An Impossible Task

As I learn more about my pride, I am amazed at how present it is in my life. It seems everything I do is saturated with my pride. It so permeates my life that I scarcely make a decision at all before I find myself entertaining my pride in my thoughts, words, and actions. It seems my pride is not so much a decision I make, but rather a paradigm to which I am disposed to think through. I need more than to learn a few lessons about pride to change. I need more than to work hard to change. My mind needs to be completely renewed.

Many of God’s tools have fallen to working for what is less than God’s glory during their lifetime because they became proud. May God help me to not waste my life indulging my pride by what I do. I want no less than to live for God’s glory alone and to do great things for Him, but God forbid that I should go about doing great things in my pride. I wonder if a puffed-up servant is worse than a servant who is too petrified of offending his master to serve. I would be hard-pressed to decide whether I would like to do much with my life for the church yet do it out of pride or simply do the smaller things that I can do and keep my heart from pride.

Yet still, my pride would not be so bad if it were not against the One who it is against. The very message of my pride devalues God. Here is the impossibility of my task. It is utterly impossible for me to properly convey with words who this is who I am sinning against. This is our God who I am offending. He is my designer and my creator. My savior and my sustainer. He is my judge and my shelter. This is hopeless; I am not even scratching the surface. Nor do I know anything beyond the surface of who God is. Yet because of what little I know of who God is I, I dare not proceed in my life worshiping anything but Him.

My purpose in writing this was to convince anyone who reads this to pray for me. Many of you who read this I have asked to pray for me in this area. I hope I made my pride out to be as terrible as it is to me, or even worse if that is possible. Honestly, my pride terrifies me. I am terrified when I see how it has infected every fiber of my being, I am terrified when I see what it could do to me, I am terrified when I see what it is to God, and I am terrified when I see that I cannot fight it.

All this would lead me to condemnation. I would be hopelessly petrified indeed if God did not give me hope. I am hopeful when I remember that God has promised to remake. I am hopeful when I remember that my contribution does nothing to alter my status before God. I am given hope when I remember what God has done to forgive my pride. I am hopeful when I remember that God is the one who fights for me.

Despite all that I have reminded myself of in the previous paragraph, do not think that I am alright. I am still sunk in my pride and I simply cannot remain here because of the God I serve. Please pray for me. Pray that I the more I sink in terror of my pride, the more I would dive into God’s grace. Also pray that God would transform my mind so that I would obsess myself only with God’s glory.

Won’t it be a glorious day when we will no longer need to fight our pride?