SCRIPTURE:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.
Leviticus 26:13
OBSERVATION:
The Israelites didn’t get it, and we know what happens. Every promise comes true, and more. While many failures along the way steered their eventual return to slavery, every miss and misstep finds it’s roots in their miss directed pride. They were God’s people, but the too often looked to God as belonging to them rather than they belonging to Him.
APPLICATION:
Pride: there’s that word again. Growing up that was an important word that I would hear at home and at school, all the time. Pauahi encouraged us to “carry ourselves in dignity and pride”, and while so much of that statement still resonates in Warriors all over ʻāina, somewhere along the line so many kanaka, myself included, ignored the first noun, dignity, and placed all the attention on the second, pride. We are proud sons and daughters of Hawaiʻi and proud descendants of greatness. Pride is good, but without dignity we can easily forget what qualifies the pride in the first place.
I think the Israelites had a similar problem. They were God’s chosen people, set apart. They had every reason to believe that they were special, a cut above the rest. And even though God reminds them why they get to hold their heads high in the first place, they eventually succumb to pride and return to exile and slavery.
Pride is not a bad thing. I have pride in my culture, pride in the accomplishment of my children, and even pride in things I have accomplished singularly and collectively with others. Pride becomes a problem when we start to revel in our own glory. The more prosperous one becomes the more easily we can drift from the source of that prosperity. What this results in is a misguided operation style where the source and endgame is completely off.
While every moment of accomplishment will bring unique challenges to carry myself with dignity and pride, there are a few things I can do to make sure my head is held high but my heart stays bowed low:
- Remember my story. All I need to do to ratchet back to humility is remember the grace God has had on my life and the grace that has been afforded to me by others.
- Stay grateful. Pastor Wayne says, “build your bank account with gratefulness to bankrupt your complaining.” In this case it’s my pride. I need to change the “me’s” to “because of Him”, the “I did’s” to “He did”. When I use the language of gratefulness my mind aligns to the good intentions of my heart.
- Always start with a blank slate. “Job’s not done”. That needs to be my mentality. Let me explain. I need to always start at 1 and can’t expect yesterday’s success to be the starting point of today’s efforts. Each challenge is unique and requires unique anointing. Just because God blessed yesterday’s effort it doesn’t mean it’ll carry over to today. Now, I’m not saying God’s blessings are finite, but my reliance on it needs to be. If not, I may fall into the trap that thinks it was me, and that I made it. I need to continually seek His blessing and follow his anointing as the cloud moves by day and the fire by night.
PRAYER:
Jesus, thank you for the dignity to be able to carry myself in pride knowing that I’m chosen and qualified by You and You alone. May Your grace continue in my life as I hold my head high and keep my heart humbled. Amen.
