I am not perfect.
I do bad things.
There, I’ve written it just as easily as you please mainly because I know the confession is truthful and helps me get into what I feel compelled to focus upon today.
It’s hoity-toity-ism.
You know what that is, of course: It’s our fleshly human way of looking down our noses at others and persuading ourselves that, unlike them, we are faultless and blameless.
Unlike them, we always do what God wants us to do.
Right.
We lie to ourselves and use the lies to make ourselves feel superior to others.
It’s a human thing whose allure we often find hard to fight even with the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
And we all know the devil loves that urge in us and never hesitates to play on it.
I remember how strongly he played on that weakness in me one Bible study evening sometime shortly after I finally became a Christian.
I also believe that I’m being divinely moved to share it all today for more reasons than that the doing can greatly help me in my spiritual growth.
Remember Jesus’ parable in Luke 18, specifically the words in verses 11 and 12?
“The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers or even as this publican.
“I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.”
The Pharisee was I on that aforementioned Bible study evening when I met a certain fellow Christian for the first time.
This child of God had been in the church for many, many more years than I.
Yet from appearance, speech and manner of dress, the Christian seemed to be an active part of the rough world that I’d just escaped.
Immediately, I looked down my nose at my fellow believer and snarked in my mind: “Will you look at this one? This ain’t no Christian. This is definitely one of Satan’s agents who’s eventually going straight to hell.”
Oh how ashamed I’d eventually come to feel as I grew in Christ and my thoughts would go back to the way I’d misjudged my fellow Christian.
Who was I to mentally judge another fellow believer and try to condemn that one of God’s own to the darkest of all places?
It would pain me the more inside too when I’d see this Christian extend nothing but kindness and gentleness to others.
It often seems, too, that the Holy Spirit remains extraordinarily diligent in taking my mind back to my thoughts on that evening, long past now.
Of course, I don’t mind. It keeps me humble and ever mindful of what it means to be a true follower of God.
And the more I think about it all, the more comfortable I become at leaving up to God stuff like judging others and determining where each of us is going.
It truly helps me to love a lot more people and see a lot fewer flaws.
Jesus said: “Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye, and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
“Thy hypocrite. First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:4-5) 5).
Ozzie Roberts June 2, 2019
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