During my morning time with God, and while reading Matthew 20 and 21, this realization entered my mind and heart:
Absolute faith (trust) in God requires absolute humility before and to God.
And then I opened Paul E. Billheimer's book, Destined for the Throne, to pick up reading where I'd left off, which happened to be about Paul's "thorn in his side," which he asked three times for God to remove, and each time, God refused for a specific reason: For Paul's protection. The following two paragraphs are found in that section on page 86.
"... The sands of time are strewn with the wrecks of the broken lives of many who were once mightily used of God, but who suffered shipwreck upon the rocks of spiritual pride. This explains why Watchman Nee says that God's great work is to reduce us, that is, our ego. For until God has wrought a work of true humility and brokenness in His servants, He cannot answer some of their prayers without undue risk of producing the pride that goes before a fall. If God could trust the petitioner to keep lowly, who knows how many more answers to prayer He would readily give.
"This principle may also explain why answers to prayer for healing sometimes are not received. If the answer to prayer for healing in Paul's case was hazardous to him, how much more so may it be in many others. Although no one since Paul has ever had as much reason to be exalted because of the abundance of revelations, very few have his ability to keep humble. Is it possible that one reason why some are not healed is that God sees they too might be lifted up with spiritual pride and 'fall into the condemnation of the devil'? If God felt it advisable to withhold the answer to Paul's prayer for healing to keep him humble, may this not explain the failure of some other prayers for healing?"
This pride-factor is something each of us, who call ourselves Christians, needs to be aware of. It's far too easy for any of us, and most especially those with a more public standing as representatives of His Church, to forget it's always, always, always about Yeshua/Jesus. The micro-second it becomes about us, we're falling out of humility and into Satan's camp. I know--I know! It's all to easy to do so, especially because ....
That "dead-on-accurate" meme that "puts them in their place," or the one we create or share that degrades "those people who deserve it," and on and on, wherever our Satan-directed pride takes us, takes us further from where we need to be as representatives of our Father and His Kingdom, as well as obedient to His commands about such matters.
Pride. It's the greatest and trickiest stumbling block Satan has in order to capture us and lock us into a prison with bars invisible to our spiritual awareness. He's an expert in pride--it's what got him cast out of Heaven and made him an eternal spiritual orphan (something he works very hard at making all of us; after all, what better way to hurt a Father than to destroy His sons and daughters made in His image).
Pride causes us to make fun of others, or degrade or criticize them, or do all sorts of things other than what God commanded: Pray for them. I do this a little differently: I ask Him to forgive me, starting with the sin of pride and where it leads me far too often. I ask Him to forgive all of us who are saved and those who still can be, to cover all our sins with the blood of Yeshua/Jesus -- not one of us can claim to be free of sin. Not one. I ask Him to continue to open all our eyes, ears, hearts, and minds to HIS TRUTH.
Our world, our country (USA), our lives have been turned upside-down, relatively overnight. For His Remnant, part of our prayers is that His Kingdom come, His will be done here on Earth as it is in Heaven. To us, those are more than a line of words of a prayer recited too often by rote, rather than meant with full heart-and-soul reverence for our Father God and how they relate to what He has promised us. These upside-down times require trust in the Lord. And, I offer that this needs to be absolute trust that needs to grow exponentially, sooner than later.
We cannot do this on our own. This is the work of Holy Spirit in us: We must ask the Father for His help with this. Just know that the cleaner and clearer we are as temples of God, the more uncluttered space we provide for Holy Spirit to abide in us. If you wouldn't say it or do it with Yeshua/Jesus standing next to you, it probably doesn't belong in your temple.
Absolute faith (trust) in God requires absolute humility before and to God.
What is the full measure of absolute humility before and to our Father God?
Thank you, Joyce, for giving me something to deeply think about this morning. This really hit me like a ton of bricks: " If you wouldn't say it or do it with Yeshua/Jesus standing next to you, it probably doesn't belong in your temple." I pray that I remember that at all times.
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