LEARNING DAILY

 

Deuteronomy 8:12-14, For when you have become full and prosperous and have built fine homes to live in, and when your flocks and herds have become very large and your silver and gold have multiplied along with everything else, that is the time to be careful. Do not become proud at that time and forget the Lord your God, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt.  (New Living Translation)

 

When reading The Daily Bible in Chronological Order – 365 Daily Readings, these verses really stood out to me. Moses was warning those who had left Egypt with him to not forget what the Lord had done for them once they became prosperous. That warning still applies to each of us today. Prosperity and abundance can cause a sense of satisfaction with life on earth and cause our enjoyment to be in material blessings and stuff we have.  Doing so is a source of pride because we look at what we have or look at what we have accomplished and say, “Look at what I have done”. In this prosperity, the danger to forget God is always present. I do not know why those who have never accepted the salvation of Christ prosper; I do know that worldly wealth can be obtained by ungodly means and practices. Such wealth is not to be seen as God’s blessings.

 

The message of Moses certainly is valid for us today. He was telling them that the God of Israel was giving them a choice: if you forget God, you will die, or if you remember Him, you will live. One who gains wealth without God may prosper in this life only to see that eternal life with God has been forfeited in the process (Yesterday’s blog verse – Luke 9:25).

 

The New Testament teaching tells us to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and live with Him by walking on the narrow way. John’s first letter exhorts everyone walking on the narrow way to not love the world. One way we do that is the “pride of life”, the arrogant desire to be recognized because of what one has or their position and the desire to be recognized. Satan tempted Jesus in this way and he attempts to do this in every believer to turn him/her away from God. The nonbeliever just keeps on doing what he can to get more or to be noticed among men without giving any thought about God. Being concerned about what those in the world think about you or how it judges you becomes more important than any consideration about how God judges you.

 

Today this is not about what a person has. It is about each of us being prideful, about not giving God the glory in our lives. A person might appear to be humble on the outside but inwardly their life is about pursuing self-glory, personal desires and worldly praise. This is certainly against what Jesus taught. There is no way to say it gently: the pride of life in a person will turn a person away from God; it causes us to be disobedient to Him.

 

The warning of both Moses and John is clear for everyone on the narrow way: our thinking, the way we live our lives needs to be less about ourselves and more on serving God and others. I refer back to the church member or disciple thought again. All of us are going to feel prideful at times over a comment made to us or something accomplished. The moment we do, we must acknowledge it and prayerfully ask God to use these moments for His honor and His glory. We overcome pride by being honest with ourselves and God. When we refuse to see our own pride, it is because of our own self-importance. For those on the narrow way, we ask for the Holy Spirit to fill us each day, surrendering to His will and desiring to be used for the Father’s glory. For those who have not surrendered to the salvation Jesus offers, overcoming pride begins there.