Dear Lord, I confess my tendency to operate in my own strength. I ask Your forgiveness for the many times when my first response to a problem or a crisis in my life, instead of relying upon You, has been to turn to my own resources. Lord, I acknowledge before You that my strength is totally inadequate for anything I have to face.

Standing in Your presence now, Lord, I turn actively from my own strength, and I express my utter reliance upon You and Your power. Any action I take, I will take in Your empowerment and not my own. Thank You for opening my eyes to the folly of operating under my own steam. Kneeling before Your throne, I call this tendency what it is: the sin of independence from You. And I call upon You to set me free from that tendency, in order that from this day forward, I may walk in complete reliance upon You and Your strength operating through me.

In this moment, I promise that for everything I accomplish only in Your strength, I will give You and You alone the credit and all the glory. I humble myself before You and place myself completely in Your hands. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

 

This Prayer is authored by Dick Leggatt, President of Derek Prince Ministries – USA in his March 2012 Newsletter, a copy of which is attached below. Click here to receive the Derek Prince Ministries emailed E-devotional.

Are you a “strong” person? Do you tend to operate in that strength? If so, what we highlight in this letter may well unlock the greater purposes of God in your life.

Usually, when I write these monthly letters, I think of someone specific, tailoring what I say to that person. This month, I’m writing to myself, and you can feel free to listen in. I hope what I tell myself here is helpful to you as well.

The Peril of Self-Reliance

My father was a self-made man. I never met anyone more independent and self-reliant than Dad, who was the second son in an immigrant Scottish family of six. He was a remarkably hard worker who lifted himself by his own bootstraps and carved out a respectable measure of success in life. And he dutifully imparted many of his own traits directly to me.

What my father accomplished, as well as his attitude in doing it, would most probably be regarded with admiration in our society. Indeed, a year and a half after his passing, my admiration and respect for that stalwart Scotsman continues to grow. However, I have discovered in my walk with Jesus Christ that much of what is considered great personal strength can be directly contrary to the Lord and His ways. Faced with that truth, I have had to make some serious adjustments, many of which have focused on the tendency to operate in my own strength.

Even as a boy, one of my favorite works to recite was the highly regarded poem, “Invictus,” by William Ernest Henley. Containing such sentiments as “my unconquerable soul,” and “my head is bloody, but unbowed,” the poem ends with these two telling declarations: “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” In some ways, it all sounds so valiant and courageous. But the attitude it spawns, left unchecked, can place us in direct opposition to the Lord’s work in our lives.

Dealing with the Pride of Life

In 1 John 2:16 (nasb), we see some specific references to pitfalls we should be avoiding in our lives: “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life,” with the added warning that such tendencies are “not from the Father, but…from the world.” In fact, we see the “boastful pride of life” running rampant in society—in people’s insistence upon “doing their own thing” in their own strength. “I Did It My Way” seems to be the theme song of choice for so many.

One of the greatest indictments of this kind of behavior in the Old Testament is God’s chilling statement to His people in Jeremiah 2:13: “For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” What a grave error: deliberately rejecting God’s provision (something which actually works) in favor of a contrivance made by our own devices (something which doesn’t work)!

Over the years, I have been convicted about so many areas of my life in which I have engaged in the fool’s errand of refusing God’s ways to build things my way instead. That has resulted in the necessity to ask the Lord for help in correcting the errors, cleaning up the messes and unsnarling the tangles caused by my own misguided humanistic efforts. Have you had to endure some similar experiences?

His Strength, Not Ours

In the days ahead, I have a great expectancy for the Lord to do some remarkable, redemptive, restorative work in our society. I sincerely hope He will use His people to accomplish these great achievements. If the Lord truly intends to use us, it is absolutely necessary for us to learn and relearn the very basic lesson of operating in His strength rather than in our own.

