MEDITATION MOMENT – Pride and Unworthiness

Pride and Unworthiness are a condition of the heart. As I contemplated Pride, I realized that it is a protective shell covering our heart resulting from a traumatic event causing us to question our Worthiness. In that fact or series of, we were made to feel less than who we are. As we travel down the root of Pride, we encounter our identity. If we are uncertain of our character, then we doubt the significance of our creation and ultimately the Person who created us.

Pride is the turtle shell that covers Unworthiness.

A wound occurred in your past, and the ruler of this world, the Evil one, stepped in. We didn’t know that Evil was speaking because he acted helpfully and offered a solution— “Those bullies wounded you! Made you feel worthless. Made you take off your brand-new Timex watch. Remember? The one with the chrome stretch band you got for your birthday. Made you hand it to the ringleader so he could throw it to the ground. Well, well, you can fix that. Promise yourself that you'll never let that happen again. You're better than they are. They disrespected you. They offended you. They humiliated you. Never let that happen again—ever!” Evil then placed a turtle shell over your heart—without it, you’d be vulnerable.

And so it goes— throughout your life, you wore the shell of Pride to protect yourself from humiliation, disrespect, and offense with an unreasonably lofty opinion of superiority.

You were unable to keep the promise you made to yourself, but you did everything you could to achieve it— you overcompensated, overachieved, overcontrolled, and overworked, and— you failed. And Evil said, “Look at you. You aren’t worth the dirt on your shoes. You’re worthless. You're nothing— but a failure.

Love cracked Pride and revealed Worthiness.

There is one attribute that will crack that shell and let out the beautiful being that you are—Love. You must seek your Creator to understand the mystery.

God made all things and all beings, and He called them all “good.” He made every person unique, yet none is better than another in God’s eyes— There is no mistake. You are worthy because you are a son or daughter of God. Your worth does not come from people because they are fallible—they are full of faults—just like you. Your worth is born of the infallible Father God who does not error and has made no blunder— You were not a failure when he created you, nor are you now, regardless of your experiences. Your Creator is a God of Love who is forever the same today as yesterday as tomorrow. You are not less than who you are because you ARE and ALWAYS WILL BE a son or daughter of God—that is your worth—worth so much to Father God that He gave His only begotten Son to be the sacrifice for you to live forever with Him in heaven. That is why you are worthy.

Since you did not earn your salvation from eternal death—you cannot work for it, and your salvation is no better or worse than another’s—you cannot brag about it.

Humility and Worthiness

What about that wound? It was all a lie from the Evil one. You thought it was a blessing of protection—that Pride—when actually he was making you feel worthless by convincing you that you needed a shell to hide behind.

God makes good of all things taken together for those who love and obey Him. When you receive Jesus in your heart as Savior from your sins—that is your first step at dismantling the shield of Pride and trading it for a heart of Humility. You were unworthy; now you are worthy. Jesus paid the price for your sins and bought your Worthiness. It's a done deal. You can't add to it with Pride, and you can't take away from it with Unworthiness. Every morning when you wake up, believe that you are worthy—because Jesus gave up His earthly life for you to be alive in Him. And you will no longer need Pride—because you had nothing to do with your salvation. Jesus broke the chains of Pride and destroyed them. Jesus finished that on the cross!

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Copyright 2017  © Jeff Cambridge

For You shaped me, inside and out.
    You knitted me together in my mother’s womb long before I took my first breath.
I will offer You my grateful heart, for I am Your unique creation, filled with wonder and awe.
    You have approached even the smallest details with excellence;
    Your works are wonderful;
I carry this knowledge deep within my soul.
     You see all things; nothing about me was hidden from You
As I took shape in secret,
    carefully crafted in the heart of the earth before I was born from its womb.
You see all things;
    You saw me growing, changing in my mother’s womb;
Every detail of my life was already written in Your book;
    You established the length of my life before I ever tasted the sweetness of it.

~Psalm 139:13-16 The Voice

But God, with the unfathomable richness of His love and mercy focused on us, united us with the Anointed One and infused our lifeless souls with life—even though we were buried under mountains of sin—and saved us by His grace. He raised us up with Him and seated us in the heavenly realms with our beloved Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King. He did this for a reason: so that for all eternity we will stand as a living testimony to the incredible riches of His grace and kindness that He freely gives to us by uniting us with Jesus the Anointed. For it’s by God’s grace that you have been saved. You receive it through faith. It was not our plan or our effort. It is God’s gift, pure and simple. You didn’t earn it, not one of us did, so don’t go around bragging that you must have done something amazing.

~Ephesians 2:4-9 The Voice