Fractured Saints - never beyond mending - a christian blog for the broken ones

Out of all the top sins in my life, I don’t think pride would have made my top 3 or even 7.  Yet in the six (yea, seven) things God hates, “A proud look” makes the first on His list.  (Proverbs 6: 16-17)  In the New Testament, pride shows up again as one of three on a list as “the pride of life”.  I John 2:16

Ever notice that the Bible also makes some very emphatic and exclusive statements and conclusions about pride?  “Only by pride cometh contention: . . . ” Proverbs 13:10 and “Pride goeth before destruction, . . .” Proverbs 16:18

If God takes the issue of pride so seriously, why don’t I?  The only answer I could come up with: my pride.

As I began to delve into my own research to be able to teach on this topic in Men’s Bible study, a flood of conviction began to overwhelm me.  “Only by pride” do I argue, “Only by pride” do I get offended when someone is critical, “Only by pride” do I criticize others, “Only by pride” do I find fault in others, “Only by pride” do I become dissatisfied with my situation, “Only by pride” do I find myself too busy to read my Bible or pray, and on and on.  I began to see how pride has infiltrated every aspect of my life, every moment of my day, every encounter with another person, every thought that enters my mind, every action or word will be influenced by my pride.  I saw myself unable to function in life without my pride, and I stood totally convicted and judged in my own eyes.  How would God see me?  I shuddered, because I also knew “Pride goeth before destruction.” Proverbs 16:18

Most people inaccurately quote this as pride comes before a fall, but it is a misquote of the words in the entire verse.  God says, quite emphatically, that He hates pride, and we either must lose our pride or face destruction.  I also found destruction comes in so many forms.  Others are killed every day by someone else’s pride.  For example: texting while driving – pride tells us we can do it.  Speeding – we are safer drivers than others aren’t we?  I could write a whole article on just the consequences of pride, but you get the idea.  Relationships are destroyed – by pride.  Churches die and are destroyed – by pride.  Families are torn apart – by pride.  How different would our world be without pride?  Picture that, and maybe you can get a sense of why God hates it so much.

If “Only by pride cometh contention” then the reverse must also be true, so I came up with the corollary that “Only by humility cometh contentment.”  Think of all the things that bother you, then think of how Christ faced them by taking off His God robe long enough to die for you and me.  At the very moment of our own salvation, humility, not pride, ruled our minds and hearts.  On bended knee, vulnerable, we cried out for Him to save us, and He did.

I believe now that no one dies and goes to hell for their sins – for Christ paid for ALL OUR  SINS.  I now believe that a person dies and goes to hell for their PRIDE.  Someone who refuses salvation is someone who has refused to humble them self and acknowledge an Almighty God and His Son Jesus Christ, or maybe they have an issue with recognizing their own sinfulness.  In any case, it is always pride that stands between them and salvation – everything else to effect their salvation is already prepared for them.  Pride tells us we must earn salvation, while humility accepts there is nothing we can do to save ourselves.  God will only judge us for our sin if we hang onto our pride, and I am in the middle of my P-R-I-D-E.  Need a reference for that?

How about the story of Jonah?  The city of Nineveh was condemned for their sins, Jonah goes and warns them then sits on a hill to wait for their impending destruction.  The people humble themselves from the king to the last citizen, and God spares them.  Check it out for yourself how multiple times God backs off His judgment from a person a city or a nation because the person, people, or nation humbled themselves.

The kicker: 2Chronicles 7:14 “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Thanks to tmamone for turning me onto The Sarcastic Lutheran. It’s now one of my favorite blogs. A new post came up earlier this week that really touched me; it was Nadia Bolz-Weber’s sermon in honor of the baptism of a child in her congregation, House for All Sinners and Saints. It’s about the promises God makes to His children and his steadfastness in honoring them, and about the importance of dying daily to self and the joy of returning to God.

I posted a link to this on my Facebook page, and a good friend of mine with whom I often disagree pointed out a specific passage: “Don’t listen when people say that following Christ means being right. To follow the crucified and resurrected one is to live as a people who get to be wrong.”

My friend responded, “I always have qualms when someone claims with certainty that Christianity is not knowing what is right. I mean, if she is absolutely certain about re-birth in baptism, then isn’t she right?”

