Pride – Page 5 – The Nexus

Digging in Deeper: 1 Samuel 15:9, 13

September 19, 2018September 18, 2018Leave a comment

“But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction. . . .And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, ‘Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.'”‬‬ (ESV – Read the chapter)

What were God’s instructions to Saul? He was to destroy everything when he attacked the Amalekites. Everything is a hard word to misinterpret. In pretty much every occasion it means…everything. It doesn’t leave anything out. Now, perhaps it can be used hyperbolically, but that wasn’t how God used it in His instructions to Saul. He meant everything. And Saul didn’t obey. Read the rest…

How Not to Comfort the Hurting

August 20, 2018August 16, 2018Leave a comment

In part two of our series, Grace in Hard Times, we take a look at the conversation among Job and his friends as they wrestle with the awful tragedies that have befallen him. Their attempts at comforting gradually transform into attempts at condemning him when he won’t play ball with their notions of how the world works. Along the way, we learn an important lesson on how to approach getting our minds around the hard times we face. Keep reading to find out what it is.

How Not to Comfort the Hurting

Have you ever been sure you were right…until you learned you weren’t? Tell me if you’ve been here before. One day we were getting ready to go to the pool and I had asked Noah to go to the garage to get something for us to take. We weren’t planning on making it a long trip and so to the boys’ disappointment we pretty severely limited the number of toys they were going to be able to take. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Psalm 138:6

March 7, 2018March 7, 2018Leave a comment

“For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar.” (ESV – Read the chapter)

God wants to be close to us. There is no one so low who is yet seeking God to whom He is not as close as their next breath. Although He is the high and exalted God, yet He is near to us. He is transcendent, yes, but He is also immanent. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: 2 Chronicles 26:16

September 15, 2017September 12, 2017Leave a comment

“But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the Lord his God and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.” (ESV – Read the chapter)

Uzziah’s punishment can seem awfully big in light of his apparent offense. I mean, he burned a bit of incense in the Temple. Why should that have drawn a punishment of leprosy? But, the light external offense was only a symptom of the much more dangerous internal issue. As faithful as he had been throughout his reign as king, he eventually started to see himself as the source of that success. Once he did this, his downfall was nigh. <!–more Read the rest…–>

This poses a stern reminder for all of us. The perils of success are great. We should run after it with all we have, but if we begin worshiping it as our god, it will lead to our doom. We never escape the necessity of being wary of this temptation. Pride, or a belief that we are sufficient in and of ourselves for, really, anything, will always eventually lead to our undoing, and not only ours, but often for all the people who have attached themselves to our wagon as well. This is never pretty. Instead, let us always remember who is God and remain humbly reliant on Him; constantly aware that apart from Him we are nothing.