Heart Shift and Motherhood: Finding God's Extra in the OrdinarySample

Humility

During this season of transformation, God has been convicting me and teaching me about pride. He is revealing issues at the root of pride in my life and healing me of them.

Pride is thinking you can do life – any of it – on your own without God.

A prideful mindset doesn’t need to be all-encompassing for it to take hold in your life. For me, it has been insidious and easily disguised by personality characteristics that appear positive and may even be celebrated by culture: hard work, determination, self-confidence. Their sinister backside, often undisclosed, is stubbornness, comparison, pushiness, control (forcing things to happen), or having a skewed and inflated sense of self.

When you have sin in your life, you can’t focus on it and expect to overcome it. Yet, when God showed me that I needed to deal with pride, my prayers were, Lord, help me not to have pride. Lord, show me where I still have prideful areas in my life. God, please deliver me from pride. Pride. Pride. Pride.

As every experienced parent knows, you can’t tell a toddler, “Don’t touch that,” and expect them to actually not touch that, unless you give them another focus. I realize now that even though my intentions were good, I, like that toddler, was also focused on what I wasn’t to be doing. My gracious Heavenly Father redirected my attention to something so much better – humility.

Seeking humility is one of the most important ways we can become more like Jesus (see Philippians 2). Instead of asking God to take away my pride, I began to ask Him to fill me with humility. When we ask God to help us be humble, we are asking Him to bring us closer to Jesus, to make us more like Him.

Reflect:

Are there aspects of life that you think you can do without God? Confess them and invite Him into those areas today.

Let's Pray:

Lord, thank you for revealing areas of my life that I have not surrendered to you. Please forgive me for thinking I can do any aspect of this life without you. Holy Spirit, please fill me with humility. Jesus, draw me closer today and make me more like You