"O believer, learn to reject pride. Remember that the more you have, the more you have received and therefore the more that you are indebt to God. And you should not be proud of that which renders you a debtor. Consider your origin...look back to what you were...consider what you would have been, but for Divine Grace! Look upon yourself as you are now...doesnt your conscience reproach you...doesnt your thousand wanderings stand before you and tell you that you are unworthy to be called His son or daughter. If He made you anything, arent you taught thereby that it is grace that made you to differ? O, you who are valiant for truth, you would have been valiant for error if grace had not laid hold of you!
Therefore, don't be proud!!
Though you have a large estate, a wide domain of grace...once you did not have a single thing to call your own except your sin and misery! O strange infatuation, that you who have borrowed everything should think of exalting yourself!"
These thoughts from Mr. Spurgeon come from one of his sermons on the text of 1 Cor. 4:7
"For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?"
Remember that the Corinthians were a "puffed up" people. So, Paul wrote these words to deflate the puffed up church. And the way that he did it was by speaking truth to them about the grace of God and how everything that they had came from the hand of their gracious God!
Since reading these reflections on humility being our greatest friend and pride being our greatest enemy, you may want to begin reading 1 Corinthians for more grace exalting and pride deflating exercises!
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