Living Hope Fellowship Church

DEPENDENCY

Training Material

by Pastor Kevin Badgley

DEPENDENCY

Preface

(abide in Christ, depend on Him)

          It is God’s divine will that we would abide in Him, and we have a dependency on God.  If we want to walk right and speak right we have to depend on God.

          If we are going to bear much fruit, do anything in the ministry, or even be a Christian witness we have a dependency on God. 

          When it comes to walking in the Spirit, and casting out devils, you have to abide IN Jesus, lest any flesh glory in His presence.  Be encouraged, because you can do great things if you will get in and ABIDE IN CHRIST!

DEPENDENCY

by Pastor Kevin Badgley 

          John 15:1-8 says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.  Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.  Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.  I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.  If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.  If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.  Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.”

          Our carnal nature is diametrically opposed to the divine nature that is placed within us.  Our carnal nature says, I want to be in control, and I will remain in control.  It goes on and says, However, I will allow a certain amount of divine nature to operate in me so that I can keep my blessings. 

          It is God’s divine will that we abide in Him!  We have a dependency on God.  In order to walk right and speak right we have to depend on God!  If we are going to bear much fruit, do anything in the ministry, or even be a Christian witness we have a dependency on God. 

          God doesn’t want us dependent just for the sake of being dependent.  We have to understand that without Him we can’t do anything.  The Bible says in Isaiah 64:6, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. . . .”  In other words, the good things that we do are still filthy rags compared to what the Lord does.  The motivation behind the Lord’s doing is holiness and blessing for people to be drawn to Him.  We are self motivated and self exalting. 

          I don’t want to be dependent on anybody, but we are dependent on many things.  For an easy example just look at electricity.  Think about the air conditioning or heating, lights, water pumps, computers, and all the things that electricity does for us.  We are electrically dependent.  Our forefathers were not dependent on electricity, but we are so modern, and intelligent, and able!  Yet we are more dependent than we have ever been in the history of the world. 

          Do you remember when it rolled over to the year 2000?  The big concern was about the power grids going down because the computer didn’t know what 2000 meant!  It was the Y2K Scare.  Nothing happened, but there was world wide fear because of our dependency.  Without electricity coming down the wires most people couldn’t get their pay checks. 

          Almost all of us depend on gasoline.  If they decide to quit pumping oil and gasoline what are we going to do?           

          Jesus shows us here a total dependency of the church on Him.  He tells us to ABIDE in Him.  The problem is that we have become so dependent on other things that we have pulled our dependency off of the Lord somewhat.  We think we are so able without Him in these areas.  We have the ability to choose a “yes” or “no” answer to Jesus.  Even as Christians, He gives us a certain amount of independence until such time that we realize that the best place that we could be is totally dependent on Jesus. 

          Elijah was totally dependent on God for his food.  He drank out of the brook, but God fed him with ravens.  He couldn’t appear anywhere else in the country, because there was a hit out on him.  The king had said that he wanted Elijah and made nations to swear an oath that they had not seen him if they had not.  Elijah couldn’t stay among the people so he stayed in the wilderness. 

          This preacher got fed even though he wasn’t a hunter!  This was a God ordained dependency.  Whenever I try to walk upright before the Lord, and I think that I am doing pretty good, yet I slip, I realize that unless God holds me I can’t stand.  Whenever I want to repent, except that God be there, I can’t repent.  When I need healing, or I come before the Lord for someone else’s behalf, I must depend on Him.  I am constantly asking God to remember my children.  We can’t shuck our dependency on the Lord for any reason whatsoever. 

          Our old nature is that we want to be independent.  We say, Lord, save me, and set me free, so He saves us and sets us free.  Then we have a free will to choose good or evil, blessing or cursing, life or death.  Then we say, Ok, God, I will take it from here.  That has never been God’s design.  After you come to the Lord, He wants you more dependent thereafter than you have ever been before. 

          God feeds the sparrows.  God feeds and clothes us.  He waters the land.  He made the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars, and everything that grows on the earth.  However, He wants us to have a greater dependency on Him, a worshipful, glorious dependency on Him. 

          As a Christian you can’t do anything without the Lord.  If you do, you do it without the anointing of God, without a holy witness, or the glory of God, and that is “religion”.

          In John 15:2 it talks about every Christian that isn’t depending on God.  Real freedom is when we are fully dependent on God.  Genuine freedom does not mean that you can do anything that you want to do.  Genuine freedom is from the Lord, because where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.

