Thank you for your prayers: I believe that God has struck my heart with a deep understanding of humility

You know, I have kinda built my Christian identity around the fact that I invest a lot of effort into my faith, and by implication I am “all that”, or as “all that” as it is reasonably possible to be. However, the spirit of God has recently struck me to truly bring it home that I am not all that. That has been a bit humbling, but to be honest I am grateful. I recognise that this might well be the result of someone’s prayers, and if so, I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude. This is truly where I want to be, humble before my God, having an accurate opinion of myself.  I often fall into having a big head, and then when I am there I honestly cannot see myself in perspective. However, whenever I come to myself, I will always choose humility, always. So if you are praying for me, thank you!

Also, while I am talking about prayer! I recently wrote on this blog about how I can tell when someone is praying for me. I am just going to be candid here. A few days ago, an understanding hit me. And you know what? This is how it felt to me: I hope that I am not making this up, I hope that this is not wishful thinking! It felt as if someone had read my post about how I can tell that someone is praying for me, and they had taken the information on board, and they were trying to find a way of praying for me where it would not be so obvious to me that they were praying…but guess what, I could still tell! And I could even tell that they were trying to be discreet!

Wishful thinking?  This is why the above could count as just wishful thinking: Because it is so lovely to think that someone “out there” might care enough about me to pray for me.  It is so lovely to think that someone might be carefully reading my blog and responding to the information on it.  I know that God cares about me that much, of course, and actually much more! Ultimately it is God’s opinion that matters. However, it is so lovely to think that there could be a human person praying too!
It is also so lovely to think that I might be able to guess just who is praying!

The thing about prayer is that it is usually such a private, secret activity.  You never imagine that the person you are praying for is going to going to “turn around” and say “Listen, I know that you have been praying for me! And I can even tell you what you have been praying!”  I am sorry that I have made it sound as if God is a passive party in all this. The truth is that God Himself is of course the real force behind all this. It is He who moves our hearts to pray for others. If indeed I am right and I can tell that someone is praying for me, and I can deduce who it is, then that will be because God decided that He wants me to know!

By the way, I am not remotely offended at the implication that my character is bad enough to need prayer.  Because I know that it is! Whenever I get caught up in my own ego then I can’t see clearly, when I can see clearly I can see just how unattractive it is! Furthermore I am doing everything I can to pray for my own character so if someone is praying for me then they are contributing to my achieving my goal faster so I am extremely grateful. I will always welcome sincere prayers for my character from everyone!

I believe that the following is a new understanding of humility that God has granted me, or rather new but old. Because it has definitely occurred to me before, I may well have already expressed it on this blog, or my other one. Anyway, here it is, and it is so ridiculously straightforward and simple: my big problem comes about whenever I find myself comparing myself to other people. In all candour, I do invest a lot of time into faith. But I finally remembered that the only Person I should ever compare myself to is Jesus. When I compare myself to God there is simply no way I can maintain a big head.  God is so big, and so powerful and so perfect and so consistent, and He is God

Furthermore, one other big reason why I keep falling into this particular sin, and others, is because my life has lacked stability and consistency. I hope that from now that will no longer be the case in my life, and I hope that by the grace of God He has granted me victory over this deeply unattractive habit, which actually is a sin, once and for all!!!

So by God’s grace I truly hope to hold onto this understanding on an ongoing basis. It is my prayer that I will never forget this again. And if anyone out there is also struggling with humility, I encourage you to gain some perspective by gazing upon God. Comparing yourself favourably to other people will always be a completely false approach. If we want to get a true and accurate measure of who we are, then we each need to compare ourself to God and God alone.

If you are praying for me and God is letting me know, then to me that is a reassuring sign, that God is right here in the centre of this interaction between two of His children, that God cares about what we are each going through, and that these prayers are coming from a sincere heart.  So to summarise I would like to thank my mysterious prayer hero, even if he has been trying to be discreet, and I would also like to thank anyone else who might also be praying for me “out there”!