Prideful Persistence

At moments when all seems to be going well, we don't value our strength. When things don't go as well as they should, we suddenly feel very weak, unable to handle the pressure, and even unwilling to go on. The pressure moments frequently reveal 'whose' strength we are reliant upon, don't they? If it is our own, we 'feel' the pressure in ways that can actually bring harm to our bodies, and even more so, to our spirit. As scripture says, "If you fail under pressure, your strength is too small." (Proverbs 24:10) It isn't our strength that we should be reliant upon, although this seems to be a very hard lesson to learn!

If you fail under pressure - it isn't if 'God fails you under pressure', but if YOU fail under it. I have come across people who got themselves so deep into stuff they are weighed down under, hearing them complain that God 'hasn't come through'. Could it be that God didn't want them to get into the mess they are in, but they failed to heed his advice? Might it be that they figured they could handle it on their own, so they just got deeper and deeper into the mire without realizing their own strength was totally insufficient for the journey? It could be a little of both!

God isn't going to let us fail - though he gives us free choice to get ourselves into all kinds of messy circumstances beyond our ability or strength to get out of on our own. Why is that? Doesn't he love us enough to keep us out of that mess? Of course he does! He loves us so much that he gives us the free will to choose. His greatest hope is that we will lean into him BEFORE we make those choices, though. Whenever we don't listen, or we never ask in the first place, he is disappointed, but he never abandons us to our mess. He is right there - we just don't realize it yet.

Sometimes we need to come to the place where we recognize that our strength isn't enough. We need to see our prideful persistence of doing things our own way and in our own strength isn't going to help us when we get weighed down by the circumstances. There are times when God allows us to make those choices, knowing we will come to an end of that prideful persistence to be self-sufficient! He isn't abandoning us - he is waiting on us to recognize our need. Just sayin!