At the start of the year, I was in a bicycle accident. I was riding along at 47km/h when a car pulled over into the yellow line and stopped there, blocking the whole road where I could ride. I do not know why I had not seen that the car had pulled off to the yellow line. But I remember that it all happened so rapidly and that there was far too little time to try and avoid the accident after I had noticed the car. Not to mention that it was during a time of heavy traffic, meaning there were cars next to me on the road which made that decision unavailable.
In the time between noticing the car and the impact of the crash, it could not have been much more than a second, my mind spontaneously jumped into prayer. I remember that it was in English, which is odd as my home language is Afrikaans; yet when I was in Egypt last year on an outreach to the persecuted church, we prayed in English many times during stressful situations to include the whole team. After the outreach, when I was back home, I did find myself praying in English instead of Afrikaans many times throughout the day.
I do not remember what I had prayed in those brief moments, but time must have frozen for a minute so, that I could plead to GOD with my imperfect tongue before the inevitable would happen. But the one thing that I somehow and for some reason remember was that at the end of my prayer the words, “Your praise will ever be on my lips” jumped into my mind as a conclusion and a promise. [lyrics from the song ‘Ever be’]
With impact, I was instantly knocked out. Luckily for me, some people saw what had happened and stopped at the scene to come to my aid. When I awoke, I was laying on the side of the road, with a few kindhearted people staring down at me. I tried to lift my head just to be told that I should lay still as there was a possibility that vertebrae in my neck and spine could have been damaged. But as my eyes scanned down my body to try and do a damage assessment, I saw that my knee was cut open from side to side unto the bone. I saw a wound on my left arm which looked as if someone had scooped a tablespoon's worth of flesh out of my left bicep. And then my breathing became unbearably difficult. With each inhale and exhale I felt excruciating pain. My chest was completely bruised up when they cut off my clothing, I thought that surely some of my ribs were broken. The last significant superficial wound was visible to others but not to me, a long cut on my forehead, starting in between my eyebrows.
After what felt like a few hours of tanning on the roadside, the ambulance finally arrived. I was loaded into it on a stretcher whereafter a nurse inserted a drip with pain medication into my arm. However, the tap was never opened and I would not receive anything to dull the pain till much later in the hospital (almost 6 hours) after a complete body X-ray scan had been done, after I had been cleaned and got stitches on my knee and forehead. The doctor who looked at my scans then came in and notified us that nothing seemed to be broken which was not expected - if you had looked at the state of the car and my bicycle. He then called me 'Ironman' and walked out of the room. For a while, after those words were uttered, I felt strong and almost superior to a certain degree. But right then and there I knew just how wrong he was and how wrong the feelings inside of me were. For it was not by my strength that I escaped the crash with relatively little damage, but it is my GOD who is much stronger than iron.
This may sound like a loose ball of laces at the moment, because why should you read all about my accident when you have enough of your own problems, or when family who is close to you are struggling with illness or other painful situations? When most of the time it doesn't feel as if GOD protects you as I have just implied He protected me in the accident.
Let us drift away from the accident for a moment. We are born into this world that is full of sin, we are born unable to fight against it ourselves. A lot of people are born with no defences at all to keep sin out of them. Their parents may be absent or ignorant, leaving the doors wide open for all sorts of corruption to enter. Others who are more fortunate are born into a military-grade armoury, with parents who love them, who nurture them even sometimes to the detriment of themself, who when even before the child is capable of understanding starts to teach them, as best they can, about Jesus and clothes them, in that way, with protection. It is a continuous spectrum with an infinite amount of cases, some being more extreme to either side of what I had described and cases that lie somewhere in between. We all start life differently.
Yet, even in the best of circumstances that can be created by us, darkness creeps into our lives from the very start. For we are not perfect, for we too had an imperfect start (though it may have been better than we could ask for), and fail tremendously in seeking GOD's guidance in every aspect of our lives. We can try our best to obey every single law, but if we are truly honest with ourselves, we will see the impossibility of this task. Sin does not just comprise of breaking the laws with our actions, but sin begins in the heart. [Matt 5] And if our eyes are open and fixed on our hearts, we would be staring at a wasteland that only GOD can rescue and rehabilitate.
But why would God allow that to be the course of His creation? Maybe because that is what we choose to make of HIS creation every day. And because He loves us, He can, but would not, force us to love Him. Because that would fall outside of the boundaries of love. A relationship would be impossible without our free will.
This accident of mine was not an act of GOD. Just as the death of someone is not GOD taking them back or drawing their line. Just as it is not GOD testing or punishing people who are going through tremendous suffering. Just as it is not GOD who made the rich wealthy and condemned the next in line to poverty.
We certainly live in a world where GOD can do miracles, for GOD can do anything. But how can we expect to understand the reason why GOD touches our world, if we can not even understand a miracle in itself? God can influence our lives. But we have shut the doors for HIM, and HE is no burglar. Even though we so desperately want HIM to come into our lives with a miracle, we unconsciously fear the truth that would have to accompany that miracle. For GOD’s handiwork has one big signature written all over it. He signs it with Humility, not small and only down in the righthand-side corner but with large CAPITAL letters in every corner of the heart.
