It is so easy to step onto and glide down the slide of pride. One does not even notice when one started to get puffed up. Slowly it starts. Subtly. Soon, one is on a ride that seems enjoyable yet like a slide it starts at the top and but lands at the bottom, sooner or later. These verses come to mind to remind oneself to stay humble before God and before others; for no one else but God has given us what we have, whether talent or intellect or riches or looks, whatever it is that makes us proud:
The prophet Jeremiah wrote: “The (1) human heart is deceitful above all things and (2) beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers goes deeper into these two really strong and awful statements about the human heart:
I wrote these few words about pride in my diary, as I received these as gentle warning from God in my quiet time with Him. Then a few days later I observed that just like pride, any other activity which seeks to appease the mortal self, the flesh, the body over and above the Spirit and at the cost of time spent with God, is also really easy to slide back into and slide down, just like the pride slide. This also happens just as subtly. What started with “I am so mentally tired let me entertain myself with some clean, harmless entertainment” ended up in long night hours of wanting to watch more and more and more. Before I knew it, I was again spending vast swathes of time simply entertaining myself at the cost of my own spiritual walk with the Lord. Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that I learnt this lesson so clearly and blogged about it in this post “Who is your God?”. How right I felt writing that and how quickly I re-elevated entertainment over God.
In this I am the clear loser. God is not holding out a cane and wagging it at me! He is sad at the wastefulness because it damages me and delays the good things that He wants me to step in. These good things of God are unlocked in direct proportion to the time we invest with 1:1 with God (not the things which are considered "godly" like religious activities, festivals, rituals - these in themselves can become a 'god' missing the point of a personal relationship with a Living Entity). The enemy of our soul never ceases to keep adding delays, distractions and alternatives that finally lead to outright rebellion against God, even before one knows it is happening.
How terribly weak the heart and human resolve is! Without the dynamo of His Spirit inside, the believer cannot get back up and walk completely out of the strategically planted webs of wandering that the enemy weaves around us. Without His Spirit the believer cannot successfully overcome these constant nudges and tugs at our heart and mind from the enemy to prioritize everything else but time with God. Reminds me of the words of the old song: “Prone to wander/ Lord I feel it/ Prone to leave the God I love” and I quickly want to follow it up with the rest of the lines which are a prayer: “Here’s my heart, Lord/ Take and seal it/ Seal it for Your courts above”.
Whatever your pet set of distractions and temptations are, even though they may in themselves be good or clean projects or activities; you know in your heart that these are vying to replace your time with God. Don’t be naïve, the adversary wants to disrupt your relationship with God and he will never stop trying to stop you with whatever tool is needed to knock you off track. As Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” - John 10:10 and Peter wrote in his letter about it “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” 1 Peter 5:8
When you have a nanosecond of awareness before succumbing to these temptations quickly call upon the Lord. Inquire of Him and ask Him to change your heart and mind so that your desires themselves will align with His desires for you. He will instantly help you (God is a very present help in trouble –Psalm 46:1), if your ask is genuine. He will stop the adversary's plot designed to thwart your relationship building time with God (When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him – Isaiah 59:19), and enable you to overcome by His Spirit (No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. 1 Corinthians 10:13). God will help, but, you and I need a deliberate act of our will to make a choice for the life Jesus talks about, which when we walk with Him deliberately, we will have in full. Every moment, Choose Life!
- Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. - Romans 11: 3
- Do not be proud but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. -Romans 12: 16
- “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight”, declares the Lord. - Jeremiah 9:23-24
The prophet Jeremiah wrote: “The (1) human heart is deceitful above all things and (2) beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers goes deeper into these two really strong and awful statements about the human heart:
- the human heart is deceitful: the sequence of ideas seems as follows: if the blessing and the curse are thus so plainly marked, how is it that man chooses the curse and not the blessing? And the answer is found in the inscrutable self-deceit of his nature blinding his perceptions of good and evil.
- the human heart is beyond cure: In other words, desperately wicked or incurably diseased. Wickedness is implied but it is regarded rather as a moral taint following on the deliberate choice, then as the choice itself.
I wrote these few words about pride in my diary, as I received these as gentle warning from God in my quiet time with Him. Then a few days later I observed that just like pride, any other activity which seeks to appease the mortal self, the flesh, the body over and above the Spirit and at the cost of time spent with God, is also really easy to slide back into and slide down, just like the pride slide. This also happens just as subtly. What started with “I am so mentally tired let me entertain myself with some clean, harmless entertainment” ended up in long night hours of wanting to watch more and more and more. Before I knew it, I was again spending vast swathes of time simply entertaining myself at the cost of my own spiritual walk with the Lord. Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that I learnt this lesson so clearly and blogged about it in this post “Who is your God?”. How right I felt writing that and how quickly I re-elevated entertainment over God.
In this I am the clear loser. God is not holding out a cane and wagging it at me! He is sad at the wastefulness because it damages me and delays the good things that He wants me to step in. These good things of God are unlocked in direct proportion to the time we invest with 1:1 with God (not the things which are considered "godly" like religious activities, festivals, rituals - these in themselves can become a 'god' missing the point of a personal relationship with a Living Entity). The enemy of our soul never ceases to keep adding delays, distractions and alternatives that finally lead to outright rebellion against God, even before one knows it is happening.
How terribly weak the heart and human resolve is! Without the dynamo of His Spirit inside, the believer cannot get back up and walk completely out of the strategically planted webs of wandering that the enemy weaves around us. Without His Spirit the believer cannot successfully overcome these constant nudges and tugs at our heart and mind from the enemy to prioritize everything else but time with God. Reminds me of the words of the old song: “Prone to wander/ Lord I feel it/ Prone to leave the God I love” and I quickly want to follow it up with the rest of the lines which are a prayer: “Here’s my heart, Lord/ Take and seal it/ Seal it for Your courts above”.
Whatever your pet set of distractions and temptations are, even though they may in themselves be good or clean projects or activities; you know in your heart that these are vying to replace your time with God. Don’t be naïve, the adversary wants to disrupt your relationship with God and he will never stop trying to stop you with whatever tool is needed to knock you off track. As Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” - John 10:10 and Peter wrote in his letter about it “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” 1 Peter 5:8
When you have a nanosecond of awareness before succumbing to these temptations quickly call upon the Lord. Inquire of Him and ask Him to change your heart and mind so that your desires themselves will align with His desires for you. He will instantly help you (God is a very present help in trouble –Psalm 46:1), if your ask is genuine. He will stop the adversary's plot designed to thwart your relationship building time with God (When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him – Isaiah 59:19), and enable you to overcome by His Spirit (No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. 1 Corinthians 10:13). God will help, but, you and I need a deliberate act of our will to make a choice for the life Jesus talks about, which when we walk with Him deliberately, we will have in full. Every moment, Choose Life!
Come Thou fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
…
Oh to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be
Let Thy goodness like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart Lord, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above
-Robert Robinson, 1758
".. as habit renders the pleasures the vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo... you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention."
" I'm being humble!' , and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages a you please."
-Quotes from C. S . Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, a dry but powerful humor of a sequence of letters exchanged between demons assigned to woo humans into everything else but God.
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