What happens when we evaluate ourselves? This daily devotion looks at identifying what the evil thoughts for which we should be looking to improve.
Nuggets
- We need to make sure we reverence the Lord
- We need to make sure our image of ourselves is correct.
- We need to keep our speech honoring God.
To read devotions in the Redo for Godliness series, click the appropriate button below.
Devotions in the How Do We Live Godly Lives? series
This is another post that has topics that we’ve talked about frequently. So, I’m going to look what we’ve said before.
Don’t worry. The last time wasn’t a regurgitation of what we said before. It ended up being something totally new.
That is what learning is about – putting the building blocks together and making something out of it. Let’s see if we can do it again.
By the way, the dizziness has come and gone this week. It’s not as bad as it was the first of the week, but still worse than last week. I haven’t seen farmers in the fields around here, but I keep hoping that is what it is about, not the medicine.
“The third sort of directions are for the ordering of evil thoughts, when they do intrude; and” (Charnock, The Sinfulness and Cure of Thoughts)
“Check them at the first appearance. If they bear upon them a palpable mark of sin, bestow not upon them the honour of an examination” (Charnock, The Sinfulness and Cure of Thoughts)
It is great to say that we need to evaluate ourselves. But what really are we evaluating?
This is going to take more devotions than this one. We’re going to keep the application for the end.
Let's Put It into Context #1
We’ve been looking at Charnock’s sermon entitled The Sinfulness and Cure of Thoughts to show us how to cleanse, a.k.a. sanctify, our thought processes. Charnock has taught us
- that we cleanse our thoughts when we return to having a strong relationship with God. We can do that by studying the Scriptures, meditating on God, contemplating on His creation, and praising Him.
- that we focus our thoughts by being humble instead of prideful, following God instead of the worldview, working instead of being idle, and laboring for Him.
- that we overcome our evil thoughts by burying ourselves in Scripture, relying on His omniscience and judgment, guarding our hearts and lips, and evaluating ourselves.
Resource
Glossary
Here is a running list of what we’ve discussed previously.
Make Sure We Fear the Lord
“The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil …” (Prov. 8: 13 ESV)
We need to make sure we reverence the Lord
Some may think that fear of the Lord means dreading the punishment of sin. It isn’t. The fear of the Lord means awe, reverence and love, not terror.
The problem with that is we many do not hate the evil behind the sin. We just hate getting caught and punished. We only start to hate evil when we are forgiven.
We have to do more than just understand God’s ways. We have to treat sin the same way that God does.
That means we have to embrace God’s ways and abhor sin — even if it is our pet sin. Even if it is something we feel is small — like our thoughts.
What that takes is getting obedience down to the heart level — making it our character.
So, fear of the Lord can’t be just a mind thing. It has to be an action thing because it is a character thing. Fear of the Lord is what draws us to Him for salvation.
Remember, our character is our thoughts, feelings, and actions all added together. That is why our thoughts are so important and why we have to check them at first appearance.
We have to be so like God that we wonder who is doing the talking — God or us. We have to be the character of God. Outside of God, we never will be able to understand things.
To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.
Verse Commentary
Make Sure We Keep Our Pride in Check
“… Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate” (Prov. 8: 13 ESV)
We need to make sure our image of ourselves is correct.
When we think that being good enough by ourselves, that is not fearing God. That is arrogant pride. Pride is on the checklist we looked at in Living in Faith and Love to determine what is evil. Jesus told us that pride of life was one of the three things to avoid in this world.
No, pride doesn’t always have to be sinful. Unfortunately, too often we take it to the self-focused and self-elevating level. This high opinion of ourselves presents itself in our opinions, judgment, and plans.
Pride is a sin because it takes our focus off God. In fact, the root of the unwillingness to seek God is pride.
We can’t want to understand everything so that we can say we don’t need God since we have figured it out. That isn’t what God wants.
We shouldn’t love ourselves more than we love God. Oh, we can have some self-love. The self-love should not escalate into pride. That is another name for self-flattery. The self-love can be so strong within us that we start boasting about all of our good points. Then we start boasting of our possessions. But this self-love and self-flattery turns into self-interest. We forget about God and come to depend on ourselves. The self-interest can turn into covetousness.
You would think that, after the original sin and mankind’s fall from grace, we would see ourselves as we are. We not only don’t see the need for humility, but we also go the other way and bump up the pride.
