Thots on Worship - Pride and Humility

Excerpts taken from "Times of Refreshing - Tom Kraeuter and other writers"

"Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." - Proverbs 16:18

Dear all,

I'm sure that in all our endeavours in life, we often face the struggle of pride and humility, especially when we put in so much effort and practice into the perfection of our craft. Sometimes even after attempting something that we have not done before and surprisingly, it turns out pretty good, we catch ourselves saying, "Hey, that wasn't that difficult. I pretty good at this!" Little did we know that we fallen so far short of God's standard of perfection. God uses the meek to shame the proud, and more than often we fall shamefully thinking what a cuckoo we had been.

This is apparently more evident for me serving as part of the worship team. Sometimes, we can have the tendancy to think that we did such a great worship service earlier, how cool was my guitar solo, or vocal solo and all that stuff. But hey, guess what! God could have done that solo way better than we did. When we start to think that way, we would be treading on sinking sand.

God spoke through prophet Isaiah, "I'm the Lord; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols" (Isaiah 42:8) God takes all glory and there is none for others.

In order for us to be lifted up, we have to be humbled. It varies differently from people to people. Some may be humbled to great lengths while others a little. It all depends on our standing in Christ. "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up." (James 4:10) In Matt Redman song "Heart Of Worship" that we sung last week, it also reminds us that it's not about us, but all about Jesus.

Jim Cymbala, a pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle said that if people left a meeting talking about what a wonderful sermon the preacher gave of how beautifully the singers sang, then the meeting has failed. But if people went home saying things like, 'Isn't God good? He met me tonight in such a wonderful way.' it was a good meeting. There was to be NO sharing of the stage with the Lord.

We definitely need that kind of attitude in the Church and also in our lives today. If we ever exhibit a little bit of prideful attitude, we are in danger of being labeled as a child of wicked heart. Let us avoid the destruction that brought Satan to Hell. Stay away from pride and choose to be humble in all that we do.

For His Glory,
Adriel