Tag Archives: grace

IS GOD’S FORGIVENESS CONDITIONAL?

30 Friday May 2014

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Did you ever wonder what the part in the Lord’s Prayer that says “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” means?  I had always filed that one under “Theological Mysteries Too Deep for Me to Understand.”  Doesn’t God assure us ALL of our sins are forgiven because of Jesus’ death on the cross?  This seems to imply that He will only forgive as I forgive and I’m human.  If someone has done something really awful to me and I’m struggling to forgive them, does that mean God will not forgive some of my sins?

 I wasn’t going to take any chances with this and decided that forgiveness was to be my way of life.  I have some pretty bad sin in my life – bad.  I have spent the majority of my life serving myself at great cost to others.  But I claimed God’s promise that He forgives me for everything I’ve done as long as I am sincerely sorry and turn away from those things.  There is a lot of sin that a just, righteous God had to wipe from this sinner’s slate, and if He’s willing to do that for me, I will forgive whatever somebody has done to me.  Some wrongs are tougher than others and I often find myself struggling to stay at the proper level of forgiveness, but rather than dwell on what someone has done, I shift my focus to their need for God, remembering the time in my life when sin defined my life.  I concentrate on praying for them and for me.  Focusing on forgiveness and prayer keeps my thoughts away from what they have done.  God’s gift to me is a forgiving heart, which I feel very blessed to have.  Even with that, I have found it to be consistently and profoundly true that forgiveness may not do anything for the other person but it has set me free: so much less to fret about and stew over.

 So, despite not fully understanding what this part of the Lord’s Prayer means, I had it covered by my decision to just forgive.  Then a few weeks ago I was listening to Alistair Begg on the radio as he explained this passage.  Seems I’ve been taking the line too literally – no surprise there.  According to Pastor Begg, as sincere followers of Christ, our goal must be to forgive everyone of everything (forgive us as we forgive others) because that’s how God forgives those who accept His gift of salvation.  If we’re unable to do that, then we haven’t fully realized how detestable sin is to God; we haven’t acknowledged how abhorrent our sin is to Him, nor how great His gift of forgiveness is.  Once we fully understand the magnitude of God’s grace and mercy we will be able to forgive seventy times seven times.  It’s something we will work on as long as we walk on the earth, but it is to be our goal. To choose not to forgive someone and stick to that decision is a clear indicator that we haven’t grasped how wretched we are without Jesus.

 Psalm 51: 3, 4 – “ For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned,”

 As humans we rate sin – murder is worse than a lie, lying is worse than stealing my pen from work, stealing my pen from work is worse than using God’s name in vain.  But whatever you consider the smallest sin separates you from God.  We must look at sin from God’s viewpoint, not our own.  In His eyes, no matter how “small” the sin, the object of His great love – YOU – are separated from Him.  That grieves God.

 Mark 5:34: “And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.  Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.”

 Grace is relatively easy to understand intellectually.  Jesus paid our debt and God no longer holds us accountable for any of our sins – not a single one.  In my mind I understand that.  But truly comprehending how great His mercy is is extremely difficult.  If I have spent my entire life repeatedly committing the sin I think is the absolute worst one, but right before I die I sincerely accept Jesus as my Savior, God forgives me. He said He would and I expect Him to do that.  And He expects me to forgive everyone of everything without keeping record of the offenses.  Too much to ask from a human being?  Yep.  But I can do it because His Spirit dwells in me and I call on His power to get me to the place He expects me to be.  I can’t just consider forgiveness; I can’t reason through a situation to determine if I will or won’t forgive; I certainly can’t make a decision about forgiving someone based on worldly rationale because the world will tell me I certainly do not have to forgive everyone of everything all the time.  From a worldly perspective I cannot accept that someone like Jeffrey Dahmer could be forgiven.  But God clearly tells me otherwise.  The world rails at the thought of a child molester being forgiven.  But God will forgive anyone that is clothed in Jesus’ righteousness.  That’s the magnitude of His forgiveness that I have to understand.  And if I cannot understand it, I simply must accept it and trust Him in that.