His comments bring up a really interesting quandary about right and wrong in Christianity. Surely there’s value in recognizing our potential to be wrong in nearly everything; it keeps us humble and helps us to give God the respect He deserves, He whose thoughts are not our thoughts and whose ways are not our ways. However, isn’t there some necessity to be right in some things? We must be certain of the power of the resurrection and the holiness of God, right? But at some point doesn’t too much certainty lead to Phariseeism?

Where do we draw the line between where we must be right and where we might be wrong?

Most of the time I feel certain that if it weren’t for other people, all of us would have a much stronger Christian walk. If that guy hadn’t cut me off, I wouldn’t have cursed at him; I’d have no problem forgiving that friend of mine if she hadn’t done such a horrible thing to me; I would easily be able to love and respect people if they didn’t act so stupid. Maybe that sounds obvious or ridiculous, but really, isn’t that how we think?

Two years ago, a speaker at a ladies’ retreat I attended talked about this propensity we have to lay the blame for our own behavior on others. She said that since we can’t control what other people do or say or think, our only concern in all things should be that we do our part. Fundamentally, her lesson was pretty much the same as “turn the other cheek,” but for some reason, the way she put it really resonated with me, and it helped me better apply that principle to the situations in which I often find myself.

For instance, if someone at my job makes a bad decision that ends up costing me a lot of extra time and effort that could have been avoided, that doesn’t make it OK for me to fume over it or to be wrathful toward that person. My job is to do my part, and my part only—which is to do my work “heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.” God won’t hold me accountable for my colleague’s actions, but neither will he weigh those actions heavily when judging the rightness or wrongness of my behavior.

If I hear that someone at church disagrees with my idea of appropriate church dress, that doesn’t make it OK for me to take pains to wear what they don’t like just to make a point. C.S. Lewis would call that uncharitable behavior, and I believe Christ would, too. My job is to do my part, which is to give fair consideration to that person’s objections and then to shut up and love them as God commands, regardless of whether we agree.

Say a prayer for me that in all things I can concentrate on doing my part, and nothing more.

This is my first post on FS, and since I’m the first girl here I thought I would write about submission, or love, or Deborah, or Esther, or the status of women in the Bible in general. You know, either something “feminist” or something “girly.” But I don’t feel like writing any of that now.

My two-year-old daughter is sleeping peacefully upstairs after two days of fever that peaked at 104.4 degrees. My mother-in-law, who is one of the kindest people I know, spent yesterday morning taking care of her for me. My mom and dad, who moved here last year just to be near us, came over this morning to help out. My sister-in-law, another of the kindest people I know, was thoughtful enough to call on her way home from work to check and see how the midget was doing. My husband, who is slugging through one of his busiest work months of the year, made a special trip home yesterday just to have dinner with his little girl.

So I don’t feel like being anything but grateful today. I wish it didn’t take so many little salvations to make me feel that way. In the past few days people I love have saved me from frustration, and worry, and hassle, and I feel abundantly grateful for that. So you’d think that, faced with the one big salvation I’ve been given, I’d wake up every morning ready to tell those rocks not to bother crying out, because I’ve got it covered. Why is it often so much harder to praise the name of the Lord for His sacrifice than to praise our earthly, day-to-day saviors?

It’s my 7th anniversary and it seems that on each anniversary my wife and I tend to analyze and try to figure out why it works as well as it does. Of course my dashing good looks is the cement that holds our relationship together (second only to our vows to God). This year we discussed trust. How we both know that neither of us is ever going to leave the other for any reason. This makes a huge openness in our relationship allowing for honesty even to the point of pain. No hiding things that could start building our relationship on lies. But I think we are very fortunate. This trust certainty isn’t in every marriage, even some Christian marriages lack this.

I can’t imagine the fear and uncertainty I would have if this trust wasn’t there. Living in a house where your not sure what sin, act of forgetfulness, or wrong word in an argument would be your last. My wife is amazingly blessed with her ability to forgive me in my many shortcomings. Thank you Lord for my beauty, my lover, my confidant my bride.

I want to know what you think and why you think it. I kinda sit on the fence on this mostly leaning toward I really don’t care. I just find a lot of rubs with some of the arguments I hear against it, things about keeping marriage sacred and stuff like that (really with a 50% divorce rate I think we lost that a long time ago). Marriage is defined as the union between a man and a woman. While I agree that this definition should remain in the church I am not so sure it needs to in the government. I don’t think the church should marry a gay couple, since homosexuality is a sin but I don’t think it is a job of the church to force its moral doctrine on the state.

