"For His Name Sake" Psalms 23:3

Oh Pride....The funny thing about pride is that I get sucked into the idea that I'm like the opposite of prideful then I boast about being humble! Oh the irony of being a human with no idea what they are doing! My devotional the other day really put things in perspective for me as I faced my struggle with pride, no matter how tiny I feel the problem is, it is none the less a struggle.

Max Lucado explained that no only are we just tools that God uses to do His will, He himself should receive all the Glory. I think this is a very serious problem with Christians today and being humble enough to give God the glory when we do something amazing. Even the most humble person has a slight moment of arrogance and thinks "Hey, what about me?!" Lucado then bears the question, "Does a scalpel have a smug look after a successful transplant? No, it is only a tool, and we are the same and ultimately God gets the glory."

When I was young in my faith I was not sure why God needed an ego boost all the time. Did he really need to feel that important? However, I am come to find that it isn't God that has the ego problem, it US! He takes on the things that we cannot handle and we definitely cannot handle being given all the glory. We struggle being humble most of the day, we would never handle being given all the glory for the things that we do! We'd be arrogant and completely selfish, more so than ever before!

As Christians we even fall into being prideful in our prayers. We pray things like "Thank you Lord for blessing me and not putting me on welfare like that man on the street corner." One thing we definitely aren't is we aren't real with ourselves and we aren't being real with God. Humility is the only way we can mature as spiritual beings. We must die to ourselves and understand that although we are blessed, we are still filthy rags before the Lord and we all fall short of His glory! Instead our prayer should be, "God have mercy on me, a sinner, like my brother on welfare-I am dependent upon your grace."

Max Lucado put it best when he said, "The Maker of the stars would rather die for you than live without you. So if you need to brag, brag about that, and check your chin at the door!"

Let us remember to not give ourselves the glory for we cannot handle nor do we deserve it. "Don't praise yourself. Let someone else do it for you." (Proverbs 27:2)