 As a Christian I am held to a very high standard.  That standard is not another human being – my standard is Jesus.  God’s work in me is conforming me to His image, not to the image of the “goodest” person I know.   When forgiveness is hard, I remind myself that, had I done something as horrible as Mr. Dahmer, the moment I accepted Christ’s death as payment for my sins, I would have been forgiven.  That’s God’s promise.  Learning to forgive is part of our sanctification – part of becoming more like Christ.  We must constantly be working on it.  If there’s someone you haven’t forgiven because you feel justified that what they did was so bad you need not forgive them; perhaps someone keeps hurting you time and time again and you have stopped even considering the need to forgive them, you can know you haven’t fully grasped how abhorrent your sin is and how great God’s forgiveness is.

 Luke 11:3, 4 – “Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.”

 God’s forgiveness is not conditional.  This statement in our Lord’s Prayer is a reminder of what God has set as our goal.  If there are still people in our lives we are struggling to forgive, we can know we haven’t fully grasped the magnitude of what God has done for us.  We haven’t fully realized how wretched we are without Christ.

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TIME TO DEAL WITH MY PRIDE

04 Sunday May 2014

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 Recently God made it clear to me that it’s time to deal with my pride. I knew I could no longer excuse or dismiss the way I behave when pride rears its ugly head in my life. It was time to let go of it and allow God’s Spirit to determine my response instead of my emotions. I’ve been troubled with this for some time, unable to enjoy God’s peace as I continue in my disobedience.

 Here is some of what C.S. Lewis says about pride in his book, Mere Christianity, Chapter 8 titled The Great Sin: 

            “There is no fault … which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.”

             “…the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

            “Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity – it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.”

            “If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.” (I love that one!!)

            “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others.”

 I went back to college to get my bachelor’s degree because “everyone” around me had one. Once I had that, I began noticing all the people who had master’s degrees. So I got one. Then, as I was working in my field, I noticed how many people had a specialized certification so I got that. Then I got a job where the majority of people had PhD’s. I made phone calls, eager to begin my work earning that degree. But I was tired – tired of attaining one level of education only to yearn for the next. Before I earned them, I wanted them desperately. But as soon as I had that piece of paper in hand, their value diminished: after all, I didn’t earn them from a top-ranked college. I didn’t become the confident person I thought I would become because I had them. When I committed my life to Christ, He showed me that His plan for me has never been a worldly one – the degrees were part of MY plan. But pride did provide me with a use for those worldly achievements: to try to convince people I’m “cleverer…than others!”

 My go-to pride behavior is spewing my “wisdom” for whoever is within earshot. I say whatever pops into my head to show how much I know, to indicate the things I have or my position in life, to insure someone understands I am not wrong or “less smart” than they are. When I see a chance around people I’m comfortable with to expound on whatever topic has come up, my “wisdom” comes gushing out. I say things without considering the effect my words have on others. It’s embarrassing to put that on paper and my pride tells me I don’t have to talk about it; better to keep this to myself so others won’t look down on me or know my secret – as if they’re not already aware of it! I discussed thoughts on pride in another blog, but this aspect of it was one of those things in my life that I hadn’t yet identified as disobedience.

 I can’t tell you how many times I’ve embarrassed myself as I allowed pride to determine my behavior. But that’s not the worse consequence – I’ve hurt people I love. I’ve struck at people at their most vulnerable spots, wanting them to feel small on purpose. Lewis is absolutely right when he says “Pride leads to every other vice…” God has made it clear how pride is bringing sin into my life and I know I must hand it over to Him now.

2 Corinthians 12:9 – And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”   

 I’ve deleted these last two paragraphs numerous times thinking there’s another way I can talk about this without divulging my weakness. But I’ll press on – as I become more obedient, it is a clear testimony of the Holy Spirit’s work in me – I can’t do this on my own!

