"If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14
This week God has been teaching me a lot about humility. He opened my eyes to problems I did not even know existed and I just found myself being humbled this week. Sometimes God has to open our eyes like this because we do not even know what is going on.
Maybe you are like this: It's finals week and you have put off studying until now. The only thing on your mind right now is figuring out how you are going to survive the 3 finals you have in 2 days. You are consumed with the huge problem in front of you at the moment, but as you are distracted, your dirty laundry is pilling up and becoming a mountain in the corner. Or maybe you are like this: your email is just pilling and pilling up full of things you need to delete, but you do not notice that this needs to be taken care of. In both of these cases there are things going on that you do not realize you need to deal with.
Sometimes we get stagnant about issues in our lives, maybe because we are so busy dealing with something else or we just do not see that anything is wrong. Being stagnant, which is not growing in Christ, not taking care of the sin in our lives and growing in our walk with God is, dangerous. Why do people say to stay away from stagnant water? Because as it sits it becomes a breeding ground for disease which could make us terribly ill. Well if we become like stagnant water, not doing anything to grow, not taking care of the sin in our life, we are going to become sick spiritually!
In my life I was not growing, I was not taking care of some sin in my heart, for two reasons: first I was focused on something else, and then once that became taken care of, I did not see any other issues. But God prompted me a week ago to ask Him to open my eyes. As I was reading in a book about conquering sexual sins, a phrase stood out to me. The author was talking about how he needed to ask God if there was anything in his life that he needed to change and work on. That convicted me and I realized I needed to do the same thing. And God answered that prayer. He opened my eyes to show me that there were a lot of other things going on in my heart that I was not dealing with. There were a lot of things that were hindering my walk with God. My dirty laundry was pilling and I was to busy to see that. My inbox had 5000 messages that I did not realize I needed to clean out. This week God showed me that I needed to take care of the bitterness and anger in my heart, my immodesty, and my selfishness.
Opening my eyes was hard to do. It hurt like crazy seeing problems in areas that I thought I had mastered. I thought I was the queen of modesty. Bitterness? No! I am the sweetest, most loving girl in the world! That is not true though. We must be careful not to exalt ourselves. In Matthew 23:12 it is written:
"Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted"
When you think you are alright, God will come in and shake things up and show you that you have got some work to do. And when you are humbled, God gives you the tools to grow and the best thing is that He has so much grace to give as well.
Humility is a hard thing, but it is a good thing and a necessary thing. I encourage you to take some time every once and a while to sit down with God and ask Him to open you eyes and show you what you need to work on in your life and what areas you need to grow in.
"Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." James 4:10
Love you all! Have a great week!
Gabby
