"Relying On God Has To Begin All Over Again Every Day..."

"Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done..." C.S. Lewis, A Letter to Mrs. L.
The twin evils of pride and selfishness are an epidemic common to all mankind that is impossible to eradicate.  We must daily take our medicine to keep them in check.  There is only one cure and it is submission to the Lordship of Christ.  It is to be willing to daily take up our cross and to follow Him.  It requires constant vigilance; sometimes we even have to do it more than daily.  We cannot even take pleasure in having licked it because once we begin to pat ourselves on the back, we are back to square one. 


  Fighting pride does not involve degrading ourselves.  Rather, it is simply a realization of our complete and utter dependence on God.  It is an acknowledgment that all that is good in my life has come from Him. It is knowing that He is the source of everything in my life, even my next breath.


Pride, the refusal to submit to God, is the first sin and the most deadly sin.  It is not to be trifled with.  What are the biggest sources of pride in your life?  

On The Corruption Of Even Noble Acts

Thoughts undertaken for God's sake...are continued as if they are an end in themselves, and then as if our pleasure in thinking were the end, and finally as if our price or celebrity were the end."  C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.

How true this is!  Given our depravity, virtually every noble action will, in the end, be corrupted.  For example, reading my Bible daily is a good practice.  As C.S. Lewis notes, however, if I am not careful, my daily Bible reading will become an end in and of itself.  In other words, I will read my Bible for its own sake, rather than to hear from God.  I will begin to find pleasure, not in hearing from God, but in studying the Bible.  Then as my knowledge increases, it will become a source of pride.  The distinction is subtle, but important.  The activity of reading one's Bible is indeed a noble activity. Yet, it is so easy for the noble activity to become corrupted because we have such a tendency towards aggrandizement.

The activity need not be reading your Bible every day. Virtually every good deed can be corrupted by this tendency.  Perhaps it is visiting the old or sick.  Am I visiting them because I want to show love towards them? Or am I visiting them because of how it makes me feel?  Am I giving that gift because I truly want to help the child in Haiti?  Or am I giving that gift because it absolves some guilt?  Do I pray in public because I have to, or do I do it so others will hear my beautiful prayer?

Pride is the first and deadliest sin. Indeed, in some form, all sin is pride. It is wanting what I want and not what God wants. It is putting myself on the throne of my life, instead of God.

Pride is valuing self more than we should.  We are all valuable, but I am not more valuable than you and you are not more valuable than me.  Any value that we have is because of Christ and His workings in our life.

There is no easy pill to rid oneself of pride.  It requires constant vigilance because of its tendency to raise its ugly head.  It will even raise its head in so-called "noble acts."