Stride in Pride
My mind is nothing in comparison. My daily routine has grown to include doing things the way I think they should be done. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ you may ask. I had the same question because aren’t we to do the best we can in this life and strive to live morally? I have blossomed my pride in thinking that there were parts of my day when I could tell God, and myself, “I’ve got it. I’ve learned this before and am familiar with what is going on around me. I’m confident in myself.”
Then, I started noticing distance between God and me and couldn’t figure out why. This stride in pride is one of the reasons. I won’t take you through the others right now but I had to come to some startling realizations this week. Here we go.
If I do not actively seek God’s direction, seek to initiate God intervention, seek to have the mind of Christ, then I do not believe in the full authority of the Bible. If I believe there is a single split second in any day of my life in which I can go at it on my own, then I don’t believe I need to seek what God has to say about what I’m facing as I have already used my manly wisdom to determine what I will do. I had to get to a point of asking myself, “What do I want? Do I want to explore the infinite mind of the One who created eva-ree-thing and grasp things beyond my wildest imagination all-the-while having confidence that it is true? Or, do I want to take some things on myself, use my limited mind and hope I make the right choices, have the right reactions, control the right things, walk the healthy path?” I don’t know everything. I do not know the right choices to make, the right actions to take. I do not know how to face the things that are thrown at my family. I do not know how to be who I need to be to my wife. I do not know. But, God does.
“Oh, great! Now I have to go to God to make it day-to-day even?! You’re saying I need Him to that degree?” I asked myself that recently and the answer is, “You’re doggone right you (Jonathan) do!” To answer no to that is to be the spokesperson for Pride, Inc.
Who has understood the mind of
the Lord,
or instructed him as his counselor?
Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him,
and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge
or showed him the path of understanding?
Isaiah 40.13
We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment:
“For who has known the mind of the Lord
that he may instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 2.12