          You can be so free in the Lord that you don’t get sick, or bound, or become troubled or vexed.  You have joy unspeakable.  You have peace all the time.  You have faith when everything around you is going to pieces.  That is full freedom.  However, you must follow the footsteps of Jesus in order to walk in that freedom. 

          The freedom of our country was bought by the blood of men and women who gave their lives.  Others who survived the wars paid a high price of dedication and sacrifice.  Freedom has a price. 

          John 15:2 says, “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.”  In other words, when you are in the vine, abiding in Christ, God will take away the part of you that isn’t producing!  God has taken parts of me away, and it has been very shameful, humiliating, and upsetting to me.  I thought that I was pretty good, had a lot of ability, and I thought I was valuable! 

          Luke 16:15 says, “And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.”

          If you aren’t producing, then He is going to cast you away.  If you do start producing, He doesn’t pat you on the back and say, OK, I’m not going to bother you anymore.  He purges you more.  You may have a pretty good limb out there with fruit on it.  It has two or three down here, and one way out there, and He will whack it off right there between two and three, because you aren’t producing to the degree you could be.

          God doesn’t want us to be half baked Christians.  He will work to make us produce fruit, and see to it that we are abiding in Him.  He wants to get us into that place in John 15:7 that says, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”  That is a glorious freedom!  Yet, it will not happen if we are free from our connection with Christ.  Without Him we can do nothing.

          Verse 6 says, “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.”  If you do not abide in Him, you will be severed from Him.  So many have broken off from the vine and gone on their own way.  They will burn in hell.

          I can try to talk to intelligent people on complex subjects, but I end up talking like a fool, because I’m not intelligent enough to hold a conversation in certain areas.  However, I have found out that when the anointing of God comes on me I can speak of great and marvelous things of the Lord.  This causes me to understand that this ability came from God.

          Everybody God uses was at one time headed for hell!  We all started out at the same place, sinners.  I know some brilliant people who are just as lost in their souls as they can possibly be.  I know some people who are really ignorant, but they love the Lord, and it seems like wisdom follows them.

          God can take a fool, and make a wise man out of him when he comes to God and abides in Him.  When we abide in Him, we don’t have to be stupid, or sinful, or worldly, or lustful.  God will totally change your nature to where God’s nature is operating in your vessel.  You won’t behave like you used to behave if you abide in Him. 

          David said in Psalm 119:31, “I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O LORD, put me not to shame.”  Obey the Lord, and keep the Lord’s Word ever before you and in your heart that you won’t sin against Him. 

          1 Corinthians 1:21 says, “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

          Verse 26 says, “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:”

          You don’t need to be wise, mighty, or noble, or rich to be able to accomplish the things that Jesus accomplished.  Jesus said in Mark 10:24, “. . . Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!”

          There are only a few who are noble, wise, mighty, or rich who are Christians.  It is not because God doesn’t like them, but because they usually don’t think that they need God.  They don’t have the dependency on God that others have.

          If you are poor you depend on somebody else to help you with money.  If you are not noble, but a coward, you depend on the brave to defend you.  If you are weak you depend on the strong to keep you.  If you are already capable, you may feel you have no need of help.  If your dependency is on worldly things or on your own talents and ability, sooner or later you will fail. 

          1 Corinthians 1:27-29 says, “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:  That no flesh should glory in his presence.”

          Eventually, we can come into a place where we “are not” like Enoch, and God took him.  He was a godly man and Hebrews 11:5 says that, “. . . before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”  If you walk with God, He will take you there too. 

          The Apostle Paul was a brilliant man.  He was a wise man, and he was mighty in deeds and words, but he said that he counted those things as dung.  He laid them down and began to speak on a common man’s language level.  He said in 1 Corinthians 2:4, “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:”  He could have come with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but he chose not to.  He chose to be dependent on the Spirit of the Living God.

          We know that we are not qualified to do certain things.  We are limited by our stupidity, our background, our stature, or because we are weak or ignorant, but God has chosen limited, unqualified, and devil possessed people to come into the kingdom of God!  Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven devils, when He rose from the dead.  God uses women.  God uses children.  From what sling did the stone in Goliath’s forehead come?  It was from the sling of a ruddy faced boy named David. There is no excuse for us to not do great things for God!

          The devil tells each of us that we are not qualified to do anything of a grand nature.  However, Jesus said in John 15:7, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”  You can get to the place where nothing will be impossible unto you. 

          He uses very unqualified people.  1 Corinthians 1:28-29 says, “And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:  That no flesh should glory in his presence.”

