Depending on God for your needs does not imply that you don't depend on others or yourself for living the Christian life. I depend on the farmers and food producers to have food to eat because they are the ones who grow the food that I eat. The right weather conditions for farming to take place are clearly outside of our control. So it's appropriate to depend on God for rain and sunshine. But even if those conditions are met, it's not guaranteed that I'll have food to eat.

I have to move my body and exercise my will and bring about the ability to eat food. Whether I get food depends on the state of my body. Do I have control over my body? Yes, but not absolute control.

To say that I depend on either God or other people – depending on the issue – presents a flawed understanding of God's design of the world He created.

In medical matters, when we have a medical concern, we depend on God and the doctors for some solution. We rightly pray for God to move and answer our prayers, but we obviously depend on the doctors because we don't have the knowledge they have about what's needed.

We depend on God and our teachers for education and learning. Teachers depend on God for the right attitude in guiding their teaching because they need the Holy Spirit to guide them and bring to light anything that would dishonor Him or disrupt the connection they have with Him.

Do they consult God directly about how to prepare a lesson plan? I doubt it. They might pray for ideas. But beyond that, I don't think they depend on God for preparing a lecture or lesson plan. Is this wrongheaded?

I don't think so for a few reasons. First, this would turn the world into a one-man show, with God literally doing everything. Second, it seems based on the idea that we *directly* depend on God for everything. I don't need to pray about how to change a tire, cook a meal, formulate an argument, or even persuade people about something. At the same time, however, it was God who gave me a mind and body to operate, so that I can do those things. So in an ultimate or broad sense, I do depend on God for those abilities.

I think the process of sanctification can beautifully capture this relationship between God, myself, and the Body of Christ. I depend on God's daily grace and empowerment for victory over sin, enabling me to be receptive and open to whatever He might have to say on a given day, and so forth.

On my end, victory over sin, in general, comes through confessing my sins to the Lord, eliminating sinful habits, and cultivating good habits that glorify Christ. Because the process of identifying and eliminating bad habits involves spiritual warfare (2 Cor. 10:5), I am incapable of doing this on my own because I am battling against Satan and demons.

The Holy Spirit, because He is all-powerful, is who I must involve daily as my ultimate source of strength for overcoming sinful habits in my life. However, grasping with my mind what habits are, understanding how they are formed, and recognizing the difficult challenges in forming them early on don't necessarily require illumination from the Holy Spirit. Even unbelievers can have a good understanding of habits, even when they don't know the spiritual warfare that lurks behind certain habits in our lives.

The process of being sanctified depends on God's constant presence and empowerment in my life on a regular basis. I need His presence and empowerment to live virtuously. However, much of this also hinges on me. Why? Because God has given me the resources I need, and it is up to me to take advantage of them. Second, it is because I am responsible for when sin disrupts the harmony in my relationship with God and in making progress. I can never fault God for messing up.

I hope you can see that if it all depended completely on God for all of this to happen (and messing up does happen), then there would be grounds to blame God for why this happens. But God is perfectly good and loving and thus can't be blamed when I fall into sin and fail on my end of the sanctification process. It might sound strange to say that it depends on God and me for sanctification to take place, but it seems reasonable to say.

So in a nutshell, being a physically healthy, morally upright, spiritually mature, and wise child of God depends on several things: God's grace and empowerment; my participation and exercising of my free will to know intellectually what a healthy, morally upright, and spiritually mature life looks like; my willingness to be corrected and guided by the Holy Spirit (the latter which He constantly helps me to do) day by day; and my allowing Christ to guide me through all these things through His Church.

It depends on God, you, and the Church. I'd like to end on a brief quote that I think summarizes what I have said:

"A Christian spiritual discipline is a repeated bodily practice, done in dependence on the Holy Spirit and under the direction of Jesus and otherwise teachers in His Way, to enable us to get good at certain things in life that we cannot learn to do by direct effort." - "The Lost Virtue of Happiness: Discovering the Disciplines of the Good Life" by J.P. Moreland and Klaus Issler

See also: Philippians 2:12-13; Colossians 3:5; and 1 Timothy 4:7-8.