Humility:True Greatness-5
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
Chapter 5 As Each Day Begins
Study and overview by Marc
Mahaney wants to show us in this chapter the importance of spiritual disciplines and how they help us to depend on God and defeat pride.
The following has been spurred on by what I read, but this was not Mahaney's main thrust.
In many circles that I have been in, the word spiritual disciplines always evokes the word legalism. I do not remember who said it, but I like the illustration of a guardrail that is put up on a curvy mountain road. It is there to help you, not to hurt you. So many folks scream legalism because they don't want to be disciplined or don't know how to be. To be clear, legalism is when we attempt to reach God through the law in which we will never be able to do. There are many churches and ministries that will make you feel like you must follow certain disciplines to be a Christian. That is wrong and not good. The disciplines are there to help us to know God more and by knowing Him more we will love Him and others more. When we love God and others more we will be chopping away at our pride.
If you are involved in a church or ministry and you think folks are being legalistic you just need to ask some questions. Do you think these things will save me in and of themselves? Will you still love me and help me if I am weak in the disciplines? You may find that the church or ministry is relying on the law and good works, if so, get out. But, you may also find that you are like many of us and you are just not disciplined and don't want any type of structure to change your day. If this is the case, then we need to strive to be disciplined. I am not, but I do want to be. It has been challenging for me to continue the discipline of blogging every day for a month. This is not a main spiritual discipline, but it has helped me to think on God and reevaluate the way I live with God and others.
C.J. gives us great advice on how to begin our mornings and live through out the day. He goes through different applications that we can follow, but he is quick to say that this is not a perfect list or even the exact list that each of his readers will have. What can I change in my day to help me reflect more on the Cross, the Word and my God?
"So I advocate using your morning moments wisely, letting the light of God's grace shine in to brighten your entire day. I'm convinced that your purposeful application of these daily morning habits--acknowledging your need for God; expressing your gratitude to God practicing spiritual disciplines, seizing your commute time for spiritual benefit; casting your cares upon Him; and above all, reflecting on the wonder of the cross of Christ--are the most effective things you can do to more deeply experience the promise and the pleasures of humility."
Humility:True Greatness-4
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
Chapter 4 Greatness Demonstrated
Study and overview by Marc
"Here's an essential truth: To learn true humility, we need more than a
redefinition of greatness; we need even more then Jesus' personal example of
humble service. What we need is His death.""For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give
his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45)
In this chapter we see again that all of the Christian life is possible only by the sacrifice of Jesus. We do not come to Jesus by our good deeds or by our own anything, it is by His grace that we haved been saved. Nor do we achieve humility or any other godly virture on our own. We need Jesus. We need His provision and debt paying sacrifice to live and to serve. Do I forget Jesus in my efforts to make Him known?
"Donald English expresses the point this way:"At the source of all
Christian service in the world is the crucified and risen Lord who died to
liberate us into such service."
"Ultimately our Christian service exists only to draw attention to this
source-our crucified and risen Lord who gave Himself as a ransom for us
all."
C.J. contiunes on to go deeper into the incomparable sacrifice of Jesus and it's nessesity for us to have life and to live an awesome life of faith.
Jesus has died for our sins, and our sins are rooted in pride, pride keeps us from depending on God. Depending on God for all of life is humilitly. Do I live a cross centered life?
Humility:True Greatness-3
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
Chapter 3 Greatness Redefined
Study and overview by Marc
We have some desires for greatness and in that pursuit God is either in it or not. I want to be a great husband, dad, son, brother, uncle, friend, missionary, teacher, athlete, video game player, leader...and the list goes on and on. It is not wrong to want to be great at these things, I think God desires for us to be great at most of these more than we do. C.J. shows us that our definition for greatness must be filtered through the bible.
We can see the disciples arguing with one another about who is greatest among themselves and Jesus lovingly sets them straight.
"If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all." (Mark 9:35)
Once again this verse makes me review my personal life and my public ministry. Do I put others first? Am I convinced that Jesus' way of living and leading is best or do I exert my "expertise" over him saying that I know better? Do I seek greatness for my name's sake or for God's, and the good of others? Will I depend on Jesus' ways and trust Him in my desire to be great for Him? I want to be fully involved and successful in all my responsibilities. I do not want to meander through life like a little stream being directed by every little obstacle in the way, I want to be a full river of intentional living. In this, I do believe God is honored, but only when
he is the goal, supplier, and sustainer.
I have seen leadership the way Jesus desires and I have seen horrible leadership. We can have the right words and right actions and all along not be a servant of all. It is a great picture, I serve those in my care and they will be supplied and equipped to do what they need to do. The best place I saw this was in college. My discipleship leader Brad Bedingfield made sure that I was walking with God and thinking about others. I felt loved and looked out for and did the same in the lives of a few college guys around me. They, in turn, did the same thing in the lives of others. I would love to see how this chain of serving each other has led to the salvation of many and equipping of the saints. Our goal was not numbers, although it felt like that at times, it was disciplining college students for God's glory. It was a simple method, a biblical one too. When our goal is great programs that will get or keep people involved, we can become focused on the programs and not people. We are to serve people, not programs. We do programs, but not at the expense of the great commission. What if numbers are low but passion, evangelism, worship and servanthood is high? I think these factors can lead to lasting impact and life change. What is at the heart of those of us that lead, will we humbly trust in Jesus' way of being great and having a lasting ministry, family, or business?
