Last week, we dove into one of the most outrageous claims that people use to share the gospel, the prosperity gospel. If you haven’t read that post yet we encourage you to check it out by clicking here. This week we would like to continue talking about an all too common pitfall that we can hit when trying to share the gospel with others. The power of pride is overwhelming when we allow it to seep into our soul and it begins to breed all types of bad fruit. Pride can also lead to a legalistic and judgmental spirit which begins to destroy us as the body of Christ. If we are to truly show Christ’s love to all we must fight against these things in all aspects of our lives. We may never fully concur the issue of pride, but if we do not commit to fight against the tendency of pride we will destroy our mission.
Pride is when we decide that we are doing things the “right” way. It starts as a small thing like having pride about an accomplishment and believing that you did it all on your own. As you begin to allow this to grip you it roots itself deep in your soul and spreads throughout like a virus. When we are gripped by pride we feel like we have arrived. We are always the ones who are right. It becomes hard for us to communicate the gospel because when someone offers a different idea our pride lashes out and fights against showing God’s love. Even on the cross Christ was always about others not about himself. The root issue of pride is that we have an inward view and not an outward one.
In our state of pride we fall into the spirit of judgment. We begin feeling as if we should be able to tell everyone else how to live according to our lives. Last we checked God is the only one who has the ability to judge people so why should we inflate ourselves to play God? In the movie Bruce Almighty the main character Bruce (played by Jim Carey) gets the chance to be God. He is given the ability to do everything that God can do and for a while it is fun. He feels like he is good enough (out of pride) to be God, but at the end there is a scene with God and Bruce that captures why we should not try to take God’s place in judging others. Bruce tells God that he doesn’t want the responsibility of Him, and God replies saying something along the lines of we all want God’s powers without the responsibility of them.
When we become judgmental and prideful we begin to assume the role of God. As Bruce figured out, playing God is not something that any of us could even begin to do correctly. We lose the grace that God has given us to pour out on others because we are so wrapped up in ourselves and can’t see past our own desires. Our mission is to love others, and we can’t do that with a judgmental spirit. God would have us to love others unconditionally and even when they don’t deserve it. He first forgave and offered grace to us. Let us not be like the man in the parable whose debt was forgiven and then demanded another debt be paid. Let us spread the message of love to all who are around us even if we don’t want to give it to them. Of course we will stumble. That’s where God grants us grace and mercy. Let us pass on what we have been given.
The easiest way to not fall into a spirit outside of God is to constantly dive into the Word and God’s love. If we know God’s word we will begin to see that there are things we may do that are different for us than others. God gives us a set of universal lines to follow for those of us that call Christ our Lord. He offers the Ten Commandments as our guidelines for living. One thing that many Christ followers think is that if we shouldn’t do it then the non-Christians shouldn’t either. God’s rules apply to us, and we can’t expect those in darkness to act like the Light. Even within ourselves God has given us some things He feels will best benefit us. If it’s not written in black and white within the Bible God grants us free will to determine what we believe He would want of us.
There are millions of people living in the dark and we have been given the challenge to reach those people. There is a God-sized agenda we are responsible for and it is much larger than our pride or judgmental spirit. Our Savior came into this world not to condemn but to save it. Over the next week we urge you to search in your heart where the virus of pride may be resting and begin to work through that area of your life. Let us give grace and mercy to those who we don’t think deserve it. Give forgiveness when we feel like we can’t. Be about this cause that is greater than anything we can ever do. Let’s go be who Christ called us to be. Be the Light in the darkness!
Dive Deep,
KC
Thanks for the post! This is some good stuff!