Leaning on God; The Best Antidote to Pride
Pride can be easy to spot most times. You hear someone boast or show off, and you can hardly miss it. However, there are times when it's not so easy to spot it in ourselves. It's easy to judge someone based on their actions and ourselves based on our intentions. This is where we could easily miss it.
I was delighted when the opportunity came for me to contribute posts to this blog as a guest writer, but started to get weary when I noticed I started looking forward to Facebook "likes," Twitter retweets and blog comments affirming how impactful the post was. When I started perceiving this feeling, my instant response was to avoid writing altogether so that I didn't have to deal with this feeling. "Don't write than I don't have to look forward to any reader's affirmation."
How wrong I was.
This is how we deal with internal struggles or challenges at times; avoid situations where we might face such a challenge completely. Now, certain circumstances call for avoiding what might result in a temptation, especially where a bad or sinful habit is concerned. If you struggle with illicit drugs, it makes absolute sense to avoid hanging out with friends who do. However, we must realize that just avoiding such groups will not resolve any internal desire for drugs.
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It's just like driving on back roads won't take away any desire to speed on the interstate. A change of heart is still required. Hence, what we find ourselves doing is trying to deal with heart issues by only setting rules or boundaries; saying I won't go here, I will cut my cable, don't blog, etc. Those actions could be helpful, but by themselves are not the answer. Paul addressed this with firm words
"You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?" - Galatians 3:1-3
Paul was hinting on the danger of relying on our flesh or actions for justification before God. I realized that part of me was wrongly looking for affirmation from my blog posts. But, I thought the humble thing to do was to avoid blogging altogether. However, the deeper heart issue wasn't getting resolved and would have manifested itself somewhere else. In the first instance, it was pride even to think that any good post actually comes from me. A truly humble response would have been to admit my dependence on God for all things and hold on to the fact that I can really boast of nothing.
"What do I have that wasn't given to me?"
Is there somewhere in your life where you think you are acting humbly, but in reality are not really leaning on God, but instead depending on your methods? We can't finish in the flesh, what was started by means of the Spirit. I'm not sure how much more writing I'll be doing ahead, but it really doesn't matter anymore because I'll be leaning on God all the way. And if anyone loves it, the glory goes to God in the first place, and I need to hold on to that perspective. In conclusion, I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to show you where you may be leaning on self instead of Him, so you can live out Galatians 5:1-16 as intended.