When God Breaks You

This post by Mike Adams was originally published on his blog The Accomplished Sinner. 

I had made theology my pursuit, my goal, my aim, my identity. And I was pretty good at it too. I could go toe to toe with the best and I was proud of that. Don’t get me wrong. Good theology is necessary. But theology apart from a heart captured by the gospel is reduced to dangerous information. It’s ammunition to win an argument. It’s fodder for a blog. It’s food for one’s pride. Theology not rooted in grace and removed from the gospel makes us hard, indifferent, proud, cold, and right all the time.

Something else that became my identity was my ministry. In almost 40 years in the faith, I had been on the pastoral team of several different churches and my identity was wrapped up in being a pastor. I became proud of the fact that I was a pastor. Proud to be a servant. Go figure!

Then one day, the structure I had built my idols on began to collapse. The building fell with me still in it and everything crumbled in the ashes. Destroyed. Brought to nothing. And all I could do was watch it tumble. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what was going on, but I could feel my heart changing.

That collapse was almost 5 years ago. I see more clearly now what I couldn’t see then. The Holy Spirit was being merciful to me as He began to show me what had slowly happened to me over the years; who I had become. It was an intervention. A badly needed rescue. I had become hard, indifferent, proud, cold, and… right all the time. My identity was wrapped up in me and my theology and ministry, not Jesus. Grace and the gospel had become theological categories to be mastered, taught, and filed away. My spiritual growth and progress in the faith (whatever that means!) was independent of Jesus and the center of my world. I only gave Him lip service. My assurance was up and down like a roller coaster ride because my eyes were fixed on my performance and my own spiritual navel.

Sometimes God breaks our legs and once we’re immobilized, He begins His gentle work of rebuilding, restoring, and restoration. He rebuilds and renews our hearts with His unending grace. He takes damaged goods and makes all things new. He takes us in directions we never saw coming and would never have imagined. But most of all, He keeps loving us! Even in our foolishness He is full of rich mercy and grace.

What is Pride and Humility.

Found this today reading a John Piper sermon on 1 Peter 5:5-7 here.

I'll try to answer that with ten biblical observations about pride. Humility is the opposite.




1. Pride Is Self-Satisfaction

God says to Israel in Hosea 13:4–6, I have been the Lord your God since the land of Egypt . . . 5 I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of drought. 6 As they had their pasture, they became satisfied, and being satisfied, their heart became proud; therefore, they forgot Me. (Cf. Jeremiah 49:4.)

2. Pride Is Self-Sufficiency and Self-Reliance

Moses warns the people of God in Deuteronomy 8:11–17 about what will happen when theyhave rest in the promised land: Beware . . . 12 lest, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply . . . 14 then your heart becomes proud, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt . . . [and you] 17 say in your heart, "My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth."  God's goodness is turned into self-sufficiency.

3. Pride Considers Itself Above Instruction

In Jeremiah 13:9–10 God says to the people of Judah, I will destroy the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. 10 This wicked people, who refuse to listen to My words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts. Pride stubbornly refuses to be taught the way of God, and makes its own wishes the measure of truth.

4. Pride Is Insubordinate

Psalm 119:21 says, Thou dost rebuke the arrogant, the cursed who wander from Thy commandments. When the commandments of God are spoken, pride turns away and will not submit. It rejects the right and authority of God to command.

5. Pride Takes Credit for What God Alone Does

One of the most vivid illustrations of this is the case of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.[Nebuchadnezzar said], "Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?" 31 Whilethe word was in the king's mouth, a voice came from heaven, saying, "King Nebuchadnezzar . . . sovereignty has been removed from you . . . 32 until you recognize that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind, and bestows it on whomever He wishes." (Daniel 4:30–32)Then, after his season of humiliation grazing in the fields like and ox, Nebuchadnezzar isrestored and confesses, Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise, exalt, and honor the King of heaven, for all His works are true and His ways just, and He is able to humble those who walk in pride. (Daniel 4:37; cf. Isaiah 10:12)

6. Pride Exults in Being Made Much Of

Jesus indicted the religious leaders in Jerusalem: And they love the place of honor at banquets, and the chief seats in the synagogues, 7 and respectful greetings in the market places, and being called by men, Rabbi. (Matthew 23:6)

7. Pride Aspires to the Place of God

In our family devotions we just read the story of Herod's pride in Acts 12: And on an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an address to them. 22 And the people kept crying out, "The voice of a god and not of a man!" 23 And immediately an angel of the Lord truck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died. (Acts 12:21–23; cf. Isaiah 14:12–14)

8. Pride Opposes the Very Existence of God

Psalm 10:4: The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek [God]. All histhoughts are, "There is no God." Pride knows that the simplest solution for its own survival would be that there be no God at all. That would be, as the Nazi's might say, "The Final Solution" for the survival of pride. It doesn't come as any surprise then that . . .

9. Pride Refuses to Trust in God

Proverbs 28:25 contrasts arrogance and trust: An arrogant man stirs up strife, but he who trusts in the Lord will prosper. Pride cannot trust God. The posture of trust is too weak. Too dependent. It calls too much attention to the strength and wisdom of another. Trusting God is the heartbeat of humility, the opposite of pride.  When pride keeps us from trusting in God to take care of us, there are two possibilities: one is that we feel a false security based on our own imagined power and shrewdness to avert catastrophe. The other is that we realize that we cannot guarantee our security, and so we feel anxious.  Which brings us to the tenth trait of pride and the final explanation about the connection between 1 Peter 5:6 and 7.


10. Pride Is Anxious About the Future

In Isaiah 51:12–13 God says to anxious Israel that their problem is pride.  "I, even I, am He who comforts you. Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, and of the son of man who is made like grass; 13 that you have forgotten the Lord your Maker?"  Who do you think you are to be afraid? Sounds strange, doesn't it? But that's how subtle pride is. Pride is the root of our anxiety