Wilderness Wonderings

Wilderness Wonderings

pride

The Heart of Reproach

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Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

Matthew 9:14-17
Bedouin with an old wineskin

If another of the faith does not publicly worship in the same manner that you do, does that make you holier than the other? The disciples of John (the Baptist) challenge Jesus who has on other occasions told His disciples to practice their fasting in private (Matthew 6:16-18). However, here they come boasting of their spirituality and equating themselves with the Pharisees, who we have already seen challenge Jesus with their own disagreements with His methods and teaching. When you associate with the prideful, your own pride will quickly surface and lead to your own downfall.

Using a religious practice to demonstrate your piety is shallow faith, like putting a shiny new patch on an old pair of jeans. When it comes times to wash that garment, the compatibility will quickly become apparent and lead to damage of the main garment. In the same way, using a religious act to demonstrate your faith instead of allowing a heart that is consumed with love and compassion for your neighbor be the measure of your faith produces the same damaged results.

In the same way, if you try to put freshly fermented wine in old, worn out wineskins, the wineskin will not be able to handle the weight and corrosive action of the wine against the weakened leather and lead to the entire crop of wine to be spilled and wasted, unusable – unfit for consumption.

Is your faith fit for consumption? Then preserve it in a true vessel of compassion and grace and a heart that is prepared to offer restoration and reconciliation instead of furthering division and bitterness. Is your faith restorative? Then prepare it first with immersion in the water of the Word before applying it to the visual edifice of your life. This way, your deeds do not stand out as a sore thumb and not reflective of the garment you wear before witnesses.

When you are in the presence of the Bridegroom, it is time to celebrate His grace and His love. It’s not a time for dour piety. It’s not a time for drawing attention to yourself and your religiosity. It’s a time to focus on the Savior. The time for fasting will come in due course. And when it does, do not do so like the hypocrites and draw attention to yourself.

Grace to you, my friends. Revel in the presence of the Savior. Celebrate Him for He is indeed worthy of our attention.

The Prayer of the Kingdom

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“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”

Matthew 6:5-8

Prayer is not a tool for the proud, but rather it is a petition of the weak. If you spend more time in prayer glorifying yourself and your deeds and your own personal value to the kingdom, then you have completely missed the point. Prayer is about humbly submitting ourselves before our Sovereign, yet merciful God, recognizing that we do not have all the answers, but He does. By His providence, He sees our past, our failures, our mistakes, and our sin. By His grace, He forgives knowing that His Son paid the penalty for our transgressions. By His omniscience, He knows what our future holds before we even imagine it.

In Jesus’ day, it was a common practice among the religious elites to not only walk around with bells on the hems of their robes to announce their coming, but at certain times of day they would suddenly and without provocation stop and loudly pray in the street – bringing attention to themselves. In many cases, contextually speaking, these prayers would be spiked with pride and self-aggrandizement. Other times, they would point out the sins of others or give thanks for their high position relative to others around them.

Jesus illustrated this with the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, which is related by the gospel writer Luke. Two men enter the temple to pray, one a Pharisee (the religious elite) and one a despised tax collector. And Jesus made a point to describe the tax collector as “despised.” It was more of an indictment of the heart of the Pharisee than the condition of the tax collector. Tax collectors were often locals who would volunteer to collect taxes on behalf of Rome in exchange for protection or relief from their Roman oppressors and were often paid out of the taxes they collected – resulting in some cases over taxation for the benefit of the collector.

The Pharisee’s prayer was full of selfish pride: “I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.” (Luke 18:11-12) Oh the hubris! The pride. The arrogance to stand before a holy God and compare yourself to another of His creations, when the only comparison that should be made is to Him alone. When we stand in the darkness of our sin, we are blinded to our own wretchedness in comparison to Him. However, when we stand in the light of His holiness, we stand exposed for all that we truly are.

