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:
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.
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).
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