One of the key elements of spiritual maturity is dependency. If you want to go far with God, you must learn what it means to be totally dependent on Him. The only way you can learn dependence is to have your personal resources ripped away from you. It’s nasty business and a very painful process yet this is the one and only road that leads to intimacy with God and IT IS WORTH IT.

We all start out thinking we understand dependency, but we don’t. We think of it like a man with a broken leg who has to hobble around on crutches. This isn’t dependency, this is merely inconvenience. If someone takes his crutches away, he can make do by hopping about and grabbing other people and furniture. Ask this man if he’s learning dependency and he’ll roll his eyes and tell you all about his trial. But then go ask a man who is paralyzed from the neck down and can’t even breathe without the aid of a machine. Ask him if he knows what dependency is and you’ll get a whole different answer just by the look in his eyes. God wants paralytic dependency from us.