Awe and Humility

Though I wrestle with it, and despise it, I find that I struggle with arrogance every day. It is not the type of puffed up arrogance that is easily noticed by others, rather it is the subtler kind that is detected and confronted by my relationship with Jesus alone. And by subtler I don't mean better because the more I understand it the more I realize that it is the very thing that often stands between me and my King. It is the voice or subtler still the feeling that betrays a belief that "I'm pretty good." That belief can not be taken lightly for it tempts us to fall into religious rigor rather than authentic relationship. It is the thing that can keep us from turning to God altogether. The thing that can keep us from drawing close to him once we are his. The thing that can keep us trapped in mediocrity believing that we know best. The thing that keeps us from fully understanding the greatness and goodness of God. It is the thing that keeps our hearts from beating as one with his as Jesus's did. There is no rationalizing or minimizing its ugliness. More days than not it is the thing I stand before my Heavenly Father guilty of and in need of confessing. The struggle to defeat this belief reminds me of Job. Though Job was a man who sought to please the Lord and as scripture says was "upright before him" (Job 1:1), he was not perfect nor was his response to his trials. In Job chapter 2 it says "In all this he did not sin with his mouth", but it does not mention his heart. I do not believe that the events in Job's life were punishment for sin as some of his friends suggest and God himself denounces in his reply to Job. I do think however, that there is a sin of the heart that is implied in the Lord's response to Job which is that Job did not fully understand the greatness of God or his own smallness but he believed that he did. After the Lord answered Job, Job confessed this, "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know." Too often my belief that I'm pretty good causes misplaced pride and even faith in my understanding of things. However, when I am faced as Job was with the greatness of God there is no room for foolish arrogance. When I think on all that the Lord has created and I hear the words he spoke to Job, I am moved to the same response as Job. Here is some of what the Lord spoke to Job. I pray it moves each of us to living out each day in awe and humility realizing that our understanding of this world and of God himself is limited and that all we have is a gift.

Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements- surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?

On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,

when the morning stars sang together

and all the sons of God shouted for Joy?

Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the whom,

when I made clouds its garment

and thick darkness its swaddling band,

and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors,

and said, 'Thus far shall you come, and no further,

and here shall your proud waves be stayed?"...

Have you entered into the springs of the sea,

or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Have the gates of death been revelaed to you,

or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

Have you comprehanded the expanse of the Earth?

Declare, if you know all of this."

(portions of Job 38)