It Ain't About You
“Self-love.” We hear that phrase a lot. Even in the Christian community, you hear a lot of encouragement about who God has called us to be, the potential God has placed in us, the purpose that we are created to fulfill. We’re often encouraged that we can do all things through Christ and that we are capable and called, beautiful and bountiful, loved and lavished, and any other encouraging alliteration you can think of. But at what point does this “faith-based” self-love become selfish?
For so long, I believed the only way to struggle with pride was through arrogance—believing in your own ability rather than God’s. But in the past year, God has opened my eyes to the spectrum of pride. It doesn’t just lie with arrogance, it lies with insecurity too.
Did that statement catch you off guard? When God revealed it to me, I was definitely a bit shocked and deeply convicted. If I feel so lowly of myself, how am I prideful? Let me answer this bluntly too, it’s because insecurity is the enemy’s sneaky way of making it about us. In Exodus 4:10, Moses says,
“Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
Here, Moses focuses on where he falls short. But today, I want to shift the perspective of this story for a moment not to look at where Moses falls short as a human being and how he was able to overcome it and move forward as one of the biggest figures of biblical history, but to look at the power of God apart from what He can do through us.
EXODUS 4:4-14
To summarize this passage, God assigns Moses the not-so-simple task of delivering His people out of slavery in Egypt. God tells Moses to return to Egypt and speak to Pharaoh and free the Israelites. Now, you can imagine the type of fear Moses must have experienced. God was calling him to go back to the place he ran away from to avoid being killed and not only that, God was telling Moses to convince the Egyptians to free their slaves. So it makes sense that Moses was hesitant—insecure, even. In this part of the story, Moses’ insecurity actually keeps him from obeying what God is commanding him to do. BAEs, insecurity is not at all humble. It’s prideful because it makes us focused on where we fall short rather than where God’s power lies. It’s because of Moses’ insecurity that he incurred God’s anger. Moses’ insecurity led to his initial disobedience.
And so Moses tells God he isn’t qualified, but God’s response isn’t what we as Christians today expect. God didn’t encourage Moses saying, “Moses, I’ve called you to something special and significant. You can do this because I’m on your side.” No. God brings up who HE is, not who He created Moses to be. I kind of read God’s response with a little sass, a little attitude. He says to Moses,
“Then the Lord asked Moses, “Who makes a person’s mouth? Who decides whether people speak or do not speak, hear or do not hear, see or do not see? Is it not I, the Lord?”
Eventually the Lord does reassure Moses that He’ll help him speak, but the first thing that comes up is God’s power, not ours.
SHIFTING OUR PERSPECTIVE
We live in a society that encourages believing you are the main character and honestly, sometimes I live in that mindset too! It’s fun to be dramatic and uninhibited in the way we live our lives, but we need to understand that apart from God we truly are nothing. To put it bluntly, it’s not about you and it was never about you. I don’t want this to be discouraging for you BAEs at all. In fact, I want the complete opposite. I hope this will be a humble reminder that it’s because of God and who He is that we’re even able to move forward into our purpose.
It’s not easy to step away from ourselves, especially when our lives are so saturated with self-focused encouragement. Sometimes even worship brings us to the forefront, but I encourage you BAEs that when you start falling into insecurity or even if you fall into the arrogant side of pride, your first instinct is to turn to God and who He is, because at the end of it all, it’s so much better when it’s about God.
How much better is it that we can rely on an already perfect God rather than the impossibility of our own perfection?
We are not called to be perfect people, but we are imperfect so we have the opportunity to lean on God and trust Him. In this world, we’re never going to be enough, but God is always enough.
Much love,
Deej