HOME, HUMILITY & HEAVEN

They say, “Home is where the heart is.” I just got back from a visit to my hometown. Spending a week quarantined with my father and my three sons was refreshing and comfortable. Home is where hearts are intertwined with bonds of redemptive love—bonds that hold firm in shifting circumstances and the most troubling seasons of our lives. This is good. Home is where the real me is put on display 24/7—not the pretty façade I tend to want to put on for the world. The real me is sometimes painfully embarrassing; this is good, too.

After eight long years, my firstborn son was released from prison. When I saw him for the first time in those eight years, it was as if I took my first breath after some sort of new birth. A burden I had not realized I had been carrying fell off my shoulders. For the first time in more than a decade, a deep sadness in my heart turned to overflowing joy and peace. Don’t get me wrong, the Lord sustained me with an abiding peace and joy throughout my ‘prison trial’, but this was joy spilling over. It was comfortable. It was that deep sense of realizing that I am home. It was that same spilling-over-joy I knew when I was first reunited with my two younger sons a year after I was released from prison. The word deliverance comes to my mind along with a picture of the joyous children of Israel as they walked through the parted waters of the Red Sea on dry land in awe and wonder. I think of Joseph being reunited with his father. These moments in life are times for great rejoicing, celebration, and praise! From bondage to freedom—every child of God should get a sense of what I’m talking about.

Even in the best of earthly families, conflicts arise when members want their own way. This is what happened to Joseph when his jealous brothers plotted his demise. You know the story. This is the deadly heart of pride—go to whatever extremes necessary to exult self over others, to play god. Joseph had already forgiven his brothers years earlier at the time their father died. It was on that occasion (still focused on themselves) the brothers worry that Joseph may take back his forgiveness and seek revenge. Joseph, with full confidence in God’s providence and sovereign rule, made this statement to his brothers in humility of heart: “Do not be afraid, for am I in God’s place? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive. So therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones.” So, he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. (Joseph 50:19-21)

One of the blessings we have been able to experience in this present reunion has been due to Covid-19. Covid-19 has slowed down life as we know it. Just like a prison experience, the evil found there must be overcome by looking for the good. Trusting God’s promises, we can know that whatever happens has ultimately come from His hand for our good and His glory. Covid-19 is forcing us to focus on that which is supremely important—our relationship with God and others. Hopefully, it is refocusing our perspective and reshaping our priorities. Just like time spent in prison, this time away from the busyness of life can be redeemed by examining our hearts before the Lord.

Covid-19, prison, unemployment, sudden poverty, disease, death, famine…whatever the devastation we face in this world…is a blessing we sometimes hesitate to receive from God’s hands of goodness. Any situation wherein we are reduced to helplessness forcing us to humble ourselves as we look to God alone is a gift. Life lessons that remind us we are completely dependent creatures are priceless gifts wrapped in dark packages. However, rather than eagerly receiving them from His hand trusting the Giver, we recoil from them trusting our own assessment of the “gift”.

No matter what trying circumstances test our faith, we need to be able to quickly recognize and assess the remnants of our sinful, proud flesh when it rises to assert its control in this incessant war that lays raging under the surface of our hearts.

Jerry Bridges wrote a book entitled Sins We Accept. I read it many years ago. No longer sure of its contents, I know that what I have read over the years has shaped my mind and feeds my thoughts. When I started jotting down ideas for this blog post, I immediately thought of that book. Pride falls into this category in our world. Just how dangerous is pride? Do I recognize it in others and, more importantly, in myself? Is pride one of those sins we, as a culture in 2020, generally accept?

Having heard the term Narcissist over the years, I never really thought much about it. I would have rightly classified all human beings somewhat narcissistic. In the early 2000s, my family had been tuning in to the live-feed Sunday services of Grace Community Church. John MacArthur had been doing an expositional preaching series (I think for eleven years when it was said and done) of the Gospel of Luke. I noticed how he seemed to zone in on the character of the Pharisees. It soon became apparent that the Pharisees were a clear picture of true narcissism. After that, I could see others who could be labelled narcissists as an overall characterization of their lives. I recognized narcissists in the Bible and outside the Bible—and even some in my life whom I dealt with on a regular basis. Recently, I bought a book online (the first I have ever seen) regarding a biblical perspective on Narcissism. It is by DC Robertsson entitled The First Will Be Last. It is eye-opening and very well done.

