Are You Serving God With Christian Humility or With Worldly Pride?
Introduction
Christians need to humble themselves before God. If they don’t, they’ll be pursuing their own plans, purposes and pursuits while asking God to bless the efforts. This isn’t how God works. He desires the best for us and even though many people believe they might know more than God, they need to humble themselves before Him and seek God’s will for their lives.
This doesn’t mean that we must seek God for everything we do. Our days include many activities that we can accomplish with wisdom, knowledge and our experience. But God has a plan for each of us. We each have a unique, God-given purpose or destiny that we’re to live and fulfill.
Serving God With Christian Humility By Living His Will
When we begin to live God’s plan for our lives it has to be through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. If we seek after our own purpose or accomplishing God’s purpose without His guidance, we’ll end up working hard by our own ability which can cause pride and ego for the things we accomplish in God’s Name. We need to always give God the glory!
Psalm 115:1, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth’s sake.”
Following our own path will lead us astray. We’ll be lead by our emotions, following this idea or that, while always wondering if we’re living God’s will or not. And in time, perhaps not even caring about what God wants. Our own path can lead us to frustrating “dead-ends” causing us to waste valuable time, effort and even money.
And our own path isn’t always fun. It can be dismal, bleak, depressing, frustrating and irritating. It can be fruitless hard work that never get us anywhere. However, when we’re really committed to serving God’s purpose and plans for our lives with Christian humility it’s fun, exciting and a great adventure.
God will take us places we never thought we would go, or do things we never even thought we could do. How do we end up on our own path? We loose site of God’s unique plan for our lives by choosing to live by our own will instead of God’s.
Or we might follow the path of a person we admire, but we have to realize that with God we’re not “cookie cutter clones” of one another. God made each of us unique and special.
Worldly Pride Verses Christian Humility
Christians can also fall into pride after living God’s plan or destiny for their lives even if they started out with humility. Some might think that all the great things God accomplishes through them is because of their personal ability rather than God’s ability and empowerment through Jesus Christ.
Christians who fall into pride while achieving success in Christ, begin to take credit for what God is doing rather than giving Him the glory. By thinking that the special plan God has designed for you is because you’re special and have earned it because of who you are and not because of Jesus Christ will cause you to kick yourself right out of God’s plan for your life. God won’t do the pushing, you’ll do it to yourself.
Pride in ourselves is so loud it will keep you from hearing God. This means that you’ll cut yourself off from His guidance and the power He gives through your humility or your ability to be yielded to God. Working outside of God’s guidance will leave you to follow your own path which can never be fulfilled according to God’s plan.
What Is Christian Humility and How Do We Keep A Strong Hold On it?
The definition of humility from Wikipedia:
Humility (adjectival form: humble) is the quality of being modest and respectful. Humility, in various interpretations, is widely seen as a virtue in many religious and philosophical traditions, being connected with notions of egolessness. To see more of the definition go here: Humility
Here is what the Bible has to say about humility:
1 Peter 5:6, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.”
Pride will always get us into trouble with others because it makes us want to take credit for everything. I’ve had Christians take credit for the work I’ve done. I never trusted them again –EVER (because they never changed)! Pride will make you lie, cheat and steal to make yourself look better than what you are. But if you have it, you’re not stuck! God gave us humility.
The Antidote For Pride
Humility is the antidote to pride. All we have to do is humble ourselves before God. Then He can exalt us over time as we learn to work with Him and understand how to take His lead while giving Him the credit for what we do. God will turn the mess pride can make in our lives into great opportunity and success.
Living God’s pan for your life with Christian humility will empower you to live your purpose without the concern that you’ll be promoted or that you’ll succeed. God is going to make sure that every area of your life is more than taken care of so that you can live in peace and joy.
You’ll grow in great wisdom and knowledge that many may not understand, but they will respect you and trust you as a person of God. This is the place where your good Christian testimony will help bring others to salvation.
How Do We Remain Humble?
We don’t have to keep a strong hold on humility. We just live it daily by respecting God as the authority and power behind our work through the work of Jesus Christ.
There’s nothing we could ever do that would make us good enough to live our destinies by our own ability, even through God uses our talents, intelligence, our wisdom and at times, our physical capabilities. We always serve God through the work of the cross which symbolizes Jesus Christ dying on the cross and His resurrection after three days.
His work is the only means by which we can do anything for God. So there is no reason for pride, only thankfulness and humility to live and serve God by His grace. For many, humility is a sign of weakness, but when we’re living our purpose with humility, we’re empowered to do those things which would otherwise seem impossible or too difficult to accomplish.
It’s pride that will do us in. When pride wells up in our hearts, it can absolutely take our spiritual legs out from under us, and keep the strong arm of the Lord from being revealed in our lives.
Conclusion: Great Faith Is Derived From Great Humility
Faith is the only way we can communicate with God. It’s the way we can act on God’s guidance, follow His lead and accomplish His work. We are working with and obeying a God we cannot physically see or hear. This is why we need to use faith. A short Biblical definition of faith is believing what we cannot see.
If we become prideful about what we’re able to achieve by faith, we lose communication with God. Looking to ourselves takes us out of faith and into our own ability to accomplish God will. This can’t happen because God is a spirit. We can only worship and communicate with him in spirit and in truth.
John 4:24, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
WE NEED CHRISTIAN HUMILITY RATHER THAN ARROGANCE in order to live God’s Word. Pride will keep us from bringing God’s plan to life for His kingdom. Pride will lead us to try and live our purpose without God’s guidance by the Holy Spirit. We will expect to succeed and prosper in God’s purpose for our lives by our will and not His. Great faith in God depends on great humility. Christian humility is a necessary ingredient for the soil of our heart to be fertile ground for growing faith.
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