Lack of Humility: Being Full of Yourself

Continued from here.

Let’s talk about being a baby Christian, which has nothing to do with how long ago you invited Jesus to be your Savior but has everything to do with whether you have ever chosen to call him Lord. Sadly, a large number of Christians only embrace Jesus as their Savior but not as their Lord. There’s a huge difference between the two. Either you are a disciple of Jesus, or you are not. If you are not, then while you might look forward to heaven in the afterlife, you won’t experience all of God’s promises of joy, peace, and contentment because those blessings are reserved for his disciples – for those who are conforming themselves to the image of Christ.

The graphic shows what a baby Christian looks like. While Jesus has come to live in her heart, this person is still full of herself. There’s no humility – she is living her life as she wants and not picking up her cross and following Jesus.

Unless and until you choose to embrace Jesus as Lord (to do what God tells you to do), you will remain in this state, as I did for decades. I received Jesus as my Savior at age 8, but I didn’t make the decision to become his disciple until age 44. During the decades in between, I had a lot of knowledge about the Bible, but I didn’t actually do most of it. I was too full of myself and was more interested in what **I** wanted than in what God wanted. The Bible’s word for this is pride.

I was so filled with pride that there was little room left for God. Ironically, I believed that I couldn’t have a problem with pride because I had low self-esteem, so I sure wasn’t “puffed up” about how great I was. I was shocked to learn that pride is thinking about yourself all the time, and boy did I do that! I always had myself on my mind, and it made me miserable!

Disciples of Jesus have humility. As they do what God tells them to do, they take their focus off themselves and place it on God and on others. As they do this, they stop being so full of themselves and start freeing up room for God. Unless and until you choose to start living your life differently in deference to God, you will remain a spiritual infant, and the blessings of joy, peace, and contentment will continue to elude you.

Continued here.

[Graphic: Cartoon of Grace taking up all of the space in the body outline with a small yellow heart at the center. Courtesy Bitmoji and Grace Daniels.]