Day 2461 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.
Psalm 33:16 NIV
Whether or not we want to admit it, we've all learned to place far too much faith in ourselves. That's quite possibly one of the biggest hurdles that people have to get over when it comes to this faith of ours. Learning that we're not the most important person there is. Learning that our strength, our intelligence, and our abilities have limits. And realizing that eternal peace is found only in someone else. As with many aspects of our faith, it's a very humbling truth that we all have to understand.
But many in this place can't. They've gotten used to thinking that they're invincible. We're all told from a very early age that we can do anything we set our minds to doing. We're led to believe that we're the masters of our own destiny, the captains of our own ships. We get it in our minds that we can take on the world and do anything we want to do all by ourselves.
And then as we grow up and get older and start taking on more responsibility, we're expected to be entirely self-reliant. We learn to always seek what makes us look better, what makes us feel more powerful, and what allows us to continue believing that we're able to do it all by ourselves. We learn to see asking for help as a sign of weakness and we're taught to abhor weakness because it means we're not the perfect and invincible beings that we thought we were.
Add it all up and it's easy to see why ego is one of the biggest stumbling blocks that keeps many from truly surrendering to Christ. Surrender is almost a dirty word in our society today. We must win. We must succeed. We must do so on our own so that we can boast and walk with pride. And we must never even consider that maybe living to prove ourselves worthy in the eyes of those around us doesn't really mean very much because worldly opinions and worldly glory only matters in this world.
I read this one last night and I know it's something that pretty much all of us need to hear. We can't do this alone. We may be able to carve out a life of ease and comfort in this world. We may be able to achieve some worldly praise and earn some social approval. But when it comes to eternity, salvation, lasting peace, and forgiveness, well, we just can't do it alone. And I know that really hurts our pride, but pride is one thing that seriously has to go if we're ever going to understand the truth that this is all bigger than us and more important than what this world is chasing.
Friends, no matter what you've been told or how long you've believed it, it's okay to need help. It's okay to lean on others sometimes. It's okay to be humble because it leaves us nowhere to go but up. But putting ourselves on these pedestals of pride only leads us toward this crushing fall back to reality when our best is inevitably not good enough. Again, I know it hurts. I know it goes against everything we've been taught since we were little kids. But we may as well come to terms with it now.
All of us have learned things from this world that we spent a lot of years believing were true. And one by one we started realizing that maybe wasn't the case. And step by step we opened our minds to learning rather than just thinking we knew it all already. As much as it hurts our pride and bruises our ego, this is just one more thing that we need to unlearn so that we can find our way closer to the truth.
We can't do it alone, but we don't have to! Christ has already done what we couldn't. We can't buy our own salvation or earn our own forgiveness. Our pride isn't able to overpower God's expectations. Our ego can't argue with His truth. Please don't let your pride keep you from seeing that! It's a gift we simply cannot afford to leave unaccepted. It's the only way to eternal peace!
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