Monday, September 26, 2011

Pride is NOT the Business


The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was allowed to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.
The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done. – Revelation 15:8-11


Today’s Reading: Zephaniah 1-3; Revelation 16


This reminds me of the Pharaoh during Moses’ time. The Bible says that God hardened his heart. This is something that I never really understood until recently. Why would God do that?
This led to all of those crazy plagues right? Doesn’t that mean that God made it so all of those people suffered, including the deaths of the first born? How can God be a loving God if he would make such a thing happen?

Some friends and I discussed this a few weeks ago and that conversation really gave me a new insight. God didn’t go inside Pharaoh’s heart and make it hard. But rather God just showed himself to be the one true God, something that Pharaoh couldn’t accept.

There’s a subtle difference here.

Pharaoh believed that he in fact was God. So how could some God of his slaves be more powerful than he was? It was this pride that caused his stubbornness which ultimately led to the destruction we saw.

This happened to me too for a while. I believed that I was in control of my life and the more that I tried to control it the more out of control it became. This made me cold and angry towards God and all the time that I refused to accept that I wasn’t the lord of my life God just kept showing me that I wasn’t until finally I broke down and admitted what was true all along, that God is in control.

I see now that all of us have something in common, Pharaoh, me, and the people in Revelation. When we believe that we are the god of our own lives it becomes a matter of pride to deny that God is who he is.

God is love and light, and from Him comes all goodness and life. I’m glad that I finally wised up and stopped fighting. The darkness of self is a lonely and scary place to live.

The eyes of the arrogant will be humbled
  and human pride brought low;
the LORD alone will be exalted in that day. – Isaiah 2:11

2 comments:

  1. This is one of the best messages on pride that I have read. Great article Clarence!

    ReplyDelete

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