When I think of a man who could have accomplished much of significance in his own intellect and strength, Derek Prince’s name rises to the top of the list. An Eton and Cambridge scholar, a fellow of Ancient and Modern Philosophy at Cambridge, well versed in Greek, Latin and numerous other languages, Derek was the quintessential Renaissance man. Yet he deliberately chose to walk in humility, eschewing any reliance upon the talents he had accumulated in favor of total dependence upon the Lord. It was a lesson that Derek not only discovered, but practiced, as evidenced in the following excerpt from “The Line of Separation,” a message about our tendency toward independence from God:

“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise. . . .”
(Genesis 3:6)

Those are the three basic temptations. Good for food: the lust of the flesh. Desirable to the eye: the lust of the eyes. Desirable to make one wise: that’s what John calls the pride of life—the desire to exalt self.

You see, if you analyze the nature of the temptation, the initial temptation was not to do evil. What’s wrong with being like God? Everybody should want to be like God.

Do you know what the essence of the temptation was? (This is very important.) The desire to be independent of God. That’s the essence of sin. As long as you are desiring in your heart to be independent of God, you are in a dangerous position. Nothing in this universe has any right to be independent of the Creator. The way that they thought they could get independence was by knowledge. Please understand: the desire to know wasn’t wrong. But the desire to be independent of God was the essence of their problem.

I know many Christians who have not dealt with this root desire to be independent of God. This is the pride of life: “I can manage my life without God. If I’m in a real emergency, I’ll pray; but generally speaking I can handle the situation.”

For some people, the Holy Spirit is like an emergency vehicle. When there’s nothing else they can do, they pray. That’s not the way we were designed to live. We were designed to live in hour by hour and moment by moment dependence on the Spirit of God.

Time to Humble Ourselves

A dear friend recently gave me an intriguing book called The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn, which focuses in large part on the danger of human pride and our insistence upon independence as expressed in Isaiah 9:10. In essence, that verse is the biblical version of “Invictus”—the response to calamity by the people of Israel, whose pride and arrogance of heart prompted them to say the following words: “The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will replace them with cedars.” In other words, we will ignore the warnings God is sending us, and instead, we will build and rebuild in our own strength.

Would you like to join me in addressing that dangerous tendency in our lives? Would you like to take some initial steps toward affirming your absolute dependence upon the Lord and the power of His Holy Spirit in place of our own paltry strength?

Most of us are familiar with the “If My people…” passage in 2 Chronicles 7:14. The first order of business in that passage is to humble ourselves. Would you join me now in a prayer to take that important first step?

Dear Lord, I confess my tendency to operate in my own strength. I ask Your forgiveness for the many times when my first response to a problem or a crisis in my life, instead of relying upon You, has been to turn to my own resources. Lord, I acknowledge before You that my strength is totally inadequate for anything I have to face.
Standing in Your presence now, Lord, I turn actively from my own strength, and I express my utter reliance upon You and Your power. Any action I take, I will take in Your empowerment and not my own. Thank You for opening my eyes to the folly of operating under my own steam. Kneeling before Your throne, I call this tendency what it is: the sin of independence from You. And I call upon You to set me free from that tendency, in order that from this day forward, I may walk in complete reliance upon You and Your strength operating through me.
In this moment, I promise that for everything I accomplish only in Your strength, I will give You and You alone the credit and all the glory. I humble myself before You and place myself completely in Your hands. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

You Will See the Difference

You may not realize it right now, but the step you have just taken will have long-lasting significance for you. We fully believe you will see a difference in the way your life progresses as a result of what you have just prayed. Will you please stay in touch with us to let us know about what you have experienced as a result of this commitment?

One of the greatest blessings for all of us who work here at DPM–USA is the contact we have with you. We are so grateful for your reports of how the Lord has touched your life through our interaction, along with your assurances that you are praying for us. And how can we adequately thank you for the vital financial support you send? Your kind words and gracious gifts encourage us tremendously. Thank you for being such an important part of what God is doing through us—only through His great strength!

As confirmation of the step you have taken as you have read this letter, we want to offer you a free download of Derek’s message called “The Sin of Independence,” which underscores his quoted remarks above about our need to depend upon the Lord. This teaching will help you grasp the importance of total dependence upon the Lord, giving you some practical steps in how to make it happen in your life. It will also help to clarify the step you have taken, and we know you will be encouraged by it.

Thank you again for your involvement with us. And thank you for your willingness to turn from your own resources to rely solely and completely upon Jesus Christ. May the Lord continue to bless you as you move forward—only in His strength.