Don’t make your religion, your faith – your life – about you. It is a gratuitous gift from God. Don’t make your walk with the Lord about your spiritual abilities. And, for that matter, don’t make it about your miserable failings by indulging in endless self-pity. He chose you, not the other way around. And He will finish what he started, provided you don’t let pride get in the way.
There are two sides to spiritual pride: the things we get puffed up about because we think we’re so clever and capable, and the things we are so ashamed of and think are unforgivable. Both attitudes have their root in pride, which always separates us from the blessings of God.
Anything you can lay claim to in the spiritual realm came from God – not to mention your material life, where God constantly arranges everything for your good – even when it seems otherwise. And even the most grievous sin can be forgiven, provided we humble ourselves before the Redeemer.
It’s all about what God wants to do for you, how He wants to lavish His love on you. He wants to join you to Himself forever. He wants to save you from the shortsightedness of your ways and introduce you to the wonders of His designs – the infinite treasure He has waiting for all. And it’s about sharing that first-hand discovery with others.
But God is not foolish. He alone knows how poorly we would use these tremendous gifts and revelations if he poured them out on us all at once. Like a fool who inherits an enormous amount of wealth and runs through it quickly, leaving himself in worse condition than before, so would we be if God didn’t spare us from those temptations – sometimes the very things we’re chomping at the bit for – that would leave us with no possibility of recovery.
God gives us a blessing, a little extra rope to test us, and we, thinking we’re really something, start to go off on our own. We forget where our happiness and capabilities came from. We forget that, without the God Who brought us into life, we are nothing.
If I feel rich, it is only because God has made me rich. And I sometimes too hastily appropriate for myself – as from myself – what was a gift and which causes me to forget my original poverty. That poverty consists of diseases of the soul, repeated sin and compromises with the world, and the general limitations that go with being a creature.
This forgetfulness of my original condition, hidden from view or overshadowed at times by God’s generous consolations, can sometimes lead to spiritual pride. But God and life have ways of bringing that state to an abrupt end.
And yet, there can be a healthy forgetting of ourselves and the so many useless recollections of our needy ego that can help us focus on God and more effectively fulfill our mission or purpose.
Are you timid? Forget about it. Are you the worst sinner on the planet? Forget about it. Are you inept? Forget about it. Do you like being the center of attention? Cast that away, too.
It’s NOT about you. The world won’t collapse because your reputation slipped a couple of notches. Nor should you expect everyone to bow at your feet because you fulfilled your duty.
So, forget about your bruised ego, your inadequacies and your strengths and honors. Instead, rely on God to help you give your best. And forget all the competing voices of the ego so that they don’t overcome the solitary voice of the spirit that remembers its nobility as a child of God.
That’s what it’s about. Knowing that you’re a son or daughter of a loving Father – and moving deeper into relationship with that Living One, Creator of the Universe and Origin of all things. And helping others remember and reestablish that most unique and fulfilling relationship as well.
Make it about God and what He can and wants to do through you. Sing praise to Him for the wonders He has done.
Do so, and you will really have something to celebrate. Because you will not be following your own ways, feeling proud and secure in what you’re able to accomplish by yourself – or useless when you fall. You will enter into the fullness of God’s love, which will expand your “capabilities” and “wealth” beyond your wildest imagination.
The real secret is: when you discover God and how beautiful He is and how extravagant his love and generosity really are, you won’t give a flip about your abilities or adulation from others. But it takes a humble soul to enter this mystery.