Humility, or Trap?

A couple days ago, on my way home for break, I clicked on my radio and decided to forgo the usual music that I listen to and turn to the gospel station. I heard a preacher, Charles Stanley I believe, deliver a message about living for God and feeling, useless, lonely, and depressed.

As he talked I realized I would not hear the whole sermon if I went home, so I drove and listened until the sermon was over. The message was, it felt, directed at me and I praise GOD ALMIGHTY I decided to drive for thirty minutes to hear that message.

I found out tonight that false humility, insecurity, or thinking that you are lower then the belly of a roach in the hole he sleeps in, is wrong, especially for Christians.

When we are saved, it is out of love. Christ knows the condition we are in when He erases our sin and puts our name in the Book of Life. He knows that we can not measure up to Him and He did not die so we can. Christ died to save us from our selves and the sin that so easily befalls us.

If we sin, and we will, we need to repent and move on. We need to trust in God, not think that He is constantly irritated with us over every mistake we make. God made us human, inferior to Him for a reason.

We need to walk, we need to grow, we need to have faith, and we need to stay strong and be positive, and know that the same Bible that shows us the path to salvation also promises power through Christ.

We are not to think of ourselves as scum, or lowly, or inferior. We, the saved of God, are Children of God, and we have a Godly inheritance, why on earth should we think of ourselves as inferior and limit the effect God has in our lives?

Humility is one thing, a negative attitude is another. A Christian with a negative attitude limits his service to God by thinking he is not good enough to do the will of the Lord. Lack of faith creates inner conflict and it tends to grow.

A Christian with low self esteem needs to understand and realize that growth can only come when he breaks the patterns of his life that lead him toward this negative behavior. Christ does not have much room or use for negativity.

Once an individual is saved, Satan can do nothing about it; we are Christ’s and will be so for eternity. But he can limit the effectiveness of our testimony with negativity, IF WE LET HIM.

Satan knows where the gaps in our defenses are and if were are not constantly fortifying ourselves, putting on our armor, praying, and being constant in the word, sooner or later he will slip in and do his best to make us ineffective. And if we end up backslidden, it is because WE LET IT HAPPEN.

Christ defeated every demon He ever met in the Bible right down to Satan himself. Christ gives us power to defeat Satan in our daily lives, through Him. In Ephesians 6:16 we are told to put on the whole armor of God to stand against the wiles of the devil.

The shield of faith shall quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. But armor is useless if not put on.

A while back I was reading 1st Corinthians 10:13 which states that God will not let a Christian be tempted with more than they can handle. But with the temptation there is also an escape. Faith, that old reliable shield is one means of escaping temptation.

We have all seen movies where the hero is fearless and always gets his man. And we have seen the movies where there is always a sniveling scared character that everyone makes fun of. Christians start out as the sniveling scared little weasel, when Christ saves us we change and are supposed to grow and be the hero of the story guided by God. We are not supposed to revert back to, or stay unaffected by the presence of the Holy Spirit of God in our lives.

The preacher I heard on the radio that night was talking about breaking patterns in our lives that lead to negativity. Negativity stunts growth and puts us in bondage to habits, not faith. In order to grow in the Lord, there has to room in our hearts for the Lord.