Two Helpful Sayings

When I was a kid I used to ride my bike to and from school.  On my ride back from school there was this hill that I dreaded because it was so massive. It was near impossible to ride up even on the lightest gear. It was in my mind unscalable.

I often go back to the house where I grew up and I’m always taken aback by how small that hill actually is. What seemed so big to me as a kid was in reality not very large at all. 

The difference of course was perspective - when I was small I thought everything was big but now that I’ve grown up things don’t look the same.

I’ve noticed this to be true in my life about the seemingly giant hills of “Jealousy” and “Pride”.

Jealousy and Pride are marked by Scripture as real killers of the inner man. They have the ability to take our eyes off of God and put them on ourselves. And can even be behind us grieving Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30-32).

I’ve found a phrase that is bathed in Biblical understanding to be very helpful for me in doing battle against jealousy. The phrase is this:

When we see a brother or sister in the Lord begin to walk in an Anointing or experience a Blessing from the Lord we should consider that it was God who gave it to them and celebrate that He did this. We should then remember that the same God who did this thing for them is willing and able to do it for us and to see their Blessing as a testimony that we can use to build up our own faith that God will do the same thing for us.

This phrase completely changed my understanding of how I processed other people’s breakthroughs and successes. Jealousy only sees the person who has something that you want but when we understand that we have a Heavenly Father who has unlimited resources we begin to see the God who gave the blessing to that person. Their victory becomes my testimony and I approach the same God who did it for them now with a heightened faith that He will do it for me.  With this perspective we not only celebrate with them but seek to learn from them so that we can receive the same thing.

In a similar way pride will delude and drain the life out of your soul. It will cut you off from that which God wants to bring into your life and is itself a deception because it comes from a place where you think you are like God in that you know everything. An understanding that is helping me to combat pride in my heart comes from a reflection on Matthew 11:25-26 and can be condensed in the below phrase:

God likes to hide. He particularly delights in concealing things you long for within the words and lives of people you don’t think you should listen to. Whether they are younger believers or come from a different stream than us God will often withhold revealing something to us directly or even through our favorite Bible teachers and will instead put it on the mouths of babes. Thus every person you meet  may have on their lips the very thing that you need to get to the place you desire in the Lord.

These two sayings have been helpful for me and I pray that they would be helpful for you.