God alone can give life, and God alone can revive a dying church. One of the greatest lessons for anyone yearning to see a church revitalized is to learn how to rely on God alone. What we may underestimate is how repugnant self-reliance is to God, how pervasive it is in us, how difficult it is to detect, and how stubborn it is to drive out. Identifying self-reliance in the work of church revitalization is an excellent starting point for the work God must do in his people, and especially in their leaders, before he will revive their spiritual lives.
Paul’s Bitterest Lesson
The apostle Paul battled self-reliance his whole Christian life. It first expressed itself in the spiritual pride that characterized him before his conversion. Paul is the paradigm of someone who sought to establish his own righteousness before God by works of the law (Rom. 10:3; Gal. 1:14). He was fiercely proud of his Jewish credentials, as listed in Philippians 3:4–6, especially of his blamelessness in the law. This tendency to boast of his own achievements was revealed to be spiritual refuse (Phil. 3:8) in light of the glory of Christ that Paul first saw on the road to Damascus. But that does not mean that, at that instant, Paul was done with the astonishingly powerful gravitational pull of self-reliance.
In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul related the bitterest lesson of his life:
For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. (2 Cor. 1:8–9; emphasis mine)
We do not know exactly what kind of hardship Paul was referring to; it surely had to do with some kind of persecution in connection with the ministry of the gospel. But Paul writes of God’s purpose in orchestrating this overwhelming pressure on his soul: to teach him to stop relying on himself and, rather, to rely on God, who raises the dead. Paul still had some self-reliance deep within him, and only such a bitter affliction and a hopeless circumstance could begin to drive it out. Paul faced his own death, and he had no stratagems for delivering himself.
The Holy Spirit spoke this lesson to Paul’s restless and fearful heart: “Stop relying on yourself; trust in God, who raises the dead. That is the ultimate issue in salvation, for death is the final enemy. And, Paul, what is your strategy for raising your own corpse from the grave? What power will you summon? What argument will you make? What bribe can you pay? All means will be gone. God will raise you from the dead, or you will never be raised. So, if that be true, dear Paul, why not trust him now for deliverance from this extreme (but lesser) trial? Drive out self-reliance with faith.”
Now, if a godly man like Paul needed this level of instruction on the issue of self-reliance, how much more do we need it? Paul’s powerful summation of his lesson came with the words, “On him we have set our hope” (2 Cor. 1:10). Setting your hope on God is the opposite of self-reliance. This is directly related to church revitalization, for what is revitalization but the supernatural work of God in raising a church from the dead? If you approach church revitalization looking at your own strength—your wisdom, technique, verbal skills, reasoning, winsome personality, people skills, shrewdness, or even revitalization experience at some other church—you are being self-reliant. On God, and God alone, you must set your hope.
Arrogance and Despair: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Self-reliance is so deeply rooted that it may be very difficult to detect—and hard to eradicate once detected. One of the greatest ways to expose this enemy of God’s glory is to gauge your heart when you look at the challenges you face in revitalization. Zeal for God’s glory has been reduced to a mere flicker, numbers have dwindled, finances are diminishing, nominal Christians are in control with their worldly outlook, evangelism has been nonexistent for years, and the future looks dim. On top of all that, some church members are vocal in their opposition to clear, biblical preaching, while the stench of hidden sin is wafting through their lives. These, and many other obstacles, face you as you look down the road ahead.
If at that moment you feel overwhelming despair, you are indulging in self-reliance. However, if you feel a surging confidence in what you will be able to achieve by your gifts and persuasiveness and are looking forward to the challenge as an opportunity to “show what you can do,” you are also indulging in self-reliance. Despair and arrogance are two sides of the same coin—and that coin is called self-reliance.
We see this most plainly in the tragic events recounted by Moses in Deuteronomy 1. Forty years earlier, Moses had sent out some spies to scout the land, yet they returned with the spiritual virus of unbelief. They caught it while gazing at the walled cities and the warriors they would have to defeat to conquer the land. “The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to heaven” (Deut. 1:28). “We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (Num. 13:33). They looked at the challenges facing them, which were real indeed, but then made the spiritually fatal mistake of looking inward to meet these challenges. When they looked inward and did not see the resources necessary, they melted in despair.
But God was angry at their wretched unbelief in forgetting all the power he had shown in delivering them from Egypt and the Red Sea. And he swore on oath that they would never inherit the land, condemning them to wander for forty years in the desert until their children would rise up to inherit it in their place. At that point they changed their minds, and each of them prepared for battle, thinking “it easy to go up into the hill country” (Deut. 1:41). This was nothing more than the exact same thing—self-reliance—in its opposite guise of arrogance. And God willed that the Amorites who lived in the hill country should drive them out like a swarm of bees (Deut. 1:44).
Church revitalization is one of the most difficult works on which a Christian can ever embark. No one is harder to reach than an unconverted church member. They have resisted biblical instruction their entire lives and are veteran “opposers” to God’s work. Concerning pastors, they have “seen ’em come and seen ’em go.” As a matter of fact, some of them have been instrumental in making them go! They consider the church to be theirs, and they will fight you every step of the way. Others are not so belligerent, but they are usually listless, lethargic, and lifeless. Amid all this may be a godly remnant who have wept and prayed for years for revival, but with no apparent success. They are discouraged and growing weaker.
When a new leader surveys such a scene, it is tempting to look inward for the resources to meet these challenges. If such a leader does look inward and (most likely) does not see those resources—courage, boldness, perseverance, wisdom, persuasiveness, people skills, and the like—he will be overwhelmed with discouragement. This is a sure sign of self-reliance. On the flip side, self-reliance can produce false confidence as a leader looks inward and somehow sees the necessary resources. In fact, the same leader may do each of these at different times in the journey of church revitalization. Sometimes downcast, sometimes pridefully elated, depending on the circumstances. Beware! This is self-reliance—the ancient enemy of God’s glory.
PRACTICAL ADVICE