Most important spiritual lesson

The most important spiritual lesson we can learn about walking with God is the same lesson God taught His children in the wilderness. It is the truth that human beings are not meant to live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Why does it take so much for us to learn this lesson? 

“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:2-5).

I am continually relearning this truth about my total dependence on God.

Here’s a great prayer that expresses dependence on God:

“Father of Mercies, Hear me for Jesus’ sake. I am sinful even in my closest walk with you; it is of your mercy that I did not die long ago; Your grace was given me in the cross by which you have reconciled yourself to me and me to you, drawing me by your great love, declaring me as innocent in Christ though guilty in myself.

Giver of all graces, I look to you for strength to maintain them in me, for it is hard to practice what I believe. Strengthen me against temptations. My heart is an unexhausted fountain of sin, a river of corruption since childhood days, flowing on in every pattern of behavior; You have disarmed me of the means in which I trusted, and I have no strength but in you.

You alone can hold back my evil ways, but without your grace to sustain me I fall. Satan’s darts quickly inflame me, and the shield that should quench them easily drops from my hand: Empower me against his wiles and assaults. Keep me sensible of my weakness, and of my dependence upon your strength. Let every trial teach me more of your peace, more of your love.

Your Holy Spirit is given to increase your graces, and I cannot preserve or improve them unless he works continually in me. May he confirm my trust in your promised help, and let me walk humbly in dependence upon you, for Jesus’ sake.” (Contemporized from, “The Valley of Vision“).

Steve Cornell