I think a good way to know if you are serving people is to ask yourself about the people in your care. How are they? How can I make their lives better? How can I love them more? How can I help them to fight sin? What do they like and not like? Ask questions. If you don't know, then you are not leading...you are just meandering.
We need to serve those around us, not to be great, but to see greatness. Let's not miss out by being filled with ourselves.
Humility:True Greatness-2
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
Chapter 2 the Perils of Pride
Study and overview by Marc
Just like the study on The Great Work of the Gospel I will be writing down many of the things that I read in Humility: True Greatness and comment on it and at times go on my own thinking path. Doing it like this helps me to have a place to look in the future when I want to look back over what I read. So I continue with chapter 2.
The main thought for this chapter is to establish biblically that God hates pride. I agree with C.J. that many, including me, do no not have a keen awareness and conviction of our pride. We can see when we are being that way most of the time, but we are not grieved over it. Just today I had three adventures that made me think of my pride...thankfully due to thinking on this topic and asking God to help me I was able to see my pride start to sneak up and in.
Adventure One:
Sherry's dad, sister, Sherry and I went out in the bay today in St. George Island. The waves were pretty rough, so much so that we were not able to fish. This did not bother me because I don't really love fishing anyway, I just wanted to hang out. It was when we were coming back in after deciding that we would not be able to fish, we were waiting for my brother-in-law to come help get the truck and help us put the boat on the trailer that I saw pride doing its own wave on my heart. You see, as we were waiting we had to go back out and in doing so we were hitting waves coming at us and we were getting soaked. The first day we did this I liked it. I was just tired of it. In my mind I was saying, "Why do we need to go out this far, why can't we just circle, why can't we just go ahead and get the boat ready for the trailer....on and on...and then, I remembered that God gives grace to the humble. I wanted to have peace and not strife so I simply asked God to help me get my attitude right...and He did. I was able to say to myself that I don't really know anything about boating and that my father-in-law did along with realizing that I am just getting wet...it's all good. I felt relief immediately. I know that God was honored and I didn't say anything stupid and hurt anybody's feelings. So, yes, although it was secret pride, it was still pride.
Adventure 2:
Simply put, the kite I was flying for the girls...Sherry thinks it is just for me...maybe so but anyways...I had put two kite strings together and was flying it high on the beach. As I almost had half of the string back on the spool..IT SLIPPED!!! AHHHH...I threw this Humility book down and ran...but not fast enough...two of my nieces were still running down the beach after it when it was well out to sea! I was supposed to be a kite flying expert, I was doing a great feat of extra kite string additions but I let it slip. How could I do it! I feel sorry for the care bears that are adrift off the coast of Mexico now in shark infested waters. Pride had some play in my heart with that. Yes, it was a very small thing, but I still had some pride.
Aventure 3:
About 6 hours after I let the kite slip I saw a stingray!!! right at my feet in the shallow waves. I did not scream or run to fast, but I made my way to shore quickly telling some passer-bys what I just saw. The man of the group said, "Let's see". So we went back out...not sure if this was pride or just an exciting stupid thing to do. As we were looking he said, "I can't see it, oh wait!..no that's just shadows and reflections in the water. We looked a little more and he left. I stayed and faced the possible truth all alone...I may have seen a big shadow and reflection that looked like a stingray...yea...I probably did...no, surely I know what one looks like...so the battle went on...it was very funny to me but I felt a little embarrassed. I think the man knew and was being gracious. Why did I feel a little embarrassed? Not too much so, but a little. Maybe it is because I have seen too many specials on sea creatures and by default should be an expert. Well, it was an easy mistake, but pride was present.
Pride is lurking everywhere to fuel us into more and more sin of self exaltation.
"The sad fact is that none of us are immune to the logic-defying, blinding effects of pride. Though it shows up in different forms and to differing degrees, it infects us all. The real issue here is not if pride exists in your heart; it's where pride exists and how pride is being expressed in your life. Scripture shows us that pride is strongly and dangerously rooted in all our lives, far more than most of us care to admit or even think about."
I like this, although I hate the truth of it..."its not if pride exists in your heart; it's where...."
"John Stott has clearly thought about this and wrote the following: "At every stage of our Christian development and in every sphere of our Christian discipleship, pride is the greatest enemy and humility our greatest friend."
We see in Isaiah 14:13 that pride was Satan's motivation in his rebellion.
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
Isaiah 14:13
C.J. tells us why God hates pride with passion:
"Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him."
I love his definition here. Humility in so many circles only gets talked about in terms of behaviour, not faith and dependence.
"There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes..."
Proverbs 6:16-17
"The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate."
Proverbs 8:13
"Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished."
Proverbs 16:5
"You and I hate nothing to the degree that God hates pride. His hatred for pride is pure, and His hatred is holy. John Calvin wrote, "God cannot bear with seeing his glory appropriated by the creature in even the smallest degree, so intolerable to him is the sacrilegious arrogance of those who, by praising themselves, obscure his glory as far as they can."
Am I "obscuring his glory as far as (I) can?" Why would I do that?!! Why do I do that?!!
"Pride also undermines unity and can ultimately divide a church. Show me a church where there's division, where there's quarreling, and I'll show you a church where there's pride."
C.J. says that when he sees his pride he confesses to God, "I was contending for supremacy with You."
We must see that God hates pride and that pride is saying to God that we know better, our ways are greater. Pride is inward and outward. I think that pride is not given much attention by many of us. I think we have explained and defended pride away justifying ourselves.