Every day we choose to read a novel (or any other worldly text), watch a movie, scroll through social media, and even exercise instead of choosing to spend that time with God. We spend only a fraction of our free time praying and reading the Bible. Pondering over how HE wants us to live for HIS glory. [I am omitting the act of talking (praying) to GOD throughout the day in our going about. I think this is a crucial part of our relationship with HIM, but I am now referring to quality time that we specially set aside just for GOD] What to say about performing selfless deeds, not out of obligation but because of love? Because we are loved by GOD.
Every day we choose to stay the same as we were the day before, stuck in a perpetual motion machine whose energy cannot be harvested for any significant use, for it is all used up for self-maintenance and self-gratification.
But is it not fine and good to just rest and relax we ask ourselves? Did God not rest after the creation was created? Are we not allowed to enjoy ourselves in these indulgences? And is God not the same now as He was in the beginning? And were we not created in His likeness? Is it not fine to then also stay the same?
To think that you (or I) were born how God intended for you to be, to think that our understanding of how to live, even when that is according to seemingly noble virtues and beliefs that may even coincide to an extent with the laws in the Bible, to think that we are not in need of serious breaking down and rebuilding by God... Is prideful. And in reality, the obeying of laws and moral values does not mean anything, except if the heart is truly humble. Otherwise, we are simply imitators of the Pharisees.
We are not capable of seeing the ONE complete truth because we are prone to answer the questions like the ones above by ourselves, and most of the time we do not even notice what we are doing. That is one of our downfalls, many of us believe that our values and beliefs of what we may and may not do, what is good and bad, that these things are from God. It could very well have been formed from what we have heard in Church, or even what we have read in the Bible, or heard some seemingly good Christian say. Yet I am of the impression that we form many of these lenses through which we look at the world by ourselves.
We give ourselves answers that are good enough, but not perfect and whole, for we are scared deep inside that we may have to let go of a lot of things that have grown so dear to us.
But I believe strongly that if your beliefs are not constantly being challenged by the world, by your own self, that they are self thought out. There to suit the flesh and calm the conscience, to try and butter the bread on both sides. To live a life that you desire yet feeling as if it is a life that is right through the eyes of Heaven.
But please listen and ponder with GOD on this, if your heart does not rebel at times, or all the time, against what it believes to be true of itself and our duty as Christians, either it falsely believes it, or that what it believes is not from God. (there may be some exceptions, and perhaps with time and GRACE our souls will truly be changed, but not after passing through this burdensome stage.) For a man's life is full of sin, temptations, brokenness and failure. No one is spared. What is more is that the world we live in is even more so, for therein is encapsulated all of the mentioned darkness, but that combined of all the living and those who have passed.
Beliefs and values that are truly inspired by God do not fit in this darkness. Can darkness mix with light? No, it can't!
If you do not struggle within yourself to please and praise God more and more, I fear you may be deceived more than you know. For if we are new in Christ, the old is dead. Yes, we are human and will probably always make mistakes, yet our hearts should yearn for perfection before God and mourn over all of its shortcomings. We should naturally rebel against our heart's beliefs, for if the belief is from God, would it not be hated by the darkness still in us? And if the belief is truly from God, would it not remain and grow stronger even in spite of the fact that you sometimes do not want to live according to it due to the will of the flesh? Although the light overcomes the darkness, we have to pass through the crucible of continuous strife within ourselves during our time here on Earth.
And that is just it. Oh how we should fear, for the seed of pride is like a weed, hard to remove from the soil. How do I mourn for those who are so overgrown with pride to think themselves to be above the receiving of God’s wrath, who do not struggle within themself, day and night, over all of themself? How do I fear that I am blind to my own pride!
Pride: to not be looking at your life in anguish over the sin that blackens the atmosphere of your existence and to be content with the standing of your heart. [ Google says: “A feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired”. Or a “consciousness of one's own dignity.” ]
You see, true GOD-given grace does not allow pride. It makes room for its existence, but only so that we can choose humility. For otherwise no one could have been humble, and all of us would have lived our lives fearing death. For it is through Jesus alone, Who humbled Himself on the cross that we have a hope and a future. And it is only through HIM that the sin in us can be overcome. Therefore, what do we have to be proud of? Absolutely nothing. For we are all partakers in the death of the ONE perfect Man, the SON of GOD. And all glory be unto GOD forever and ever, who bested sin and death and raised HIM up to the highest of places.
So should we not mourn that His praises are not constantly on our lips? Every second of every hour. Every sentence of every conversation. Should we not mourn over our laziness? Should we not mourn over the fact that it is so hard for us to give up earthly pleasures and show GOD's love more, especially to those who have been less lucky than us? Because should we, in the light of things, even care about our own leisures and pleasures? Should we not mourn that pride has gotten the better of us?
To conclude. How do we conquer PRIDE? Alone, we simply can not. But the superior question is: How do we praise GOD? Because, we are not by our own strength and deeds able to praise the Lord with worthy praises.
I think it is something that we do not understand or want to understand. But I think that a good start would be to humble oneself. For the Word says that the truth will be made known to the the Humble ([Children] - Matthew 11:25-30). And the fact that GOD would grant that privilege to those who humble themselves, speaks great volumes of how a humble heart brings praise to our Lord.
So please stop reading my imperfect words. And learn to praise the LORD with a heart that is signed in every corner and on every wall with the one word, “HUMILITY”.