When You Can’t Hold It Together: Why Depending on God Changes Everything
We say we need God, but do our lives reflect it? You’re invited to rediscover the beauty of needing Him, not as a weakness, but as the beginning of deep, unshakable strength.
Why Depending on God Changes Everything
“Do I really need God?”
At face value, it’s a ridiculous question for a Christian to ask. Of course, I need God. But beneath the surface-level belief, we must reflect and ask ourselves honestly—am I actually dependent on God? Or am I depending on my job, my relationships, my health, my ability to reason and control to sustain myself? Where does our dependence lie for our needs, strength, joy, and security?
The more we sit with that question, the more we’ll realize how easy it is to say we need God but find all of our security in our own self-sufficiency.
Drowning in Self-Sufficiency
Most of us are drowning—not in sin, though that’s part of it—but in our own strengths, capabilities, and attempts to keep it together. Our anxieties and need to control the future drive our desperate hunger for affirmation, security, or enoughness. Perhaps, more than we even recognize.
As a society, we’ve been discipled into this self-dependence. The Western world, in particular, has built an altar to self-sufficiency. We're trained to draw strength from good things, such as our bank accounts, intellect, relationships, and more. Our culture celebrates "having it all together,” yet these sources of strength, no matter how good, are ultimately fragile.
But then, we read Psalm 112, and God reveals that there’s a better way.
“He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.” Psalm 112:7
The person described here isn't unshaken because of their own strength. They're unshaken because their trust is anchored in something—Someone—unshakeable. In his study, Knowing the Bible: Ecclesiastes, J.I. Packer shares, “Anything other than dependence on and trust in God is an attempt to grasp the unattainable. The only remedy to the meaninglessness and depression caused by life after the fall is God.”
So, how do we get to that kind of faith? The answer might be uncomfortable: experience.
Just like an athlete trains their body under strain, we train our hearts to trust God in moments when we have no choice but to. We don’t learn dependence from a textbook, instead, we learn it when our strength runs out. Learning to depend on God may involve loss, uncertainty, and waiting, but it also means discovering a joy, peace, and security not rooted in things that can be taken away.
At one point, I caught myself praying, “God, help me understand what it means to depend on you.” As soon as I recognized what I was asking for, I stopped. I was unintentionally asking God to lead me into situations where my self-sufficiency wouldn't cut it. My prayer was to need Him not just theologically, but existentially from a place where I couldn’t plan, achieve, or rescue myself. Was that really what I wanted? Or was I just seeking a peace of mind that I prayed the “right thing”?
The reality of my prayer that I was overlooking was that while learning to depend on God may involve loss, uncertainty, and waiting, it also means discovering a joy, peace, and security not rooted in things that can be taken away. And as a reminder, God has already given us Scripture—story after story of His people discovering that He is enough. From the manna in the wilderness to Paul’s prison cell, the Bible is a gallery of dependence for us to learn from.
He’s also given us something else: our own stories, backgrounds, and context.
What Does a Life Dependent on Christ Look Like?
If you’re reading this, it means you’ve made it through something. Heartbreak. Loss. Sin. Disappointment. Every scar tells a story of survival, and behind each one is a God who never stopped providing, even when we weren't looking.
Maybe your story doesn’t feel victorious, but the fact that you’re still here means that God has provided for you in ways you may not have noticed. When we step back, we begin to see His fingerprints in the moments we thought we were all alone. Dependence, when we view it in this light, doesn’t have to be scary; It can be worshipful.
To look back at your past and say, “You carried me,” is an act of praise. To wake up and ask for daily bread is an act of trust. To cast your anxieties on Him is an act of surrender and freedom. Dependence isn't despair, it’s an awakening.
So, what does a life dependent on Christ look like?
Daily Bread: In Matthew 6:11, Jesus teaches us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." It's an invitation to approach each day acknowledging that we need God's provision.
Joy in Obedience: Psalm 112:1 describes those who "greatly delight" in God's commands. When we depend on God, obedience becomes less about rules and more about relationship.
Saturating Our Minds with God's Word: Oswald Chambers once shared, “The only reliable way to be truly guided by God is to assimilate the Word of God to your character."
Dependence on God isn’t defeat, it’s intimacy and transformation. It's the place where joy begins to rise. In his book, The Songs of Jesus, Tim Keller wrote, “Those who do not merely believe in God but fear Him and so obey out of inner delight have their characters transformed into His likeness.”
As we lean into Him, we become more like Him. We become people of peace, mercy, and quiet confidence, even when the world is spinning.
The Dance, Not the Tightrope
Our culture's attempts at finding self-sufficiency are fleeting. As Psalm 112:10 vividly describes it, "The desire of the wicked will perish!" Nothing will satiate our hearts’ true longings like a relationship with God. We can take pleasure in His creation, but we'll never experience the fullness of it without Him.
In a sermon, Pastor Paul Lawler shared, “God’s will isn’t a tightrope walk; it’s more akin to a dance.” Dependence isn’t about getting every step right. It’s about staying close to the One who knows the rhythm. It’s less about hearing something “new” from God and more about listening to what He’s already said until it permeates our soul. It's not about perfection, it's about presence.
We don’t need to wait for a crisis to start depending on God. We just need to recognize our need, and that in itself is grace.
“In Ecclesiastes 2:23, the Preacher writes, ‘All his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.’ The way to fight anxiety is not to forget our problems or increase our self-confidence. Freedom from fear comes through hoping in God and His promises. The cross of Christ shows that God has indeed come to save us. No matter how uncertain our immediate future, we can trust that He is with us, is for us, and will never leave nor forsake us.” J.I. Packer, Knowing the Bible: Ecclesiastes
Our dependence on intimacy with God is intertwined into every activity. Psalm 112:4 shares, “Light dawns in the darkness for the upright.” The dawn doesn’t come all at once. It starts with a sliver of light over the horizon. But it grows, warms, and leads to day. Perhaps, needing God is the beginning of that dawn. Not the end of your strength, but the beginning of His.
TL;DR
We often say we need God, but our lives reveal a quiet dependence on self, control, and cultural definitions of security.
Psalm 112 offers a picture of a person unshaken by fear because their trust is anchored in God, not in circumstance.
Depending on God isn’t theoretical—it’s often learned through hardship, loss, and the failure of our own strength.
A life of dependence includes daily trust (daily bread), joy in obedience, a mind saturated in God’s Word, and a steady heart.
Dependence isn’t a tightrope of perfection, it’s a dance with God marked by presence, not performance.
True satisfaction can’t be found in self-reliance—only in reverence and relationship with the One who never fails.