I don’t see it as a job of the state to deny someone who is living as a couple the rights of a couple just because they are the same sex. Feel free to say something contrary. I welcome ideas contrary to my own.

I’m tired.

This past week I’ve been putting myself under a lot of unnecessary stress. It’s like littlest problems become huge monsters ready to eat me alive. Anxiety disorder will do that to you. But I’m sick of it all. I’m tired of struggling with my demons. I’m tired of living in a world full of trouble and turmoil. I’m tired of all this fear and loathing. I’m tired and I want to go to bed.

It’s times like these when I think about Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all of you who are weary and loaded down with burdens, and I will give you rest.” What does this rest look and feel like? Sometimes I naively think it means God will take away all trials and pressures out of my life, but that’s not the case. In John 16:33, Jesus says, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

I have overcome the world.

For some reason I’m always forgetting this. For thirty-three years Jesus lived among mankind. He knows all about the trials, temptations, and troubles of life–even public execution and humiliation on the cross! He did all that to take the burden off of our shoulders. “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:30)

I once saw a church sign that said, “God doesn’t promise an easy ride, but a safe landing.” So that’s what I think this rest Jesus is referring to is: the peace of knowing that in the end, everything is going to be okay.

At one of our last summer youth meetings, I went up to our host and told him thanks for letting us come and over run his house. His response although quick and most likely something he has said multiple times has been poking me in the side since. He simply said, “It’s not my house, it’s God’s”. There is a lot of power in that statement for me. It’s so against everything I feel like the culture is teaching me. It’s all about me, I should do it all for me and put myself first and man that just comes naturally for me.

To see my possessions not as my own and not something I earn, but instead as a gift from God to further his glory and kingdom even when it isn’t convenient for me or what I want to spend my resources on is sobering. I also liked the way Mark Driscoll approached the idea of money “God doesn’t give you more money so you can make yourself more comfortable”. Thanks Q and Mark.

One of my favorite bloggers, Rachel Held Evans, is currently going through an ‘opinion fast’. She recently admitted she can be a little too opinionated sometimes. “Opinions are not inherently a bad thing, of course,” she writes, “but I get such a high from interjecting them into conversations that sometimes I talk over other people. Sometimes I don’t even listen to those with whom I disagree. Sometimes I don’t really care about learning or growing or building strong relationships, so long as everyone knows that I am right.” So for the past few days, instead of expressing her opinion, she has chosen to interview people about their views on Calvanism, conservatism, and gender rolls (which are usually her three biggest targets on her blog) without judging. She’s actually learned quite a bit!

I once wrote an article about the power of opinions. In the article I said that we “like to define ourselves by our beliefs. Whether they are political, religious or social, our beliefs shape our personality and view of the world. When someone challenges our beliefs, everything that defines who we are is threatened. That’s when the old fight-or-flight kicks in.”

Just tune in to either Fox News or MSNBC and you’ll see how we tear each other apart with our opinions. Is it really worth it? What if we took the time to really listen to one another? What could we learn?

In my article I wrote, “To really serve someone, you have to put yourself in their proverbial shoes. In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, ‘To the Jews I became like a Jew to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so as to win those under the law’ (9:20). We don’t have to agree with each other, but we can definitely understand each other better. The more we get to know each other, the better we can serve one another.”

As Rachel said, having an opinion isn’t bad in and of itself. But when it gets to the point where your opinion keeps you from serving and getting to know your brother, then maybe you should follow my friend’s example and fast for a while. You never know what you can learn.

So the last couple weeks have been somewhat rough at work and it seems that the adversity of life always seems to teach me a thing or two about God.  When I work lots of hours in a given week, reality seems to take on a odd, otherworldly sense where nothing makes sense.  Family relationships get strained from lack of time spent, sleep gets rare and your body starts acting funny with situations like waking up in the middle of the night with adreliline pumping.

The thing that I learned this past rough season of work is that God is to be worshipped for His constancy.  He doesn’t change like the humans nor does his love for his people falter.  This isn’t to say that stuff is going to go great for us.  Actually Israel was slaves in Egypt for 400 years (twice as long as the USA has been around) and then got to walk around the desert for 40 years after they were freed.  That sounds incredibly difficult to someone living in our easy culture.  But God was constant.  The evidence of this is all around in so much that we take for granted.  The sun comes up every morning.  Seasons come and go.  These are things that we just expect, but this expectation rests on God’s constancy and good grace in giving us even the sun every morning.

God be praised in good times and bad times.  He is constant.