Faith Thrives in a Humble Heart
The faith needed to live out the Christian life is directly related to humility. But one of the things that gets in the way of humility is a performance-driven mindset. When we live this way, our need for the Lord diminishes and our pride begins to flourish.
Mike: We are going to continue our discussion on humility today by focusing on humility and faith. Speaking of faith, I want to read just a couple of passages that talk about some of the great promises we have. In Philippians 4:7 it says, “You will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your heart and mind as you live in Christ Jesus.” Matthew 11:28 says, “Come to me all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” We could go on and on, because there are so many great promises that God has given us. But why do we have so much trouble believing these promises?
Jeff: Well, those wonderful promises you just read were conveyed in the life of Jesus when He was here on the earth. I cannot help but think about His interactions with the Pharisees and how much they needed to hear what He expressed to them. Jesus gave them the secret to what hindered them from coming to salvation. He said to them, “No wonder you cannot believe. For you gladly honor each other, but you do not care about the honor that comes from God alone.” When I think about that, what I see is that the barrier that kept them from coming to Jesus was pride. Pride will always keep us from coming to God and understanding our need for Him.
<pull-quote>Pride will always keep us from coming to God and understanding our need for Him.<pull-quote><tweet-link>Tweet This<tweet-link>
Mike: We often talk about self and the self-life. Talk a little bit about how that relates to what you just described.
Jeff: Obviously, our inner nature does not want to be lowly, unnoticed or to let go of its reputation. There is always something in us that wants the kind of honor before men that allows us to be exalted. You see it in the disciples where they argue about who would be the greatest in the Kingdom. It is in all of us to want to be something, so our inner nature is going to resist to allow God to be what He wants to be in our lives, which is everything.
Mike: Self and pride really make faith impossible, don’t they?
Jeff: What they do is blind us of our need for God. And when you think about it, the Pharisees were blind. They could not see their need, because they prided themselves on their performance, their traditions and their standing with men. They cared nothing about the honor of God.
Mike: It is easy to beat up on the Pharisees, but some of their qualities are in all of us. Let’s look at some of the examples that we see in our own lives. How do the qualities of a pharisee manifest themselves in all of us?
Jeff: When you think about faith, faith is believing God for everything. It is seeing the unseen. But we can take pride in anything and look to ourselves in a job, in our reputation, in the community, or even in ministry. I sometimes find myself looking to what I do in ministry as my source of well-being, or even honoring myself in my performance. And it really does hinder my faith in the Lord and hinders God from being able to do what He wants to do in and through my life.
Mike: I have seen in my own life that this kind of pride and focus on self is the thing that can make my faith so superficial and short lived. It can make my faith powerless really, in many ways.
Jeff: Yeah, and it becomes an obstacle really to our faith.
Mike: I know there have been times in my life where I am reading a promise in Scripture and I am just having trouble believing it. In those moments I can see the different things in myself that I hold on to and I see how pride is working in my life. Talk to us a little bit about how we begin to deal with these obstacles to our spiritual growth and our ability to walk in faith.
Jeff: Really what we need is a total change of direction in our way of thinking. We must realize that we have these bullet patterns ingrained in our flesh nature. We need to cooperate with the Lord and let our desire and our prayer be, Lord I want to be humble and I want to be like you. But then we also need to accept the things that God allows into our lives that bring about humility and to not resist them. I have had many things in my life help bring me down. I have to realize that it’s the Lord who allowed those things in my life. I’ve had to learn that it’s good for me to accept the things that will bring about greater humility in my life.
<pull-quote>We need to cooperate with the Lord and let our desire and our prayer be, Lord I want to be humble and I want to be like you.<pull-quote><tweet-link>Tweet This<tweet-link>
Mike: The key thing you said that I picked up on there is that He really does want to transform us from the inside out. He wants to make us like Jesus, that’s His goal for our lives.
Jeff: Absolutely. He made a promise in 2nd Peter Chapter One that we will be created into the image of Christ. That to me is a glorious, glorious part of my salvation. That I am given a new nature and God is going to change me day by day, more and more into the glory of God. Praise the Lord.
Mike: Amen. By faith we hear that and by faith we believe it. And as we deal with the men that come into our Residential Program and the women in our OCAH program as well, one of the great things to watch is how God's faithfulness is working the flesh nature out of people because He wants us to have the faith to believe. And that’s not just the faith to believe to be saved, but the faith to believe that He is going to transform us into His image. And it is so wonderful to see Him doing that in the lives of people around us. It’s an encouragement to me and to all of us on staff here at Pure Life. You also mentioned that we need to embrace the things that God allows in our lives to begin to break down our pride and the self that is in us. What can we do in a proactive sense to begin to walk in what the Lord wants to bring us into?
Jeff: Well, I will go back to that opening Scripture where Jesus says, “No wonder you cannot believe for you gladly honor each other, but you don't care about the honor that comes from God.” I know a guy is coming into something real with the Lord when he starts doing things because he wants to honor God. When this is the case, that is all he cares about. He does not care if he is judged wrongly by his wife, his counselor or whoever. He is learning the secret of living his life before the Lord.
We must live our lives like that, because then it becomes about honoring Him, pleasing Him and doing everything for Him. There can be no self in that way of living. And it really takes faith to do that because you are believing in the unseen. You are looking to God and you are not looking to the tangible things where people can pat you on the back or say nice things about you. You are doing it for the Lord and that is where humility and faith meet, where you are honoring God. Start seeking the honor that only comes from God and let God become everything to you. That will deliver you from the slavery of living for self and wanting all the attention for yourself. There is a freedom that comes from serving God from your heart and knowing your reward comes from Him.
