Apples of gold

I was on the phone with Tina and told her about a recent deflating epiphany of my pridefulness. To her credit, Tina did not deny my reality. She suggested I simply confess the thing and get on with it.

She spoke something like this: When we constantly struggle with our own self-evaluation, always focusing on ourselves, we never find anything good in us; it always leads to discouragement. If Satan can't get us to indulge in adultery, theft, or unbelief, he will get us to obsess about our own unworthiness. That will effectively derail our service to God. Constant moaning about our weakness is the subtlest form of pride.

The Apostle Paul didn't scrutinize his motives obsessively. He examined himself regularly to see if his actions proceeded from faith (2 Corinthians 13:5), but he refrained from Freudian introspection:

"… It is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me" (1 Corinthians 4:2-4).

It is God's job to judge. It is our job to obey. If I am off base in a certain matter, He will reveal that to me, as long as I am seeking hard to live up to what He already showed me (Philippians 3:14-16).

So should I deal with impure motives when I detect them? Certainly. And repent of them right quickly. There is a huge difference between this and morbid inwardness. I will rely on God, the searcher of hearts, to bring me to conviction of things in me that are not pleasing-as I am going along in His service. I will seek His face daily so that we will have the mutual abiding within which this happens. But God says to reckon myself no longer as a slave to sin (Romans 6:11), so I will embrace the new identity He tells me to take-heir of God and capable of "reigning in life" (Romans 5:21).

This is what Tina told me on the phone, and it was a Spirit-given "word of knowledge" (1 Corinthians 12:8) for the occasion. She could have said a thousand other things and none would have been better.

"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver" (Proverbs 25:11).