Naming and Shaming Our Pride for God’s Glory

Egos about, everywhere,

One is mine, I need to care,

God’s opportunity’s to own who we are,

Our fallen nature’s never away too far.

TOO often we see it in others, but not enough in ourselves. Our egos are the ending of us (and our relationships) so far as loving progress is concerned. When we allow God to intervene in us, we become so focused on repentance we have neither the time nor the inclination to judge.

Lord, highlight my ego in my relationships, and give me the courage to deal with it as only I can – please. AMEN.

Let’s go deeper...

Naming and shaming our pride – to pour contempt all over it – is the very opportunity, the space, God needs to take our relationships to another level.

We can only ever get the fullness of the other person before us when we give them the contrite fullness of us, ourselves.

If we won’t risk our egos – tossing them into the fire of hell where they belong – they won’t risk their egos. We must be willing and courageous to go with the leading of God and risk ‘our stuff’ in faith, and in the hope, that they will.

Stripping Back to God

Stripping back our pride – smashing the ego on the rocks of change – is getting us back to God. We do it in an instant. With no self-protection availed to ourselves, we obliterate that which is, has been, and always will be the relational barrier.

Stripping back to God is about being spiritually naked in the safest of hands – in the full assurance of confidence (as we tell ourselves – ‘I am safe’) – that this risk will be worth it. If it won’t work out right now, we must not get disheartened; we keep doing it in faith – God always rewards us, eventually, for striding in faith. And such a reward is abundantly and eternally worthwhile.

Stripping back to God is about getting away from the shadow mission – the centralising of part of our lives on what is unworthy, selfish or dark – and going into the cleansed territory of our purpose for God.

Our purpose – in broad terms – is to love our neighbours. We cannot do such a thing with egos enabled and operational. We must not just park our egos, but name them and shame them.

***

When we allow God to intervene in us, forgetting what is ‘wrong’ with them, we become so focused on repentance we have neither the time nor the inclination to judge. Then there is a relationship breakthrough; then there is the space needed to heal that which has been broken.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.