ONE DAY AT TIME !!!

“One day at a time, sweet Jesus! That’s all I am asking from you…Just give me the strength to do everyday what I have to do…....”

The words in the above famous hymn go on to say that yesterday has already gone and we may never live to see tomorrow and all we can ask God is to help us with our living for - TODAY.

The desire to be at liberty stirs every individual, right from an early age, to get rid of reliance on someone else and to endeavor to stand alone, without aid.

But the Bible contradicts this view by warning how dangerous self-dependence can be. Jeremiah 10:23 says, “A man’s life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.”

Dave Butts says in his article, “Dependency upon God” that, “It is a very difficult thing to make the switch from a culture that glorifies independence into a lifestyle that demonstrates complete dependence upon God.”
Most Christians, however, manage to make this Transition, as they mature in their Christian walk. After encountering a series of failures by trying to stand in our own flesh, we somehow learn that IT IS MEANINGLESS FOR A BRANCH TO LIVE A LIFE DETACHED FROM THE VINE. And so we learn to depend on God.

But the point of focus here is that, though we slowly learn to move away from our haughty independence to a sense of dependency on God, how far do we carry it forward on a “day to day” basis?

Do we merely depend on God to supply our needs for a distant Future or are we looking up to Him daily, seeking a fresh supply of His provision each morning?

Let’s consider a real life situation: We do not expect the milkman to deliver milk at our doorstep “sometime during the week, don’t know when”. We expect to see him on time, ‘every’ morning with a fresh supply of milk. We can all actually live a day without consuming milk, but still we depend so fiercely on the milkman and create a huge fuss if he doesn’t come along a single day.

How much more should we depend on God for things we cannot live a day without?

The problem is we do not realize that we need things from God on a day-to-day basis. We assume that God will step in whenever we need Him during the day. We don’t actually ‘DEPEND’ on Him to be in control of each passing moment in our lives.

Frankly speaking, we don’t want Him to! We still carry about our self-dependence, arrogantly unaware that we never gave it up completely in the first place.

We don’t realize that if we depended more completely upon Him ‘Everyday’, we can live life to the full, as He intends us to. And so, we end up leading mediocre lives, never daring to explore the fullness of life in God, which is available to us Freely if only we wholy depend on Him.

I’m really grateful to my Heavenly Father for showing me, at quite a very young age, the art of living one day at time in total dependence on Him. I can boldly testify that I have never been let down on a single day in all my life no matter what situation I had been facing on a particular day. Yes God honors my every simple, yet strong faith ‘day after day’.

All He wants us to do is to realize every morning that apart from Him, we can do nothing. This is exactly what Jesus Himself taught us to do in the prayer He taught us - “Give us this day our daily bread”.

Living for each day makes life so much simpler and it gets even simpler if we depend on God completely to take us through the day.

God does not promise us that if we surrender our day to Him, He will make it all smooth and rosy. But He gives unto each day what He deems best, lovingly mingle the right proportion of pain and pleasure into the day and make it a totally exciting experience for us.

Dear friend, before you get addicted to the daily and weekly planners you set up on your table, let God to plan and direct your everyday life, just as He deems best. Then I am sure, you will have no cause for worry or for fear.

Let us sacrifice our self-dependence on the altar every morning and start living our lives – ONE DAY AT A TIME.