 I used to ease my conscience about my pride by telling myself I’m just insecure. But isn’t a big part of insecurity just constantly reminding myself of the areas in my life where I feel I don’t measure up? Labeling pride insecurity garnered sympathy and self-pity. I didn’t have to admit my behaviors were due to pride; I was simply compensating – behaving in a way that eased my suffering – never mind I caused others to suffer! My goal wasn’t to simply overcome insecurity; my goal was to be at the top, nothing less satisfied the true source of my problem.

 The more mature we are in our Christian life, the more we abhor sin. There was a time in my life when I didn’t give a second thought to these things. If I said something hurtful to someone I told myself I was only trying to help them. Chasing after college degrees was only my ambition and a desire to be successful. Now when I allow my pride to determine my behaviors, I am deeply troubled. There were two situations in the past month where I didn’t even try to stop myself from speaking even though I knew exactly what was going on before I opened my mouth. After hours of embarrassment and contemplating painful apologies, I am thankful that God allowed me to see my sin so clearly. I’m thankful He gave me the heart and courage to apologize.

Romans 7:15 – “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

I’m not naïve enough to think I won’t continue to give in to my pride. But I am being very intentional about how I respond when I feel the swell of pride come over me. I have been in a number of situations already where I felt it full-force and wanted so badly to say something that would puff myself up. But I refrained and the feeling from obeying God instead of responding to my emotions brings so much peace. And it has helped me advance my relationship with one particular person so that I am better able to show God’s love.

 There are so many behaviors that we don’t often attribute to pride: an unwillingness to admit when we’re wrong; refusal to apologize; self-pity; arrogance; refusal to acknowledge how your behaviors hurt others; insisting that everything be done your way; refusal to listen to someone else’s ideas; the need to control situations and the people around you; focusing on others’ faults; reluctance or refusal to accept or even listen to constructive criticism; defensiveness; anger; responding by giving others the silent treatment. Do you feel the need to say whatever’s on your mind, giving no thought to the consequences of your words or tone of voice? Look at your behaviors and determine whether or not pride is at the root of it and begin praying for the strength to conquer it. You will need the Holy Spirit – there’s no hope of conquering this one without Him!

 While pride damages our relationships with other people, the greatest harm is that it keeps us from God. Lewis reminds us that pride IS enmity (hostility) to God by man. Are you too proud to submit to His authority? Too proud to understand His plans are better than yours? Too proud to admit He operates in ways that we are unable to understand? Too proud to accept that God can save even the worst sinner you can imagine? Too proud to admit you are as bad as the worst sinner you can imagine? Are you too proud to forgive everyone who has ever hurt you or your family? Are you too proud to submit to Christian leaders God has placed in your life? Are you too proud to reject Christian leaders who don’t adhere to Christian doctrine? Are you too proud to admit that something in your life is not in keeping with God’s Truth? Pride demands that we be number one, the “main event”, even putting ourselves above God and His commands.

 C.S. Lewis points out that pride changed Lucifer from an angel to Satan.  He says it is “the complete anti-God state of mind.”

Job 20:6-7 – “Though the pride of the godless person reaches to the heavens and his head touches the clouds, he will perish forever…”

 

 

HIS GRACE IS [ENOUGH; AS MUCH AS IS NEEDED]

22 Saturday Mar 2014

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What was going on during the 400 years between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament?  I don’t know a lot about that period of history, but I do know that the Jewish religious leaders spent a lot of their time adding details to the ten laws God had given them to insure everyone was following them in the strictest sense.  “Don’t pick up your mat on the Sabbath” – they decided that was work.  “Don’t pick one piece of grain from the field on the Sabbath” – they decided that was harvesting, thus it was work.”  By the time they were done adding minute details to insure compliance, there were thousands of laws the Jewish people had to keep track of.  There must have been a shared belief that it was possible to be in complete obedience to God’s Laws if they could list all the behaviors they considered to be in violation and punish those who did not comply.  Without considering all of the theological and historical facts of what was actually going on, that’s my simplistic take on what they were trying to do.  They just kept burdening the people by adding more and more details to the Law. 

