Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Proud of our humility?

"Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense." - C.S. Lewis

When our focus is on our behavior only, then we are setting up Pride as the Dictator of our life. If we do all the right things, then everything will be alright and if we do wrong things, then things will be bad. I think the book of Job may have something to say about that one.
If we are so focused on ourselves that we want others to notice our humility, we are the most prideful of all people. When we are proud of our humility, are we really being humble at all? Of course not! To be humble means that we are so unaware of ourselves that we have no clue that we are being humble and we could care less if anyone ever notices.
This all boils down to the fact of motive of the heart. In the Old Testament prophets, we learn of their warnings against the "ritualistic" worship (or so-called worship) of the people. Even then, we wanted a "four happy hops to heaven" formula for success in the Christian life! We need to hear those Old Testament messages just as strongly today. For some reason, we think that if we have the latest and greatest fad in our "mega" assebly that we are doing the very best work for God. (not that mega churches are bad in and of themselves) The fact is that He doesn't need us; We NEED Him! When we realize that we are the one in need of help in accomplishing the mission, then we can begin to grow in our humility. There is no ONE formula that we ALL can follow to accomplish the mission that God has laid out before us. We are all different and called to our own different ministries. That's why there are many different expressions of the body of Christ. We just need to be more concerned with the motive of our heart than the fame or notice we get from others. To be so unaware of our own self, is to be aware of God! Don't be proud of your humility. Be totally dependent on God; the source of all power and anything that we can be that is good. It's all HIS!
What do you think? Let me know of a time when you have been proud of your humility? (I don't have enough space to write about all of my experience in this)

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