Pride

God has been challenging me about my pride over the last few weeks. As I visited a nearby church one Sunday I listened as the choir sang a hymn accompanied by the organ. While I was listening I thought about the contrast between this old tradition and the new one of having a band. The thought was that most modern churches would replace the choir with a performance by the band and singers.

As I watched the choir, I noticed that they were not performing, they were giving a message of encouragement to the congregation. It was there in the hymn that they decide on and the way that they sang. They were not looking for praise from us, the congregation, even though they were thanked and rightly so but they were carrying out a ministry for their Lord. They could have been in an empty church and I’m sure that they would have sung in exactly the same way.

Also as I listened, God asked me to listen to see if I could hear a dominate voice. I couldn’t the choir sang as a team, they worked to together and delivered a message of encouragement.

So, what does this have to do with my pride. It’s about where I seek my praise from. I was reminded about when I started to write. I wouldn’t let my name be placed on the articles because I wanted people to hear God speaking, not me. One of the possible pit falls of trying to market your own material and in the world of self-publishing you have to do that yourself is this issue of pride.

The other lesson God wanted to remind me of, one that He tried to teach me many years ago, is that He has many hands, mouths and feet at His disposal and He wants to use them all. I am not a one-man band. I too, have to be just one voice in among the thousands of those that God has as part of His Choir to spread His word around the world.

The question I must keep asking myself is “where do I want the praise to come from, Man or God”? My first response would be God of course, no self-respecting Christian wants anything less but in my heart, deep down, am I really true to that response.

How do I test this? Am I putting on a performance or am I truly just trying to encourage others to keep going. If I really want to get the praise from God than I must be prepared to let God work without my knowing what He is doing and remember that I am only one person in a great big sea of people that God can use. It doesn’t matter if I am giving help, money or encouragement I need to remember: “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” Matthew 6:3.