For all those things hath Mine hand made,
and all those things have been, saith the Lord:
but to this man will I look,
even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
and trembleth at My word. Isaiah 66:2
Pride vs Humility
Such a hard thought
Give all glory to God
Sounds good
Sounds easy
Sounds like any Christian should be able to do it
Our positions
Our reputations
Humans have a difficult time surrendering fully to God
We want things to be our way, we want to help God
We give him ideas
Tell Him how things can get done
We have endless lists of inspiring, wonderful thoughts
for God to perform on our behalf, so He’ll be glorified, of course
Do not say I will do this and that,
but say if the Lord wills, I will do this and that
For that ye ought to say,
If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. James 4:15
Your Kingdom come
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:10
We want His will, really?
Our will, surrendered to Jesus
That is how it should be
But pride, that seems to be in every crack and crevice of our hearts,
comes up again and again
Die you horrible thoughts of pride
But they won’t die
They must be part of our flesh
As hard as we try, we cannot kill our flesh
We can make efforts, which God does see, so all is not lost
He knows when we try
The key is making progress toward glorifying Him
Can we?
Do we?
Paul said that which I hate I do
For what I am doing, I do not understand.
For what I will to do, that I do not practice;
but what I hate, that I do. Romans 7:15
We all do that
We try and try and even bring our failings before the Lord
and the next thing we know, we’re doing the same things again
Seems like a lost cause
But it’s not
We are human
That is not to make an excuse but we will never be perfect until we see Him
Beloved, now are we the sons of God,
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be:
but we know that, when He shall appear,
we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. I John 3:2
We can be perfect in His sight
But not perfect in our flesh, while we walk on this earth
We’ll fall, no matter how hard we try
We are imperfect vessels of His Spirit
I suppose that helps to remind us that we are flesh
because, alas, we are flesh
That is not to say we should make excuses
but if we walk around
thinking we’re something special without the Lord, with our own merits,
and that we deserve any sort of notoriety, we have fallen
The only remedy is to humble ourselves before the Lord
Pride is lurking around every corner
I shall be like the Most High as Satan said:
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will be like the most High. Isaiah 14:14
Always enticing us, yet God is always giving us a chance to resist him
and the ability to humble ourselves before the Most High God
Jesus is looking for those who submit to Him and His word above all else
Without Him we are nothing
We are just branches
We need our Savior, our vine
I am the vine, ye are the branches:
He that abideth in Me, and I in him,
the same bringeth forth much fruit:
for without Me ye can do nothing. John 15:5