While we were going through Luke with Grace Church, we were also encountering legal officials in places of power and authority over us. My naivete took a beating when I soon realized that those offices for which I had the most respect were filled with proud men whose self-fulfilling purposes were not in upholding the law but in asserting their power and gaining even more power. Isaiah 40:23 became relevant: He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scriptures like this and stories such as that of Joseph, enabled me to see beyond the man and offer prayers for lost souls I encountered along the way. The proud who humiliate and denigrate others will have their day in the Courts of heaven. On that day, all wrongs will be made right. My prayer is those we have encountered who do not know Christ, will be saved. The hope is that they will one day be family in the truest sense of the word. Until then, we must rest in the goodness of our Father, His character, and His promises to us.

For someone who had lived in the proverbial Christian bubble most of her adult life, prison was like being thrown into a sea of narcissists without a life preserver—at first. But the Lord did something interesting and, of course, beneficial in my own life. Instead of focusing on the pride in those around me, the Lord peeled back a portion of the veil over my own heart to reveal the sin of pride in me! I would see stark realities of pride in those around me, and then was almost blinded by the reflection in my own heart. I found myself swimming in a sea of women but alone before the Lord repenting of my own sin of pride on a regular basis. After prison, my focus shifted to a purposeful pursuit of humility that would please and honor Christ. I soon learned that humility would only be developed in me through my closest relationships, and quite often those relationships that were the most difficult. Ironically, the revelation of the pride remaining in my own heart gets bigger every day.

Before prison, my attitude toward pride was more, “He is able to humble those who walk in pride.” Now, it is more about this appalling reality that my own pride is an attempt to steal God’s glory. Wayne Mack has said that pride is the creature forgetting his natural insignificance.

Pride is the most insidious sin of all. It feeds all other sin. Yet, pride is exulted everywhere unless it is found in extreme narcissism. But did we ever stop and ask ourselves the question: Why do I respond so strongly toward the narcissist in my life? I would venture to guess it is because of the pride in each of us. Pride exults self. I have a problem with someone who strongly exults himself because my own pride is fighting to exult me!!! Narcissists may be easy to spot. Are you able to spot not-so-blatant pride in others—leaders in the church, family—yourself? What do you do about it?

We all know professing believers who focus on pet sins they hate. For example, we know the Bible clearly exposes the sin of homosexuality. Yet, homosexuality is flaunted in our faces today by a large portion of the population waving banners displaying the word Pride as part of the label promoting this specific sin. My point is this: How many people who are pointing accusatory fingers at others never stop to consider that a far greater sin lies within their own hearts? I say a far greater sin because pride undealt with in one who professes to follow Christ is far more serious than sin in an unbeliever.

Pride is deadly. Pride deceives and blinds. Pride can keep us from realizing that we need a Savior—not just to save us from eternal judgment, but to save daily by leading us to repentance. Pride blinds us from being able to clearly see ourselves as we truly are. Only the Spirit of God can move us towards the humility needed to identify the disease of pride and seek its cure. Pride hides in the recesses of our hearts in areas we would never imagine revealing itself in our thoughts and intentions.

A radical shift takes place when pride is exposed in our own hearts. With the discovery of this dangerous cancer, the urgency of our prayer reaches a fervency not unlike the discovery of any terminal disease. When once we may have quoted the Scripture out of a sense of moral duty, we now beg and plead with desperation: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23-34) All of a sudden, we realize our need for deliverance that comes only from the power of God working in us.

One day we are going home for good. There, we will know the ultimate deliverance from sin. There, our eternal lives will be 100% God-centered. There will be no more pride in me that tempts me to lean into self-centeredness. No one would dare try to exult themselves in the presence of the One to whom all glory rightly belongs. And at long last, there will be no capacity to do so.