Fear of Facing Our Own Shortcomings

I keep a journal where I have become comfortable with being brutally honest with myself. I am also in the habit of going back and reading old entries in this journal which means my younger self gets the chance to be brutally honest with me right now. This happened recently when I came across one of my journal entries in which I wrote about my own pride and my own insecurities. What stood out as I read my own writings was how easy it was to turn the focus on the actions of others. I even wrote a blog post in which I talked about how Christians should deal with someone else’s pride. And while I believe what I wrote on that post to be true, it left out something very important. Sometimes we’re the one with the pride problem or with some other character flaw. And while it is true that our brothers and sisters in Christ should prayerfully and patiently guide us, at some point, when confronted with our own shortcomings, we have to choose to surrender ourselves to the Lord and to allow Him to work in us to get rid of the problem.

My original post was called “Pride or Termites: How Christians Respond to the Problem” in which I described how pride often is a mask covering the real problem of insecurity. I described how we can deal with this real problem in the lives of others instead of knocking them down for the pride that is only a symptom of something bigger. But even if we are prayerfully in full alignment with God, the simple fact is that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. Likewise, a brother/sister in Christ can help you see you have a problem but they can’t make YOU do anything about it.

Back when I wrote the termite post I was ready to admit my own pride but I was not ready to do anything about it. It was much easier to turn the focus towards someone else in the form of, “this is what THEY should do,” with the “THEY” being the rest of the church. I should have been asking myself and writing about what I should do. I write this now because I believe this should be a routine aspect of the Chrisitian walk and I am being brutally honest with myself again. Instead of looking at others, Chistians (with an emphasis on me this time) should be talking about what we should do. What should I do when God reveals an area of pride in my own heart? It all starts with yielding to God and being the person He has created me to be.