We confess our emptiness to God in very strong terms; and when we have done praying, are apt to depend altogether upon ourselves… It is a vain and impious thought to imagine that I can do any thing by my own strength. Dependence on God, in every single act of thinking and willing, is both my duty and security. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
The soul that has an eye on its own motives and desires will notice that the above statements are right on the money. The soul will cry out to God in prayer and confess how vile it is, how empty it is, and then how utterly impossible it is for it to do one right thing. However, it will rise from prayer and looking to itself it will then set out to do the tasks it sets before itself and in its own strength. It is far easier to recognize the sinfulness and helplessness of the soul in theory than it is in practice, but the problem is that we can also recognize it in prayer to some degree and yet the prayers also seem to be nothing but theory.
It is much harder to live by grace than it is to think about what it means to live by grace. The soul can see and think about the theories of these things and agree that these things are true and good, but actually doing them is quite a different thing. The soul can also strive to live by grace in its own strength and even think that it is living by grace in its own strength, but that is also a terrible deception. Grace can only be received by faith alone and that faith cannot be in the strength or wisdom of self to receive grace or to walk by grace. It is a fundamental and a huge mistake to trust in self to walk in grace.
Each person must learn to look at his or her own heart as they live and not just as they pray. A person can say many things and say them well in what that person may think of as prayer, but the professed prayer may not be the real prayer of the heart and even to a lesser degree reveal the real state of the heart. It is easy to do a good deed in order to make ourselves feel good about ourselves and to do it before men to gain honor for it. It is easy to do a good deed because we know it is the proper thing to do, and it is also easy to do a good deed because we know that we should do it for the sake of God. But it is impossible for the flesh of man to receive grace from God and then to do an act out of love for God. This is what happens when we depend on self to do an act or to depend on grace.
It is a very impious thought to depend on my own strength to do any one thing, but it is far worse to depend on my own strength and live the whole day that way. Even worse, it is a terrible thing to have lived an outwardly good life during the day and then feel satisfied that I have pleased God with the day. The duty of man, though far beyond his own strength, is utter dependence on God in every single act of thinking and willing. This is to say that to depend on God is to depend on grace alone. How this very thought sticks a dagger in the pride of human beings as it shows them that they must have grace to even think a good thought and that every true thought that is good is from grace alone. There is no room for pride because a good thought comes to the mind of the human being, but instead there is room for adoring the grace of God.
The soul that sees itself as utterly dependent upon God for its entire amount of true willing must look to grace for strength for all that it does. Jesus told His disciples that apart from Him they could not do one thing (good or spiritual). He told them that in the middle of His teaching on the vine. Christ is the vine, true believers are the branches, and so any fruit that comes from the branch in actuality comes from the vine. It is impossible for the soul to learn from its flesh that it must be completely and utterly dependent on God for every single act of thinking and willing, so it must learn this from the inner teaching of Christ. The mind can see the command to live by grace alone in all that it does, but it cannot learn the practice of this apart from the inner teaching of Christ.
Not only is this the duty of the believer, but it is the security of the believer as well. The believer that lives by grace that it receives from Christ is a secure believer. This is not a believer that falls into sin and stumbles around in unbelief, but instead this is the believer that has learned the secret of living upon a true manna and a true spring of living water. This is the believer that is truly living by Christ alone and grace alone. This is the believer that is led to springs of living water and feeds on the green grass. Living for Christ is for more secure than living for self.
God Loves... Himself 
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