          Have you ever been going along in the Lord pretty good, and then do something that was really un-Christian?  You don’t feel like glorying in God’s presence the next time that you go to praying!  Does God intend for us to stumble?  No, but He expects us to abide in the Vine.  You may have not done anything on purpose, but you have to abide closer.  You can’t get out there on the tip end of the branch and try to live.  After a while you would dry up! 

          You have to get in there next to the Vine where the sap is flowing.  When you get to where you are bearing fruit He will drive you back even closer to the Vine.  You will begin to grow out some more, and then He will cut you back some more.  Pretty soon it will be you and Jesus working together in a full blown ministry.  It will be without fail, doing that which is impossible on a regular basis.  That is amazing, isn’t it?

          No matter what your past, or your lineage, or your troubles have been, if you will stick fast to the Lord, He is liable to do something special with you on purpose just to make the neighbors scratch their heads!  He said He would confound the wise!

          Sometimes it feels like nobody is listening to anything that I have to say.  You look them in the face, they hear you and understand you, but you know that they are going to do what they want to do anyway.  It makes you feel insignificant and frustrated, especially as a preacher.  Nobody wants to be insignificant!  I told the Lord, I work hard to have a good witness, and then when I do witness, it’s not heard.  Sometimes you get this look that they really don’t believe anything that you are saying.  They can know that you are telling it straight from the Word of God; they can feel the anointing on you, but it goes nowhere.  This is a fairly common occurrence!  We have to fight frustration and a certain amount of bitterness.

          As you witness to those around you, you may be despised.   The classification of what you used to be before you knew the Lord is still on you.  Only now it is anointed, and God chose that on purpose.  Some will listen to you because His presence is on you, and there has been such a tremendous change in your life, but some will not listen.

          There were times that people didn’t listen to Jesus, and in one area He marveled because of their unbelief!  Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 

          The closer you abide in Jesus, the more powerful your witness will become.  We should abide closer to the Lord so we will quit making mistakes!  We are dependant on the Lord for our next breath!  We need to be dependent on the Lord so that when a bully or the devil comes around, He will be there to protect us.  It has many advantages.

          We are qualified to abide in Him, made able because He purchased us with His blood!  If we will abide in the Lord we can do great exploits, because we do know our God. 

          We think that the Apostle Paul had an affliction in his eyes.  When people saw him they probably said, He preaches healing, but he is still having trouble himself.  Paul said in Gelatins 4:15, “. . . I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me.”  In other words, they would have given their own eyes to him. 

          Paul even said in 2 Corinthians 12:21, “. . . when I come again, my God will humble me among you. . . .”  In other words, God was going to humble him in front of them that Jesus Christ would be all and all. 

          Everybody is unqualified.  None of us were qualified to have children.  We had the biological ability, but we had never been parents before.  Now that we are older we see all the mistakes we made.  We were young enough that we had the endurance to be parents.  Now that we are older we have the wisdom to be parents!

          When you started out in the Lord you had godly zeal.  You said, Oh, yes, I’m going to win the world!  However, pretty soon you ran into a wall that said, The world doesn’t want to be won!  Then you struggled and fought.  You run into different phases as a child of God.  The devil is in your face saying, They don’t care, stupid!  That is why we must have a dependency on the Lord, and why we must abide in Him.  It is the difference between living in the yard beside your house or living in the house.  Instead of being beside the Lord, we need to be in the Lord!

          2 Corinthians 5:17-18 says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.  And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;”

          Some of us couldn’t do anything before we came to Jesus, and we still can’t do anything without Him.  If you could do anything before, now you can’t do anything.  A lot of people try to bring their worldly abilities to God, and they may work in the “helps” part of the ministry, but when it comes to spiritual things they are totally inadequate. 

          When it comes to walking in the Spirit and casting out devils, you have to abide IN Jesus, lest any flesh glory in His presence.  Be encouraged, because you can do great things if you will get in and ABIDE IN CHRIST!

          Without God we are nothing, but we can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens us.  We cannot be deceived by our self will if we won’t allow it.  If we will listen to God’s sweet Spirit’s draw in our hearts, then we can know that God is doing the work.  I ask the Lord that we will all learn to abide in Him and trust in Him fully, for our eternal life is dependent on Him!

CONTACT INFORMATION:

PASTOR KEVIN BADGLEY

LIVING HOPE FELLOWSHIP, P. O. BOX 111, GRAND CHAIN, IL  62941

CHURCH / FAX (618) 634-2541

E-mail  livinghope@hughes.net

www.livinghopefellowshipchurch.org

These condensed Bible studies have been published to help new Christians in their new walk with the Lord.  Kevin Badgley, the author, is the pastor of Living Hope Fellowship Church.

This is a Living Hope Fellowship publication.