Mark 3:2-6 ESV – “And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”

It is easy for us to see the error of the religious leaders.  But adding rules and requirements to God’s gift of salvation is something most of us regularly do, though it is generally less obvious to us.  We accept Christ’s payment of our sin debt as a gift initially, but as we live out our faith, we unwittingly add “details” and expect ourselves and others to comply with our ideas of Godly behavior.  I often find myself calculating the hours I spend reading my Bible or praying to insure I am devoting enough time to my relationship with God – what “enough time” is I’m not sure.  I worry that I haven’t found a meaningful way to serve others: proof that I am not yet worthy of being His child.  Grace IS amazing and I have to remind myself every day that I don’t have to add anything to it.  Of course, I need to be doing – but living out the love I have for God is not the same as the misguided notion that what I am doing is earning my salvation.  

Ephesians 2:8-10 – “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Almost every day I read something about things we must include in our Christian walk to assure us of our salvation.  A Pentecostal friend doubts my salvation because I don’t speak in tongues.  I ran across a website that says being baptized isn’t simply an act of obedience but a requirement for salvation.  Churches often adopt a written statement of how its members will conduct themselves, listing behaviors that they will and will not engage in.  For grace to be free, and His Word assures us that it is, there can be no signs or behaviors required, except this one:  to believe that Jesus is God in human form and that His death is the only way we can be made righteous before God and thereby be reconciled to Him.  Period. 

Romans 11:6 – “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.”

It’s easy to tell others all of the things we stopped or started doing as a result of our relationship with Christ.  But when non-believers, new Christians or unlearned believers hear these things, they conclude that God loves us based on the things we do or do not do.  They cannot separate these things from the concept of grace that we try to explain.  Just as the Pharisees kept the Jewish people accountable for every detail of the Law, those we are trying to help find Christ believe they must be “in compliance” with the “laws” we hold about following Christ and know they will fail, so they choose not to take part.  How much better if Christians talked as much about free grace as we do about acceptable behavior – or better yet, provide examples of God’s grace through our own lives. 

Psalm 14:2-3 – “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.”

In order to appreciate this amazing free gift of grace, we need to understand how God views Sin.  Once we understand how vile it is to Him, we begin to understand what is so amazing about His grace.  Think about forgiving a murderer for killing an innocent child, then take it to the next level – pay his debt to society for him; serve his prison sentence even when it means you will be executed for the crime. We murder our relationship with God when we choose Sin over Him.  We are the murderer taking from God what He loves.  Our sentence was death but God paid it, not simply by forgiving us but actively paying the debt required.

Once we comprehend God’s grace to us, there is another challenge:  extending God’s grace to others, again, not as a requirement of salvation but as a way to show others the extent of God’s love for us.  While we may find extending mercy – the opposite side of the grace/mercy coin – a bit easier because it is deciding NOT to do what we feel we have a right to do, grace modeled on God’s example requires action most often in direct opposition to what our human nature wants to do. God’s grace isn’t merely a decision to forgive us when we don’t deserve it.  He DID something – He left His glorious home and came to earth where He suffered rejection, humiliation, and a painful death.  God’s example of grace is the model for our treatment of those who have wronged us – to do the unexpected, something non-believers would deem “over-the-top” – forgive the murderer, sure, but how about developing a relationship with him because he doesn’t know Christ; forgive the woman at work who stole your idea and, as a result, got that promotion, but also send her a card or a gift congratulating her, knowing God is in control of your life and your rewards are eternal.  Once we grasp the extent of God’s grace to us and stand in genuine awe of it, over-the-top behavior can become our new normal.  What a difference that would make in our world!

“Amazing grace, …  saved a wretch like me.”

LOVE BEYOND COMPREHENSION

25 Friday Oct 2013

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You know how you can be skipping along through life and one day realize you never fully understood something you thought you had figured out a long time ago?   That happened to me the other night.  I was praying, asking God to help me through a struggle I am experiencing.  As is my habit, my prayer consisted of expressing my trust that He will work it out for good while questioning what I needed to do to correct the situation and asking Him to forgive me for getting in His way.  My prayer brought on more frustration than peace. 

Psalm 46:10 – “Be still, and know that I am God”

Then God’s still, small voice came to me and I felt His presence. It was as if God was physically beside me, cradling me in His arms as He whispered into my ear “My child, you do not yet understand my love for you.”  It literally took my breath away.  I started to respond but immediately understood that this was a time to listen; to be still.  I lay there thinking about what I have experienced and what I have learned over the past four years, and what I know to be true about God.   He brought to my mind how I keep struggling to insure I live up to the love He has for me, even though I know in my mind He requires nothing from me.  I recalled how I constantly try not to disappoint Him and He reminded me that even when I do it doesn’t change His love for me one bit.

Psalm 139: 7-10:  “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.  If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there Your hand shall lead me”

I am not good at relationships.  Too often in my family people handled conflicts with others by putting them out of their lives.  I’ve done the same thing over and over in my life.  Ending a relationship was easier than changing my behavior or an attitude, easier than admitting I’m wrong or putting forth extra effort to show love when I wasn’t feeling it.  We tend to manage our relationship with God the same way we handle our relationships with people and I realized that’s what I was doing.  I was constantly struggling to make sure I held up my end of the relationship but I had no idea how to do that.  I feared I would mess up or quit trying out of frustration.  God is literally a part of me, He dwells in me, and walking away from this relationship is not an option!    

Hosea 14:4 – “…I will love them freely.”

I knew God’s grace is free; it’s not possible to pay my debt so, in my mind, God came up with a plan to save us but that didn’t mean He necessarily had to love us (clear as mud, huh?).  Somehow I separated His grace from His love.  Love in this world is work and we are taught explicitly and implicitly that we must earn it.  It’s hard to change our thinking about that because that’s the only kind of love we have ever experienced.  But we have to get past that and truly accept that His love is different, it really is free.  God is not waiting for me to do certain things to “earn” it.

Funny, but my granddaughter just happened to be spending the night with me the night of my prayer and was asleep in the bed next to me (God’s timing is impeccable!).  As I looked at her I thought about how much I love her and how much my love for her surprises me sometimes – the depth of it, the tenderness of it; there is nothing she does that makes my love for her grow stronger each day, yet it does.  There is nothing she can do that would diminish my love for her; nothing she can do that would make me not want to be around her; I would do anything to protect her.  Even when she does things that I don’t like, my love for her isn’t diminished at all.  God showed me in that moment that while I can compare His love to what I feel for my granddaughter, His is greater.  It finally sunk in and I wept. 

Psalm 103:11 “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;”

 I walked an aisle and accepted Jesus’s gift of salvation when I was about 11 years old.  But I gave in to worldly pressures and lived my life apart from God for the next 10 or 11 years.  I returned to Him after my daughter was born but again yielded to the temptations of the world after about 6 years.  I lived the following 24 years much like Solomon, running after every desire I had:  money, men, material possessions, worldly “wisdom.”  Granted, I did not have near the resources Solomon did to satisfy his desires, but I acquired what I could with the little I had by any (legal!) means I could manage.  In 2009 the burden of my sinful life became too much to bear and I begged God to take over.  Over the past four years I’ve come to know Him.  As I looked back at the 39 years since I first accepted what Jesus did for me on that cross, I saw all that He had done for me even as I lived in total disobedience.  It was God who had taken care of me.  He had never allowed anything in my life that I couldn’t handle.  He had, in fact, kept every promise He makes to us in His Word.  The night of my prayer I saw how He has cared for me, how patient He has been.  I have done so many things that no doubt grieve Him mightily and in spite of it all, He took me back.  

Isaiah 41:13: “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”

As I lay there that night I realized I am the prodigal Jesus talks about in His parable in the 15th chapter of Luke:

Luke 15:17-24 – “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’  So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.  “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.  For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.”

It is nothing short of amazing that God welcomed me back with open arms.  He doesn’t hold anything back.  He doesn’t treat those of us who go astray any differently from those who have been obedient to Him. Now, get this:  each time one of His wayward children come back, there is great rejoicing in heaven.  He rejoiced when I came back! 

Luke 15:10 – “…I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

That night I finally gave control of my heart to God.  Knowing the truth about God’s love fills me with a desperate desire to please Him in everything I do.  It’s no longer a struggle of my will.  As I deal with the situation I prayed about that night, I have a new peace and love towards the people involved.  Since that night, I see others through God’s eyes – the ones that watched as I did things that broke His heart.  Through it all, He watched with unwavering love for me, knowing I would return.  I must pass His love on and I now have the power and the understanding to do it.  I can do no less. 

Jeremiah 31:3 – “The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.”

Pride IS an emotion

28 Saturday Sep 2013

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I learned in a college Social Work class that many people are unable to properly identify their emotions.  Most generally categorize feelings as sad, happy or mad.  Becoming familiar with the other emotions we experience such as frustration, confusion, and concern helps us see the varying degrees of feelings we experience.  Because many emotions are very similar to others, our behavior often doesn’t accurately communicate what we are actually feeling.  For example, when we’re scared we might react in anger:  My young child hides under the clothes rack at the mall and doesn’t come out when I call to him.  After several minutes, he crawls out and I scold him.  My behavior indicates that I am angry with him but I want him to know I was also scared and worried that someone might have taken him.  Or I might have been frustrated because he does this all the time and I have repeatedly instructed him not to do it.

Ephesians 4:26: “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,”

Emotions are confusing both to the person feeling them and to those we interact with.  We can’t always trust that we’ve interpreted our feelings correctly, but it’s important to know which one we’re experiencing and to understand how we behave in response to each of them.  God reminds us that we are to be in control of our feelings so we avoid the sin that can easily happen during times of heightened emotion.  But it’s difficult to control them unless we know what we are actually dealing with.  I can’t manage my frustration over a procedure at work if I attribute my actual behavior to being angry with a co-worker.

There’s one emotion that we rarely identify correctly or acknowledge:  pride.  One reason it can be tricky is because most of us don’t tend to think of it as an emotion.  I had to look it up to make sure it’s actually considered an emotion, as opposed to a mindset or an attitude.  Psychologists have determined there are two kinds of pride, one negative and one positive.  I would argue that since pride is an emotion, we will experience it in varying degrees, like anger.  Thus, its intensity and how we let it affect our behavior determines whether it is good or bad.  So, like other emotions, we must manage it just as we manage other feelings that can create problems if left unchecked.  If anger isn’t managed, we often end up hurting ourselves and others.  Pride is the same way:  I can have pride in an accomplishment, a belief, my appearance or a lifestyle I have chosen, but when that pride escalates I will make decisions or say things that hurt me and others.

Psalm 10:4:  “In his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.”

At some point, I realized that pride was the main reason I didn’t commit my life to Christ.  I loved Jesus but I didn’t want “those Christians” to think I was admitting I was wrong.  One of the decisions I made because of this excessive pride was the decision not to attend church.  I didn’t want people to discover how I was living because I didn’t want to change – I didn’t want to admit my lifestyle was wrong and that their lifestyle would be better for me and my family.  I didn’t want to sit and listen to a preacher say things I disagreed with.  Another prideful thought I had that’s surprising is that I didn’t want anyone else to think they knew God better than I did!  Even after my commitment to Jesus, I struggled to attend church because I didn’t want anyone telling tell me I was wrong about something I had learned.  Once I was able to tie these thoughts to pride, I understood the root of my problem and could deal with it.  I literally told myself (I think I actually said it out loud) to accept the fact that there are people out there who know more than I know, who have a closer relationship with God than I do and that it’s time I started learning from them instead of resenting them for it.  I saw how God wanted to use them to help me and I wanted to obey His desire for me to be an active part of His church.

1 John 2:16:  “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.”

Pride is such a subtle feeling – it doesn’t overwhelm us like anger or sadness yet it can swallow our entire lives because of our unawareness of it. Pride prevents us from doing things we should do and motivates us to do things we wouldn’t do if we would properly identify it.  It just kind of sits back there, conjuring up wrong thinking and providing us with excuses for our bad behavior, disguising itself as a legitimate weapon against others’ perceived efforts to belittle us. We tend to think of it as mostly a positive emotion, so we’re not monitoring it like we do obviously negative emotions. It’s difficult to know when we cross the line with pride.  Since identifying it and working on it in one area of my life, it’s getting easier to see when it’s wreaking havoc in other areas of my life.

Proverbs 11:2: “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”

I hold a Master’s Degree in Human Resources.  I am proud of earning my degree and for some things I accomplished in the organizations I worked for. But the fact is I worked in the field less than 10 years. As I write this I can feel pride welling up and I really want to give you a bunch of details so you don’t think I’m a failure. I want to tell you about things that happened that were beyond my control so you go away with a positive impression of me. But if I’m keeping my feelings of pride at an acceptable level, I have to tell you about the poor choices I made and the fact that I haven’t followed God’s plan for my life. When I’m in a situation at work where I’m feeling insecure about my abilities or intelligence, I will try to find a way to let others know about my education.  I don’t share this information so they can know a little about me; I share this information because I know it’s something I’ve accomplished that they haven’t, hoping they conclude I might be a little smarter than they are, even when I know that’s not true! I work with some really smart people who have five times more experience than I have, and while I struggle with numerous aspects of our job, most of my co-workers are really good at it.  My pride has led me to make some comments I wish I hadn’t made.  I’ve been caught in lies trying to make sure others don’t view me as inferior to them.  While trying to appear more intelligent by saying things I think MIGHT be true, I just look silly because others know I’m wrong.

Philippians 2:3: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves”

I have made a lot of progress in this area, but still have some work to do!  I understand that I can’t use the fact that I have a degree to make myself feel superior to others.  I can’t use it to communicate something about myself that isn’t true.  I have that degree only because God worked in my life to enable me to get it. I must look at my accomplishments as resources He has given me to help others.

James 4:6: “But He gives us more grace.  That is why Scripture says:  “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.””

In areas where I have conquered pride, I find living humbly is a very stress-free, relaxing way to live.  When I allow pride to puff me up, my life quickly becomes a muddled mess! Dealing with pride can be exhausting as I try to keep track of the lies I have told or come to terms with the pain I have caused.  When pride controls me, every situation brings the possibility that I might not come off looking as good as I want to look.  I am learning to find my value in Christ, not what other people think of me or where I think I stand in the world. I am who God made me to be and I have to realize that it often isn’t going to look like what the world says it should look like.  No matter what I’ve accomplished, what I look like, how smart I am, what I have, or what I can do, the world will never be satisfied with it and I will never be fulfilled by any of it. As I think about people I have known, it is the humble ones that I feel great affinity for.  One of Jesus’ most enduring qualities is His humility and His greatest moments were when it was in full display!  Don’t let anyone tell you that being humble is a bad thing.  Moses’ humility was noteworthy enough that God appointed a scribe to add it to His Word and look at all he accomplished!

Numbers 12:3: “(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)

 I want to live humbly.  To do that, I must remember at all times what God has done for me and where I would be without His gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Romans 12:3 “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”