Lower still honey

A quick skim over the posts I wrote over two years ago reveals to me I still seem to be dealing with the same issue of pride in my life. The need to keep working at humility seems to be  a re-occurring theme in my life. How low can you go?

Just when I think I am as low as I can go I am put in a situation where I start to defend myself or feel insecure. Pride rises like a fiery dragon and I go on the attack. Maybe not as aggressively as in the past but definitely on the attack.

Maybe I need to read this little piece I was given years ago every day for a while:

If we are to know humility, it means that we are dead to self. When you are forgotten or neglected or purposely set at nought and you don’t sting or hurt with the insult or the oversight but your heart is happy being counted worthy to suffer for Christ, that is dying to self.

When your good is spoken of as evil, when your wishes are crossed, your advice ignored, your opinions ridiculed and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart or even defend yourself but take it all in patient,  loving silence, that is dying to self.

When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any unpunctuality or any annoyance, when you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility and endure it as Jesus endured it, that is dying to self.

When you are content with any food, any offering, any raiment, any climate, any society, any solitude and any interruption, that is dying to self.

When you never care to refer to yourself in your conversation or to record your own good works or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown, that is dying to self.

When you can see your brother prosper and have his needs met and honestly rejoice with him in Spirit and feel no envy nor question God while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances, that is dying to self.

When you can receive correction or reproof from one of less stature than yourself and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart that is dying to self.

Are you dead yet? In these last days the Spirit would bring us to the cross that I may know him being made conformable to his death Phil 3:10.(Author unknown).