Leaning to humble ourselves can be one of the hardest lessons we have to be taught in life. And I don't mean humble as in not walking around prideful and arrogant. I am talking about the kind of humble where you ALLOW God to check your heart, point out what He sees in you that is impure, and allow Him to work it out of you. This does not just take an obedient heart, but it takes a heart that will allow itself to be humbled again and again and again.
God loves you...He loves me....and that is the best news I can tell you today. Because it is that love that allows God to want to work on us and in us, instead of just washing His hands of us when we mess up. God also loves us enough to not throw to much change at us at one time. Have you ever noticed that sometimes right when you feel like He worked something out of you, you turn around and find out that He needs to work something else out of you. Be thankful that He does not try to just get everything out of us at one time that He does not like. If He did, we would probably become very overwhelmed at all the "sinful things" that live in us. We always have to remember that God hates sin, but He LOVES the sinner. So it is only His desire to flush the sin out of our lives so that we can become a better person. Who else would know what is best for us other than the creator of us? And God knows that when we allow ourselves to be prideful, those changes are going to be SO much harder to accomplish.
I was once heard a Christian counselor tell someone that they needed to become less prideful so God could work on them. When this person heard this they were in shock. On the outside this person seemed to be a compassionate person. They seemed to be humble. There was no arrogance about them. They did not think they were a great looking person....and they did not think they had all the answers. The problem was, this person's understanding of what "pride" meant was very skewed. And it was skewed by the enemy. The pride that the counselor was talking about was the kind of pride that stops you from looking inward. It stops you from seeing if there is something in you that God doesn't like. It tells you that you are just fine the way you are...and it convinces you that you don't have a pride issue. The enemy wants us to look in the mirror and think "I'm not prideful". The more we believe this, the more our hearts can get into a dangerous place. God needs our hearts to stay submissive to Him. He needs them to stay "correctable". The enemy will try to get us to look at everything except ourselves. He will have you compare yourself to someone else. He will have you compare yourself to the "old you" and he will try to convince you that your "better", and better is "good enough". Not true! Jesus is the standard. He is the only person you should compare yourself to. He had no pride...His heart was pure...His life was blameless. Whether you can fully ever achieve that is not the question...it is a matter of trying. The let God's grace fill in the gap where you fall short.
So the bottom line is this, pride is a heart issue. It doesn't alway have to be evident on the outside, it can be something the is between you and God. He desires to get pride out of your heart so He can reveal things to you, reveal things about you, and create change in your life....for the better. Pride and humility can not exist at the same time or in the same place. So today ask God if you have pride in your heart that has ever stopped Him from being able to point something out to you that He desire to see changed. The last thing we ever want to do is hinder God from working in our lives. And sometimes we can do this without even realizing we are. The enemy would love to create a wall between you and God that you don't even realize is there. What better deception is there than that?
Here are some scriptures on pride if you would like to see more about what the bible has to say about it. (Proverbs 11:2, Proverbs 16:5, Proverbs 29:23, Proverbs 16:8, Galatians 6:3)
God, we thank You that You want to change us on the inside. And I pray right now that You keep my heart at a place where I always welcome that change. Point out in me the things that need to be worked on and keep me humble enough to welcome those changes. I know that the love You have for me is why You want to change me. Please allows other to see the same thing. In Jesus name, Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment