Skip to main content

Check Yourself Before You Wreckity Wreck Yourself

C.S. Lewis writes:  "The moment you have a self, there is the possibility of putting yourself first."  Pride is truly the Anti-God state of mind.  Before I really became a Christian, I can honestly say that I was very proud of my accomplishments and unfortunately held myself to a higher standard compared to others.  I was proud that I won this, or got this promotion, or maybe even worse, I was proud that I didn't do what "that person did."  How many times do we as people measure ourselves against one another?  How often do you compare yourself to another person, or the sin of another?

In Proverbs 16:18 "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling."  Here it is, your warning!  It's literally time to check yourself before you wreck yourself!  The Bible says that destruction comes AFTER pride, and that stumbling comes AFTER a haughty spirit.

The big question then:  Are you prideful?  If you answer Yes to this, then locate what you are proud of?  Is it focused on you? your family? your career? Your status?  Your preacher?  Your church?

What about your God?

The more I work on humbling myself before God, the more I've come to the conclusion that there isn't anything I should be proud of.  I am JOYOUS that God sent His son Jesus to die for our sins.  I am happy that I am saved because of the blood of Jesus, but how can I be proud in this?  Man was in great harmony and relationship with God when man fell.  The fall of man is something to be saddened over.  The fall of any person for that matter is something to be saddened over.

Here is my point for this week:  We didn't earn God's forgiveness.  We didn't earn God's sacrifice of His son Jesus.  We didn't earn a single thing that we can proud of.  God has given us the GREATEST GIFT in the history of all mankind:  His Son!  "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God."-Ephesians 2:8.

In our day and age of social media posts and status crave, pride has never been more weaponized yet more under the radar.  This week I challenge you that if you are proud, be boastful in your brokenness and weakness as Paul says.  This Christmas I challenge you to check yourself before you make that post, or before you compare yourself to others....remember pride is your warning light to destruction.  The ones who don't notice it will unknowingly find their doom.  The ones who recognize their prideful ways, humble themselves before God, and understand that we are 100% nothing without Jesus, will ultimately find the greatest joy in relationship with our Crestor, and will be a beacon for others!

Have a wonderful week!

Song of the week:  King of My Heart

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God Doesn't Need your Ability. He Needs your Availability.

The past couple weeks I've been diving (pun intended) into the story of Jonah.  We all know that he spent three days in the belly of the beast, but do you know how he got there?  Jonah decided to disobey God by going towards another city.  Jonah got on a boat to run away from where God had told him to go.  Here are my three key takeaways from Jonah's story: 1) God will use "bumpers," 2) God can use you whether or not you're available, and 3) God is bigger than anything you can even dream of.  1)  God will use "Bumpers" Jonah decided not to go towards Nineveh, instead he headed towards Tarshish.  Jonah is on a boat with other sailors and as they are traveling they encounter a great storm.  The storm was so great that the ship "threatened to break up."  This storm and the risk to the ship was great enough for the sailors to start throwing cargo off of the ship and cry out to their own gods.  What was happening?  I am fortunate to k...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pursuing Righteousness

The past month my church group has been focusing on the Sermon on the Mount for which we get the Beatitudes from Jesus.  The cool thing about going through this has been that I learned that the order of the Beatitudes is important as Jesus was giving His people a road map of how to be transformed through Him.  Jesus lived His life perfectly and is our example for what we should strive for.  Two times Jesus talks about righteousness in the Beatitudes:  "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied" and "Blessed are those that are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."  As I learned more about this and dove deeper into my own prayer time it occurred to me that Jesus didn't say blessed are THE righteous, or blessed are those that are persecuted for THEIR righteousness.....no, Jesus said blessed are those who hunger and thirst, blessed are those that are persecuted for the sake of righte...
Post a Comment
Read more

Peter's Advice for When You Encounter Suffering

As I mentioned in my last blog post, things have been moving fast for me.  I'm so fortunate to now be leading a life group at my church (Chet's Creek).  It's truly an incredible thing to look back over the last five plus years in my life and see the changes that have taken place all because God wanted my focus to be on Him.  Today I want to talk about Peter and what he tells us to do when we encounter suffering.  Unlike in Peter's time, in today's world I believe that many of us suffer internally rather than externally.  In our daily walk we are likely not stoned by others, or physically beaten, rather we are entrenched more by internal sufferings.  The suffering of being different than the world, the suffering of not fitting in, the suffering of not measuring up to what the world wants for you.  Peter gives us some great advice for when we encounter suffering:  First we must discern if we are suffering due to God's will.  Second we must comm...
Post a Comment
Read more