Archive for the ‘Pride’ Category

Jesus talk and growing up

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

There are at least two "church" sentences that tend to scare me. The first is: "Jesus spoke to me." That one always gets me, not because I don’t think that Jesus can speak to folks, I’m just not sure that he does. An older man from church told me he is writing a letter he wants to read to the assembly saying that Jesus had talked to him so he wants to share the message. I told him I’d think it over, but would love to read the message beforehand. (Actually, I’m just hoping he will forget about it, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.)

The second sentence is "I have grown so much this last year" or its sister phrase: "I have really matured as a Christian…" I hear this often, especially when said person wants to tell me what I’m doing wrong. Now I know I do a lot of stuff wrong (see my Evendays_confession_just_kidding.org), but it seems obvious that if someone has grown in Christ significantly the last few months, that they wouldn’t have to tell me how much they’d grown. Rather, I would see it and tell them how radically they’d changed.

It gets even more interesting when someone comes to you and tells that Jesus told them how much they’d grown.

Be humble my friends. Do listen to Jesus. But be discreet about all the stuff. At least try to be discreet.

Sunday’s lesson

Friday, November 14th, 2008

I am finishing Sunday’s sermon on PRIDE. You know, the bad kind, the sin that makes it easy to disdain others and keep God out of the driver’s seat. The pride that C. S. Lewis devotes an entire chapter to in Mere Christianity. The sin to which the Son of God addressed a parable. The pride that Isaac Watts writes about:

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

Jerry Rushford, Hymn Historian and Pepperdine Religion Professor, counts the hymn as a favorite. In his New Testament class, while introducing the Apostle Paul, he shared the words with 50 attentive students noting that they conveyed the motivation of Paul’s work.

A hymn site has a note that Charles Wesley would have given up all his other hymns just for this one. Understandable, especially in the light of the following verses:

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Galatians 6.14 reads: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It’s the verse that moved Watts to write those word at age 33. It’s only that spirit of love and thankfulness that can destroy the power of the Great Sin.