I copied this article from 2017. I needed to reread it and remember the truth that was revealed to me when I wrote it. You, no doubt, need to also read it.
“God resists the proud, but gives grace unto the humble…” This text is easy to read and easy to preach, but it is awfully hard to remember about ourselves. I think that pride is one of the most difficult things for us to deal with. I guess that one reason for this is that pride can be good and bad. We certainly want to take pride in our families, in our appearance or in doing a job well. But it becomes bad, even harmful, when we begin to internalize the pride and think that no one is better than us at what we do. It is at this point that we begin to think, “It’s all about me.” It is difficult for us to overcome this syndrome, if that is what it is, because we are so prideful that we think that we could never think that it’s all about us. Satan is a wily old tempter, and he will help us to lie to ourselves about our own pride. Let me begin with a personal example. When it became obvious to me that the Lord was leading me to retire, I balked at the idea at first. I tried to tell my Creator that I was not ready to “get out of the loop.” That meant that I was not ready to turn my work over to someone else, or that I was not ready to cease being the center of attention. I want to tell you, it is hard to imagine that we can be replaced. I began to pray about this, and the Lord convinced me that it was time to step aside into retirement. He also convinced me that I wasn’t being “replaced” but moving on to a new era in my life. Does it surprise you that for a little while there I thought that it was “all about me”? Well, you shouldn’t be surprised because you probably have to deal with the same thing in your life if you will be honest with yourself. I still have to be careful about it, but don’t you go getting self-righteous on me, you also need to remember that it is not all about you...:) Who taught us more about this than our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? Remember, now, that if anyone had a claim that it was all about Him, Jesus certainly did. In the prologue to his gospel, John wrote: “In the beginning was the word (Jesus), and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” (John 3:1-3) Do you see what I mean that He had a real claim that it was all about Him? Then we can go over to Philippians 2:5-9: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6. Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7. But made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8.and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Don’t miss this point: He who could claim that “it was all about Him,” made it all about us instead. If this doesn’t humble us, nothing else can. When Jesus made it all about us, it was written of Him in Philippians 2:9: “Wherefore God has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name.” It becomes plain to us that we need to fight this temptation to think that everything is all about us. In order for us to get to that point, we need to confess our false pride, and start thinking like Jesus. We would do well here to remember what Paul wrote in Philippians 2:7: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” If we want to be like Christ, we must humble ourselves, get off of our “high horse,” as my Grandma Cooper used to say, and remember that it is not all about us but all about Him. When you start feeling all self-important, just say to yourself: “It’s not all about me.” Bro. Joe
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
All
Archives
September 2021
|