“Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.”
From: The Cost of Discipleship
Author: Dietrich Bonheoffer
“Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God”(2 Cor. 3:5).
The question is, where is your extremity? Does it refer to the “anything” in the Scripture above? Probably not.
What if you consider yourself intelligent, strong-willed and fully capable of handling most of what life brings your way?
Isn’t it the “little things”, the mundane, “the grocery list”, that you don’t invite God in on that become the very things that end up messing up your marriage, your finances, business and relationships?
Usually the “big things”, those situations you know you can’t handle are those that you call God in on and those end up working out OK.
You see, the definition of your extremity determines everything else you do yourself; that is, all the things you accomplish by works through your human effort rather than by God’s grace through your faith.
So, Bonheoffer’s statement is true, but could be misconstrued and therefore misleading to a disciple of Jesus Christ.
It seems we only call on God when we are at the end of our rope or we are drowning; “going down for the last time”.
On the other hand, what would life be like if we realized that our extremity” is the proverbial “end of our nose”?
We’ve all heard it said, “God helps those who help themselves” as though it’s quoted straight from the Bible. Is it in the Bible? Is it even true in any way, shape or form?
No, the Bible teaches, almost on every page, Old and New Testament that “God helps the helpless”!
In fact, due to the fact that every human being is helpless and not necessarily receiving God’s grace to handle life, the most accurate expression of what God does is:
“God helps those who realize they are helpless!”