Day 9…Isaiah 2:6-22

"Stop putting your trust in mere humans. They are as frail as breath. How can they be of help to anyone?” (v.22) 

Notes from the devotional:

• Pride is a is a neverending problem. The more we achieve, the more self-sufficient we become. The more arrogant we become.
• Though we are impressed with ourselves, God is not impressed with us – he knows that everything comes from him and without him we are nothing.
• Humans are frail, and fickle, and unpredictable. We are limited and unreliable. God is the opposite of all this. He is the foundation we must lean on.
• We must ultimately swallow our pride and rely on God. He will be of help to everyone who trusts in him.

My notes:

• I think of our culture, our government, our scientific community. We have been able to accomplish so much that we have begun to mistakenly think that WE accomplished all these wondrous things, that our ingenuity and intelligence was the source of our advances. But what we have forgotten is that all gifts, all skills, all ingenuity was gifted to us from our Father.
• As we become more reliant on ourselves, we become too full of pride and don’t want to share credit with anyone else… Remember Gore…? “I created the internet.” Well if we don’t want to share the credit with others, we sure don’t want to admit that we could have accomplished nothing without God! So we begin to distance ourselves from him, and at some point on that slippery slope begin to wonder if he even exists.
• It scares me that, out of love for us, God may one day decide to discipline us by simply saying, “You think YOU did all this? That I didn’t have anything to do with it. Well, let me show you.” … and take his hand off what we do and leave us to the sinful devices of ourselves without any guidance from him or the Holy Spirit. Disaster, man!
• I must ALWAYS stay humble. Must ALWAYS remember that everything I have, everything I have accomplished, every skill or talent I have, was gifted to me by him. And because of this, my thanks and my praise should always be directed toward him and not other feeble and fickle humans.
• Remember Psalm 34:1 …”I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.” I pray that I will make an effort to do just that and give him all the glory!

Personal challenge:

• Look at your life and examine what in your life you are giving God the credit for? What in your life are you not?
• Pray for humility and awareness that all we are and all we accomplish is only through him who created us.

~~from The One Year Book of Devotions for Men (Stuart Briscoe, 2000)~~