Self Reliance Makes You Blind To Blessing

Some people have plenty and cannot enjoy any of it. It is not greed exactly. They just never seem to see what is already there.

Jeremiah 17:5 and 6 describe the man who "trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm," and then say, "For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh." Shall not see. Not shall not receive. The good arrives and goes unnoticed.

That is what self reliance does to a person. When everything depends on you, your attention narrows to what you are managing, and help standing right in front of you goes straight past.

You have probably lived it in a small way. Too locked into your own plan to notice someone offering an easier route, or a solution sitting there the whole time.

Living under grace changes what you can see, because you stop assuming everything good was something you engineered. Proverbs 10:22 says, "The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it." No sorrow attached to it. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you where He has already been good to you, and gratitude turns up on its own rather than being worked up.

Your family, whatever you are able to do, the fact that you are still standing. None of that was self generated, and He is not finished giving.