“Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.” (v11-14,18)
How easy is it for us to forget God when things are going well? How easy is it to develop a sense of entitlement (eg. “I earned this” or “I deserve this”)? How easy is it to think “I can do this on my own”? God warns us (through Moses) these are forms of pride and are very dangerous attitudes to have.
We know that God has a serious issue with the sin of pride, since this is one of Satan’s greatest and oldest weapons (he used it in the Garden of Eden tempting Adam and Eve to “be like God”). There are numerous verses on pride including: “The LORD Almighty planned it, to bring down her pride in all her splendor and to humble all who are renowned on the earth.” (Isa 23:9) Ultimately, God will resist the proud and give grace to the humble (1 Pt 5:5, Jas 4:6)
How do we voluntarily counter pride? There are numerous verses on that as well, including: “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time” (1 Pt 5:6) and “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (Jas 4:7).
What happens if we don’t voluntarily humble ourselves? Well, Moses points out that’s what happened to Israel: “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (v2-3) Israel did not choose humility, so God led them through the desert, through trials of hunger and thirst, in order that they would be humbled.
My challenge for today is to voluntarily humble ourselves before God, confess our sin, and invite the Holy Spirit to reveal any areas of pride in our lives. If we have been fooled into thinking we don’t have any areas of pride, then the light of God will expose those hidden areas (that’s what pride does, it creates blind spots to hide in). All we need to do is admit our own fallibility and weakness, the He is God and we are not. By submitting to His authority and giving Him permission to help us, He will gladly do so for He longs to walk beside us. Paul says in 2 Cor 12:9-10 that when we are weakest (most humble) then we are strongest (because God has permission to work in and through us).
Father God, our Lord and King, we worship at Your feet. We ask that You please forgive us our sin, and be gracious with us, for we are a broken people. Please help us to surrender every area of our lives to You, and reveal to us any areas that are not yet submitted. Please be gentle in guiding us into submission, for we don’t wish to be proud, it is a natural symptom of the sinful flesh. We invite Your power and presence into our hearts, that You would restore and revive them so they solely beat for You. In the humble name of our Lord and Savior Jesus we pray, amen.
~ Conqueror in Training