I was convicted this week of how prone I am to be prideful in my own self-righteousness. None of us have "arrived." None of us are who we want to be, or know God wants us to be. I still fall so short of the glorious standard of God... and so I am in desperate need, daily (ok, hourly), of Jesus, who lives to intercede for me at the right hand of God. Anyone who has been a Christian for a while (and by anyone, I mean me), can look at less mature Christians or non-Christians and quickly let wicked pride come into our hearts as we compare and judge. Jesus spoke pretty harshly to the Pharisees, and reminded them that they needed to stop worrying about looking so holy on the outside, and clean house on the inside. Therefore, I can pat myself on the back for what I "do for God", and all the sins I don't do, and the commands I do do, etc, etc, but if I'm have pride, self-righteousness, ill feelings toward others, or any other yuckyiness in my heart, I'm not different than those Pharisees who got a heavy dose of rebuke from Jesus (Matt 23)...(ouch!).Another thing I noticed is that Jesus didn't rebuke the Pharisees for what they taught (He told the people to obey what the Pharisee's taught), but for what they did (or didn't do...they didn't practice what they preached, and neither do we all the time). Even in some of the things I have written about or taught about (including the basis for the name of this blog), I fail to, MANY times, live up to.
Conclusion? We're all in need of that "Amazing Grace" we love to sing about. We're no less in need of it than prostitute on the corner or that angry person who cut us off in traffic this week. We all need to be like the tax collector who prayed, "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner," and not like the Pharisee who prayed, "God, thank you that I'm not like those sinners (paraphrased)."
Conclusion? We're all in need of that "Amazing Grace" we love to sing about. We're no less in need of it than prostitute on the corner or that angry person who cut us off in traffic this week. We all need to be like the tax collector who prayed, "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner," and not like the Pharisee who prayed, "God, thank you that I'm not like those sinners (paraphrased)."
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1 comment:
it's almost as though the "new or simple" christian should look down at us "mature or complex" christians because it's so hard for us to change. It's really hard to want to change if you think you are right. Good post.
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