Pride means that the picture that we have of ourselves is faulty. There are many things that can elevate our pride. But really, we can do nothing except that God has given us the knowledge and skills.
Pride comes when we forget God and worship ourselves instead. God wants us to be humble and submissive to Him. The submissive part means that we don’t sin and we do give Him the glory He deserves.
One thing Paul is saying here is we can’t think more highly of ourselves than we are. We have to acknowledge that, without a relationship with God, we are nothing.
It also usually means that the picture we have of others is also faulty. It does seem somewhat amazing that we do, in some instances, tie our pride to our comparison with others.
Pride, self-righteousness, assumed morality, ostentation, carnal wisdom, and deep-rooted prejudice are obstacles to a genuine confession. We can be proud of our worldly wisdom, which at times, makes us show off. It can also make us think we are better than others, causing us to judge them.
We think we understand things, increasing our pride. This causes us to deny God’s power and His control over us. The effect comes into play when our pride increases. We may not see that as what we would normally term evil, but it definitely is sin. If the disciples — who interacted with Jesus every day for three years – had trouble understanding who he was, how can we by reading a book?
This stops us from fulfilling the second greatest commandment: love others.
We not only are faulty in how we see ourselves, but we also do not see the standard of character correctly. God tells us several times in His Word to evaluate ourselves based on His standards.
We can get in trouble there because we take pride in what we see as our accomplishments. Instead of it coming out as satisfaction and tranquility, it comes out as pride.
This evaluation process, unfortunately, can butt heads with our pride.
Pride is an extreme on one side of the continuum. God calls us to be sober and even keeled – the other end of the continuum.
Pride is the exact opposite of what God wants. We think we don’t need God when God wants us to depend on Him. God doesn’t want us to be self-sufficient. He wants us to put our trust in Him that He will provide our needs.
We can’t let the evaluation process lead to pride or conceit. Instead, the process needs to humble us.
But pride isn’t the only extreme to which we go. Prideful people would probably be dissatisfied with the work God calls them to do because they feel it is beneath them Those with low self-esteem would be terrified with the work because they feel they are inadequate.
We see pride as the end result. This end result is dangerous to us and to others.
Worldview standards feed the chaos of the world because they are divisive. It is real easy to become arrogant and prideful when we buy into the worldview.
One way we submit to the worldview is when we try to keep up with our neighbors. They get a new car – we get a new car. They remodel their house — we remodel our house. It feeds our pride.
The bottom line is humility helps keep prideful thoughts at bay. God’s grace helps us transform from pride to humility.
Glossary
To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.
Make Sure We Keep Our Speech in Check
“… Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate” (Prov. 8: 13 ESV)
We need to keep our speech honoring God.
God wants us to show His grace to others. “… that it may give grace to those who hear” (Eph. 4: 29 ESV). This replaces our corrupt language, which is
- Profane, irreligious, or immodest discourses
- Lying and prideful
- Slanderous and defamatory language.
- “… compliance with the faults of others” (Jortin)
Resource
Gisborne told us exactly what was included in the term profanity. He wrote, “This sin comprehends every irreverent expression concerning the Deity, His titles, His attributes, His providence, His revelation, His judgments.”
Resource
Profanity focuses on our being irreverent to God.
We should make our conversations count. God wants us to use our conversation to tell others about Him, promote unity, and knit the family together. He wants us to tell others of the good He is doing in our lives.
We should use our words to build people up — not just give prideful, selfish discourses of ourselves. Instead, too many times our words tear down our witness.
To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.
Making the Connections
When we fear God and give honor to Him, we want to serve Him. The fear is all about the reverence and love. That leads us to doing the good works for which we were made.
But don’t take it too far. It is not a question of being good enough or being too bad. The question we will have to answer is have you admitted your sins, believed that Jesus is your Savior and Redeemer, confessed that God is your Sovereign God, and demonstrated that commitment by the way you lived your life?
God wants us to repent and change. Repenting and not changing is not a genuine commitment. We have to grow and produce to show evidence of our salvation.
One of the problems with not changing is we keep doing the evil conduct. Some may argue that the act itself isn’t evil. But if someone hasn’t made a true confession to God, they are still children of the devil.
Father God. We want to become more like You. We want to know where You want us to improve. Amen.
What do you think?
Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.
If you don’t understand something and would like further clarification, please contact me.
If you have not signed up for the email daily or weekly providing the link to the devotions and the newsletter, do so below.
If God has used this devotion to speak with you, consider sharing it on social media.