VIDEO Does Pride Go Before a Fall?

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

A team of researchers in Paisley, Scotland, decided to see if pride really does come before falling. They wanted to know if high levels of personal pride could predict increased risk of future falls. They studied more than six thousand adults who were sixty and over, and participants were asked “to what degree they felt proud in the past thirty days,” and they were also quizzed about their falls. Analysis of the results showed that the odds of falling were significantly lower for people with high levels of pride, which, the researchers said, disproved the biblical maxim.¹ People with a positive self-image typically have a better posture and head position and walk with a more positive gait.

Don’t worry. The results don’t contradict Scripture. The Lord surely wants us to have as good a posture, head position, and gait as possible. But He also judges those who are haughty, self-centered, boastful, and selfish. People who overinflate their own importance develop blurred vision, and the light of heaven is obscured by the blinders of self-sufficiency.

Hold your head high, but keep a humble heart.

Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than other people…It means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all. William Temple

1. https://www.stir.ac.uk/news/2017/12/pride-does-not-come-before-a-fall/.

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Verse of the Day – Proverbs 16:18 | Life Without Limbs

His Assuring Presence

My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. Exodus 33:14

I will never forget my first stay in the hospital. As a young boy of 7, I had contracted tuberculosis of the hip.

I had never spent the night away from home before, and the prospect of being hospitalized frightened me.

Our heavenly Father will be near us in every situation and in every difficulty we may face.

As my condition worsened, the doctors decided to try a medical procedure that would be extremely painful and thus require anesthesia. Dr.John made it easier for me, however, by permitting my father to stay with me in the operating room. As the sedative was about to be administered, I said, “Doctor, can I see my daddy just once more?” My father took my hand in his own and said, “Be a good boy, Henry. Everything is going to be all right. Just take three long, deep breaths and you’ll be asleep. I’ll be here by your side the whole time.”

I did what he said and came through the operation successfully. Knowing that my father would be there beside me all the time removed my fear and gave me peace. And when I awoke in the recovery room, he was still there.

So too, our heavenly Father will be near us in every situation and in every difficulty we may face. Just as He reassured Moses of His presence, we can be sure that He will be with us and give us rest.

O Thou, in whose presence my soul takes delight,
On whom in affliction I call,
My comfort by day and my song in the night,
My hope, my salvation, my all. —Swain

With God behind you,  you can face whatever is ahead of you.

Today’s Bible Reading — Exodus 33:12-17

12 Then Moses said to the Lord, “See, You say to me, ‘Bring up this people.’ But You have not let me know whom You will send with me. Yet You have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found grace in My sight.’

13 “Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people.”

14 And He said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

15 Then he said to Him, “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here.

16 “For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth.”

17 So the Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.”

Insight

God’s promise of His abiding presence to Israel is a blessing that we can know as Christians as well. In John 14:18, Jesus promises that we will never be abandoned. Why? Because of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of God’s child.

It Should Be An Unconditional Surrender

James 4:1-10

Sometimes we’re amazed by a believer’s perseverance and confidence in God’s promises. With such people, we often sense a spiritual abundance that many of us wish we had.  So, how do we get that? By following Jesus’ example and surrendering our life to God.

We may find it hard to submit to Jesus because we like to be in charge. This has been our problem since the beginning. Adam and Eve ignored God’s warning and did what they wanted, which ended in disaster. Like them, we at times prefer to ignore God’s wisdom.

Another reason that we hold back is fear. We think, Maybe I won’t like what He chooses for me—what if He asks me to give up something or do something I don’t want to do? Or perhaps we’re wary of others’ opinions. Another possibility is that we might let selfishness and pride make us reluctant to let God lead.

But by giving control to God, we actually get to live a life where blessings overflow (John 10:10). We’ll experience His love, which satisfies like no other. Our usefulness in His service will be maximized as we operate in the Spirit’s power. And obedience also brings glory to Him as well as blessings to us.

Surrender is the way to abundance. Won’t you humble yourself and give it all to Jesus?

It Is For Our Justification

“Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” (Romans 4:25)

We rejoice greatly in Christ’s resurrection, knowing that He has promised that “because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19). But it is also very important to realize and remember that if He had not been raised from the dead, we would still be lost sinners, separated eternally from God. He was raised, Paul reminds us, “for our justification.”

The immensity of the load of sin that Christ bore with Him on the cross is beyond comprehension. He had to “taste death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9), for He was the offering “for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), were it not for the infinite power, as well as the infinite love, of both the Father and the Son, such an infinite weight of sin would seem impossible to overcome, so Christ would die forever, and we would be lost forever. How could we ever know that we had been forgiven and that He had paid the awful price that would suffice for our salvation? How could we ever be acquitted and declared righteous before God?

