Hello everyone!
I am finally getting to sit down to pen this. I have some much-needed time off these next few days and my thoughts are settled. I have been thinking about this topic for several weeks now but needed the mental and spiritual space to write about it. I have been disconnecting from pride, pain, unbelief for quite awhile in my own life and I wanted to share that with you. Both on a personal and national level, we can be free of these evils. Jesus has made a way. I want this blog to be a culmination of these themes over the last few weeks.
I can honestly say with much humility now that I once thought I had it all together. I thought I knew everything there was to know about people, the mind of God, and how He sees things. Coupled with this pride and arrogance, interestingly enough, I was nursing unbelief about what He could or could not do in my life. It sounds like a bit of an oxymoron doesn’t it? That’s because such a dichotomy is an oxymoron. In point of fact, the pride and arrogance I walked in for many years blinded me to this fact. I claimed to know everything about God, how He saw people and me, but I did not have faith to believe He could work things out for good in my life. I also had no idea how much He loved me! I did not know as much as thought I did. I hurt deeply with no understanding of why. This is a bad place to be in ladies and gentlemen; you think you have everything figured out but you really don’t know God or Him personified in Jesus. You are literally just running in your hamster wheel hoping God will love you enough if you perform right enough. My hope was not in Him, but in myself. In pride, arrogance and unbelief, I became my own god. I can tell you that didn’t work out too well for me as I have written about in other blogs in the recent months.
Allow me to briefly summarize how Elizabeth being her own god and doing her own thing didn’t work out for those who are new to my writings. I did not know who I was; my worth was based on other’s opinions and acceptance of me and whether they felt I was “good enough”; particularly men. I have lost and gained weight three times in my life because of these beliefs. I have gotten into debt three time in my life because I thought I knew better. I married a man I had no business marrying because I wanted to live a dream and I thought I knew better. I have been in relationships I had no business being in with equally hurt people because I thought I knew better. I have not treated people very well at all at certain times in my life because I thought I knew their hearts better than Jesus did. Who was I kidding? I was kidding myself. Pride, arrogance, pain, and unbelief do not serve you; they slowly kill you and your purpose.
Pride, arrogance, pain, and unbelief also slowly kill a nation.
I see this same dichotomy echoed in what is going on in this country right now. We have many pride-filled people who think they know God and how He thinks and feels about other races of people, but they are walking in unbelief when it comes to issues in or society. In fact, they think they know Him so well that they believe, falsely, that He actually created some of these issues or has no problem with injustice. They say, “preach the gospel”, without understanding the ramifications and the fruit of preaching the gospel they claim to espouse. They couldn’t be furthest from His heart and they know even less about Him than they think. I was there once, so I can speak to this very well. Their hope is in themselves as was my hope, and in their works and politics; as was mine. They serve other gods and themselves as I did for many years.
I realize I’ve given you a fairly grim picture, however, there is hope. Our hope for ourselves and for our nation is in Jesus Christ – the greatest liberator of men, women, children, and all races in the history of the world. It is only Jesus who can free us from and show us our pride, arrogance and unbelief. Only He can get to their roots. They have roots in pain, only He can get to that pain. I promise you that your personal undoing and our country’s undoing of unjust systems will not be comfortable, but it will be well worth it. Why do I say this? Because in that undoing, new life and purpose will replace the deadness of pride, arrogance, pain, injustice, and unbelief. In this undoing, our country will once again be a beacon and a light for all nations. A nation who embraces other nations because it embraces all people who call America home. In this newness, there is no place for double standards, there is no place for unjust laws, and there is no place for hatred – hatred is a byproduct of pride, arrogance, pain, injustice, and unbelief and it breeds more of the same. In this newness there will be no place for slavery of any kind, whether it be of the mind, soul, spirit or body. I too was a slave in my personal life while trying to be my own little god – a slave to my unsatisfying desires and the opinions of others.
Do you see the parallels? What shows up in our personal lives and homes, echoes in our nation this day.
So, what is next you ask? What do we do?
We repent. Repentance first, then healing. I repented and healing began. Our nation must repent so it can heal. Jesus is faithful and just to heal our nation just as He was faithful and just to heal me on a personal level from the very things that plague our nation today. This will require a change of thinking and a change of heart. This will require sacrifice. This will require listening more and speaking less. This will require seeing others through the eyes of Jesus. This will require us to see the end of our road and the beginning of something much larger than any one person. This will require the laying down of pride. This will require much, but the reward will be even greater; and the latter will be greater than the former.
My latter is greater than my former. I have faith that the same will ring true for our nation. I have faith that we can overcome pride, pain, unbelief, and injustice in our personal lives and in our national life. I have faith in the dominion of King Jesus, whose grace, mercy, love, and justice are sufficient for all of us.
What say you?
Love,
Elizabeth
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