And the tax collector in Jesus’ parable knows this all too well. His own prayer is a simple confession: “O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.” (Luke 18:13) And acknowledge not only of His own spiritual condition, as is our own condition before a holy God, but a plea for mercy. It is a shorter version of Isaiah’s prayer before the throne of God:

“Woe is me, for I am ruined!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I live among a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

Isaiah 6:5

Genuine prayer sheds light upon the holiness of God and exposes our nature by this same light. When we see God for who He truly is, we see ourselves for who we really are. And it changes us. For better or for worse, it transforms us. Either we fall on our face in repentance before Him, or we run away rejecting His authority. Often times, this rejection will play itself out as we live lives contrary to His word. We demonstrate a rejection of His authority by our own refusal to repent of our own selfish agendas.

Consider the words of your prayers. If the focus of your petitions before God shines more light on you than it shines on Him, then I beg you to re-examine your heart. I beg you look upon God for who He truly and deservedly is. Contemplate His holiness. Meditate upon His mercy. Embrace His grace. Then and only then will your prayers prevail upon the ears of righteousness and move the heart of our Abba.

The Subtle Seduction of Pride

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“After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.” (Job 3:1)

There is a subtle difference between mourning and self-pity. Whereas mourning is an emotional response to loss, when we wallow in our mourning for too long, it can easily and subtly devolve into self-pity. Self-pity is the subtlest and I dare say the most egregious manifestation of pride that we can experience because the focus of our heart turns inward upon ourselves and our own perceived merits or elevated injustices.

If you recall in Job 2:13, as Job’s friends sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, nobody spoke a word to him. There was silence within the suffering, but a silence that brought comfort. But the silence was broken when “Job opened his mouth.” He didn’t open his heart to receive comfort. He didn’t open his mind to receive instruction. He opened his mouth to “curse the day of his birth.” Not only did he curse the day of his birth, but he cursed the night of his own conception.

In the third chapter of Job, our protagonist uses the first person pronoun 16 times over 26 verses. He only mentions the Lord God Adonai twice, and both times in a self-centered, almost accusative manner, as if God made a mistake in creating him. In essence Job’s eyes and heart moved from blessing God in the midst of his suffering to cursing Him for the sovereign act of creation.

Just as humility is the lens through which we see ourselves and God for who we really are, pride is the lens that blinds and distorts our vision of reality. When our circumstances do not line up with our vision, too often our initial response is to either rebuke / blame Satan or wallow in self-pity instead of opening our hearts and asking God “What will you have me learn from this?” Two principles we should be reminded of are these:

  1. Satan can do nothing to us unless God first permits it. Remember, Satan could do nothing to Job at all until God granted His sovereign permission. So in effect, when we rebuke or blame Satan for our circumstances, we are ultimately accusing God rather than drawing closer to His hand of comfort and rejecting His test of our faithfulness.
  2. We forget that Satan has no influence over us other than what we allow. Satan’s goal is the same as it has always been from the beginning – to separate us from our relationship with our Creator. He will tempt us in many different ways, but ultimately it is his knowledge of our hearts that will determine how he will succeed. Dr. Gary Rosberg once remarked “The enemy will lie in wait for years just to find a small weakness in your armor.” And the most subtle of weaknesses that we all have is pride. It was the sin of pride that was stoked in the Garden with the original sin. It is the sin of pride that ultimately leads to Job’s own downfall.

Instead of wallowing in defeat, live in victory. Sing from the victory that is already won upon the cross of Calvary. The simplicity of the Christian life and the rallying cry to adjust our vision is echoed by the prophet Micah: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8 ESV) To paraphrase in my own feeble words: “Obey God’s Word, treat people with loving kindness, and live in a right relationship with the Lord God Adonai.”

Nowhere in God’s Word does He ever say to live “under the circumstances.” In fact, He is always encouraging us to rise above our circumstances and look to Him for guidance and strength. In the words of the apostle Paul: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.'[Psalm 44:22] No, in all these things we are more than conquerers THROUGH HIM WHO LOVED US.” (Romans 8:35-37)

Please listen closely to the words of the attached song from Austin Stone Worship “Singing in the Victory”:

“I will not be anxious, Jesus, You are near
The Peace of God surrounding me, and casting out all fears
The hand that holds the heavens, is the mighty hand that saves
The voice that calms the stormy seas
Is calling me by name
I’m singing in the victory, the victory of the cross
I’m resting in the shadow, of Your redeeming love
I’m standing on the promise, the promise of new life
‘Cause I am Yours forever, and Jesus, You are mine
Oh Jesus, You are mine”

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