that dog is making silly mistakes and should know where the furniture in its own house is stationed, but over and over again this dog is walking in the same circles, running into the same furniture and the same legs and the same walls. Relying on our own volition we don't even possess the means by which we need to succeed independently: we don't even have eyes to see! If we knew the arms reaching down from Heaven, from a wiser, far removed perspective we can't even imagine yearning so deeply to hold us and provide rest from the chaos for us. But instead, out of tenacity and disobedience, we repeatedly jump out of the laps of those trying to care for us, only to step back into the same non-sensical patterns of our flesh.

In light of all that, how then do we allow ourselves to be scooped up into the loving arms of our Savior? I'm no sensei, I am by all means just at the beginning of a very arduous and contentious hike up the mountain we call faith, but there are a few things so far on this climb.

What does it look like to move from a posture of self-reliance to living surrendered to the Lord? Well, to surrender means to yield, give up or over, submit, abandon, or relinquish; and that means throwing out whatever we have given greater authority to than we have given to Christ over our lives. In my walk, that was my career aspirations and ambitions to please things created and not the Creator. The process leading up to laying those burdens that I had been carrying for so long at the foot of the cross was one of the most grievous times of my life. In hindsight, I can tell you that I was mourning the death of who I used to be. For years of my life I placed so much of my value in the way I thought others were perceiving me, giving them instead power and authority over my life. Surrendering that to Christ was not just "Oh, I love Jesus and this is the right thing to do, so here you go God". No. It was months of prayer, petition, seeking guidance from others (shoutout to those of you who walked alongside me during that insane time), and spending the with the Lord.

As I said, I am far from having all the answers, but one thing I think we can always start with when setting out to align our hearts with the heart of God is just praying "Lord, your will above all else". In Cody Carne's Christ Be Magnified, he sings "I won't be formed by feelings I’ll hold fast to what is true”; and I just encourage and pray that over you today to hold fast to what you know is true.

Surrender is too often perceived as a weakness or a sign of defeat, but that is not at all the case. We are going to find our greatest joy when he is our greatest treasure. There is a song that is written from the perspective of God and I want to share some of the lyrics with you:

My beloved let go yes I’ll take it

You don’t have to try to receive this

My beloved let go yes I’ll take it

You don’t have to try to receive this

My little ones learned to speak

Oh the praise the beauty

You've learned to surrender all of your being

And give all to me

In greater measure my love will impart

Beloved you’ve ravished my heart

In your abandon I find my delight

You’ve ravished my heart

In our abandon, he finds delight, how nuts is that! In posturing ourselves in surrender there is also inexplainable freedom– to lay down and hand over what is not meant for us to carry is the first place. A passage that sustained me as the Lord was humbling me and working on my heart comes out of the first letter to the Corinthians; and it embodies daughterhood to me.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-31

In my walk, what I hold to and take great, great peace in when the rubber hits the road is the STEADFAST promise that there is abundantly more in Christ Jesus. The ways of Jesus are more fruitful and rewarding than anything I could ever set out for myself. Everything else in this world is going to be gone in the blink of an eye, but Jesus, his ways, and his Kingdom are eternal.

Finally, how do we daily posture ourselves in surrender– die to ourselves and our flesh to be made alive in Christ? How do we live in a world that encourages us to "do whatever makes you happy" and "you do you" and be not of it? I might offer that we become so deeply saturated with the Word that tells us to die to the desires of our flesh and align our hearts with the heart of God.

Right after our man Jesus feeds the five thousand he says to the crowd: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me”. That's real big church talk, but to me what that boils down to repent (for the Kingdom is near!! hallelujah!!) and choose to live not for the desires of your own flesh, but for the greater and mightier things that the Lord has set us apart for.

Small hinges crack open mighty big doors and thank goodness for that! What each one of us can begin today and every day is simple,

Admitting to Lord that though we have claimed to be his followers, we have followed our own ambitions instead
Confessing that we have clung to control in our lives when we should have laid everything at the foot of the cross
Crown King Jesus Lord of your life, invite him to invade every area of your life
Ask God to help you surrender to His beautiful and perfect will and for the things that are disappearing to grow strangely dim

All his promises are yes and amen take heart in the promise that he has overcome the world. Rest in the PROMISE that when dwell in his presence, the shelter of the most high, there is no weapon that can stand against us. Breathe in the promise the enemy has ALREADY been conquered, your battle have not only already, but have already been won, he tramples the head of the serpent.

To close, I am going to pray something called the Litany of Humility over all of us that I believe is a beautiful example of how we may posture ourselves in humility before our communities and before our Lord.

O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, Hear me.

From the desire of being esteemed,

From the desire of being loved,

From the desire of being extolled,

From the desire of being honored,

From the desire of being praised,

From the desire of being preferred to others,

From the desire of being consulted,

From the desire of being approved,

Deliver me, O Jesus.

From the fear of being humiliated,

From the fear of being despised,