That is exactly what the resurrection of Christ assures! “By the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” (Romans 5:18). His infinite righteousness has more than balanced the terrible weight of “the sin of the world,” and He was able to take it away (John 1:29). Although the wages of sin must be death, “the free gift is of many offences unto justification” (Romans 5:16).

This gift of total and eternal justification is free because of His love, but even a free gift must be accepted before it can be possessed. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). HMM

It Is Buried Under the Snow

And he did not many mighty works mere because of their unbelief.

—Matthew 13:58

 

How many blessed truths have gotten snowed under. People believe them, but they are just not being taught, that is all. I think of our experience this morning. Here was a man and his wife, a very fine intelligent couple from another city. They named the church to which they belonged, and I instantly said, “That is a fine church!” “Oh, yes,” they said, “but they don’t teach what we came over here for.” They came over because they were ill and wanted to be scripturally anointed for healing. So I got together two missionaries, two preachers, and an elder, and we anointed them and prayed for them. If you were to go to that church where they attend and say to the preacher, “Do you believe that the Lord answers prayer and heals the sick?” he would reply, “Sure, I do!” He believes it, but he doesn’t teach it, and what you don’t believe strongly enough to teach doesn’t do you any good.

It is the same with the fullness of the Holy Ghost. Evangelical Christianity believes it, but nobody experiences it. It lies under the snow, forgotten. I am praying that God may be able to melt away the ice from this blessed truth, and let it spring up again alive, that the Church and the people who hear may get some good out of it and not merely say “I believe” while it is buried under the snow of inactivity and nonattention.   HTB018-019

Lord, don’t let me be guilty of keeping the truth of the Holy Spirit’s ministry “buried under the snow.” Help me to both teach and live the active presence and controlling power of the Holy Spirit today. Amen.

 

The Knowing

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.

—Romans 8:16

 

I know what Charles Wesley meant when he wrote, “His Spirit answers to the blood,/ And tells me I am born of God!” No one had to come and tell me what he meant. “Those who are willing to do my will,” said Jesus in effect, “shall have a revelation in their own hearts. They shall have an inward illumination that tells them they are children of God.”

If a sinner goes to the altar and a worker with a marked New Testament argues him into the kingdom, the devil will meet him two blocks down the street and argue him out of it again. But if he has an inward illumination—that witness within—because the Spirit answers to the blood, you cannot argue with such a man….He will say, “But I know!”

A man like that is not bigoted or arrogant; he is just sure….This is normal Christianity. That is the way we should be. If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out. He will know. FBR030-031

If you are a friend to God, God will be an everlasting friend to you. Nothing shall separate you from His love. DTC080

 

It was Engraved on His Hands

Isaiah 49:16

A Russian citizen imprisoned by the Nazis during the German occupation of World War II watched his young wife brutalized and killed after soldiers snatched her newborn child from her arms and gave it to a youthful officer whose wife was barren.

The prisoner gazed for the last time on the tiny lips and wide, bewildered eyes of his only child. Fearful of the days ahead and what cruelties might erode his fragile mental powers, the prisoner did a startling thing. With his knife he carved the name of the child on his right hand. Never would he allow himself to forget the object of his love.

“I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands”

(Isaiah 49:16). The stirring statement of Isaiah presents one of the most astonishing pictures in all the Bible of God’s love for us. Those nail-scarred hands bear the marks of His caring, engraved with our names for time and eternity.

Such a bold cure was necessary for the deep wound mankind had sustained. The entrance of sin into the human heart had estranged us from our Creator, leaving us open for every sort of evil invention.

There may be times when the eventualities of life with their bitter qualities make us wonder if He has forgotten. The nation of Israel in Isaiah’s day must have wondered if their God had turned His back on them. “But I will not forget you,” God promised them and promises us.

Brigadier Josef Korbel was imprisoned by the despotic communist country of Czechoslovakia and subjected to unspeakable punishment. He tells of an occasion when he was tied to a barbed wire fence in the dead of winter and left for long hours because he dared to pass a bit of Scripture to a fellow inmate. In the moment of darkest despair, he testifies, he sensed a strange warmth. Looking up,

“I saw a pair of beautiful hands covering my own—hands which bore unmistakably the marks of nail prints.”

After the resurrection, Christ came suddenly into a room through no door at all—clad in His glorified body. But still He bore the nail prints in His hands. He will not forget us. Our names are engraved on His hands!

General Albert Orsborn penned the chorus as a memorial to this truth:

 

He cannot forget me, Though trials beset me.

Forever His promise shall stand.

He cannot forget me, Though trials beset me.

My name’s on the palm of His hand.

Marlene Chase, Pictures from the Word