I've gotten alot of traffic through a recent post on humility. My basic thought was this: if you think you've got it, you probably just lost it.

Here's where pride comes in, taking our eyes off God and onto ourselves. Mark quotes C.S. Lewis: "...it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." That's where I was going with that train of thought. Pride is so sneaky, so disrupting, so deceptive.

Someone pointed out something to me a few years ago. In Ephesians 6, where Paul is describing The Armor of God, there are all kinds of pieces for protection and battle, but there's nothing protecting the back. Why would the Lord send us out to battle with naked backs?

He doesn't - Isaiah 52:12 says, "But you will not leave in haste or go in flight; for the LORD will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard." If God's protecting our backs, and is also in fact going before us, I'd consider that pretty well covered. But if pride comes in, and we begin to move without God, then even if I somehow have all of the armor in place by force of my own will, I'm still wide open from behind. Like the guy wandering down the hospital hall with his gown swinging wide open, there's a draft back there, and it ain't pretty.

We don't "lose humility" by realizing how humble we are, but there's a real possibility of pride coming before our fall whenever we take our eyes off of Him and begin to look at how pretty we think we are... especially in a hospital gown.
- posted by Rick @ 21:25