The more I learn about myself is the more I see the overwhelming desire to strive, and please instead just being and living.
As a young director over a youth ministry, I see more and more of the fact of the man pleaser that tries to rise up in the inside of me at the most “opportune” times.
The times I could get the most glory and most honor, and respect out of things. Sadly.
Pride is a very sneaky sin.
It is a predator.
It is actively trying to cease your heart. Not just distract and make you trip or fall, but to destroy and consume you.
It doesn’t come dancing around you hoping you see it.
It comes in prowling and seeking and when it sees an opportunity to attach itself, it leaps for you.
Sadly, most of the time we are not in tune enough with God to feel or see it before it is too late.
When it is too late, now it becomes a part of our day to day lives without us ever to consider that action or thought could ever be pride or even lust.
Because “that’s just how I’ve always been” or how I’m “wired.”
8. Be sober-minded and alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
1 Peter 5:8-9
Pride, and Lust come in sneakily.
They don’t flash there disgusting looks or even flash what they will do to you, and flaunt it around.
No. They flash the moments desire.
They flash all you could have in the moment, and they hide the list of everything you will loose.
We must be on our guard.
As men in particular. We battle with these two greatly.
Desire of the glory and the desire of present fulfillment.
If you are unwilling to take it to God and truly show Him the bareness of your weaknesses and sins you’re okay with holding, you may need to stop for a second and look at yourself.
To admit failure is difficult for me at times. I desire to live up to everything people have seen in me.
I desire to live up to what God has called of me and has choose to do through me.
Yet I trip and stumble.
It’s a constant reminder of how human I am, and how much I needed the divine interruption of a perfect Savior for my life.
It’s difficult to accept the failure of “I can’t live up to what they see regardless how hard I ‘try’ to.”
We must release our striving, and grab hold of just being, and living for God.
6. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, so that in due time He may exalt you. 7. Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
1 Peter 5:6-7
Asking for forgiveness from others, and from God is quick for me because I see that I mess up, and need forgiveness fast.
Forgiveness toward myself, that’s like pulling teeth at certain times.
Yet if not carefully aware, we can actually have to much grace on ourselves that we never walk in Truth, discipline and change.
I’ve said, I’ll “change” I’ve said things that I truly deeply wanted to hold to, but because I wanted to hold to it, I’ve failed.
Not because of God.
I desired to accomplish this so called “task” I laid out before myself.
I treated it as a quick fix that I thought of, not a revelation and new way of living God designed for me in the beginning.
Of course I’d loose focus. Of course I’d fall. Why? Because it’s encompassed by I and not He.
If it is our doing we will shrug it off quickly.
Resolutions for God die off, but Revelations from God we are willing to die for.
The more that I see that I trust myself in my own weaknesses is the more I’m actually not trusting God to move in His strength in my life.
God’s grace is sufficient enough for me.
The biblical truth is this, the enemy is prowling around like a roaring lion, but my God is the lion of Judah.
My God doesn’t just prowl around acting like a lion, but is powerful and strong enough to guide me out of the temptation.
He will train and teach me the ways to keep my eyes aware for the counterfeit lion trying to destroy everything I am called to be by the True Lion of God.
Be Aware, Be of Sober Mind, Be Humble and Just Be.
Joseph iii
Desperately Dependent 