All dependence upon our own wisdom, our own talents, our own intellectual grasp, our own powers of argument or persuasion or appeal, ignores the fundamental truth that “our sufficiency is from God.”
When a steamship has grounded on a sandbar at the river’s mouth, its own power is valueless for moving it. So far from helping it, the energy of its own machinery will only strain and injure it. What then? It must wait for God’s power, the power of the rising tide. That great uplifting force will do easily and quickly what its own internal power cannot do.
This is but a parable of human helplessness waiting for the power that is divine.