Depending on God: 7 Days to Recognizing Your Deep Need for HimSample

We Depend Entirely Upon God for Our Partner

“Can you help me?” That’s a question we learn to avoid from an early age. If you’ve been around children, you know that point in development where they insist, “Me do it!” Unfortunately, that stubborn independence rarely fades with age. Asking for help is a confession of weakness, an acknowledgment that we can’t do something alone. It’s a humbling truth to admit. Perhaps that’s why the Lord chose to end the creation story with a slow, extended observation of our need for help.

Throughout Genesis 1, we read a repeated refrain: God saw that it was good. That refrain culminates with the announcement “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed”. So, in Genesis 2, it’s shocking to read, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him”. “It is not good”—that’s no soft statement of disappointment; it’s “highly emphatic.” God’s stressing the point: this is really bad.

Why is it not good for the man to be alone? Is it because he’s lonely? No, it can’t be that, because he has God. Is it because there’s safety in numbers? No, he has the Lord as his protector and provider. God’s remedy reveals the answer: “I will make a helper corresponding to him.” It’s not good for the man to be alone, because he needs a human helper. A helper comes alongside another to lend strength and assistance in a task. The man needs a helper because he needs help. He’s incapable of ruling the earth or serving in the garden alone. God designed the first human being with a deficiency, a weakness. Before the Fall, sin, and death, God made us weak.

Weakness itself is not what the Lord declares not good. It’s not wrong that the man needs help. If that were the case, the Lord would have altered him so he could fulfill his calling alone. But the Lord doesn’t do that. Instead, he makes another human (the woman) so that they can accomplish their purpose together, her adding her strength to his. No man or woman can independently fulfill God’s purpose on the earth; rather, “both sexes are mutually dependent on each other.”

The Lord really, really wants us to see this weakness. That’s why he saved this bit for the end. Among God’s last recorded words in the creation story are “It is not good for the man to be alone”. It is as though God shouts, “Humans. Are. Weak!” The sentence that follows in the same verse is just as important: “I will make a helper corresponding to him.” The woman is God’s solution—but she’s God’s solution. The remedy isn’t provided by the man or the woman. The help only arrives because the Lord supplies it. God’s the one who delivers strength for our every weakness. The Lord alone enables us to do the work he gave us. “It is not good for the man to be alone” isn’t an assessment limited to the creation of the first man. It’s an ongoing, by-design, good reality that continues today.

Why Our Weakness and Dependence on God Is a Gift

Weakness is God’s good gift because it’s the context in which he gives us himself. If we weren’t weak, we wouldn’t need God—we would rival him. Embracing our weakness trains us to humble ourselves and to boast in God. Such weakness is good news because God loves the weak, and only the weak can genuinely love God.

Weakness reminds us that God designed all of life to be lived by faith. He didn’t create us to live by our own power, only introducing the need for faith once we needed to be saved from sin and death. Life, liberty, and happiness aren’t found in our independence. They’re rooted entirely in our dependence on the Lord. From the beginning, God made us look to him for all we are and all we need. Weakness is the soil in which faith grows—and faith is where life flourishes.

So, friend, don’t be ashamed of your weakness. Don’t hide it. Don’t think it makes you unable to approach God. Don’t despair, thinking it means that true strength is not available. Let’s embrace and celebrate weakness so we can embrace and celebrate all that God is for us and gives to us in Jesus Christ.

We Are Weak. But He Is Strong

Join author Eric M. Schumacher as he examines the key role that weakness plays throughout the narrative of Scripture and learn how to fully depend on God’s strength in any situation you face. The Good Gift of Weakness will change the way you look at yourself and God. Accept your gift today.

Learn more about The Good Gift of Weakness here