MY CALL FOR HUMILITY: HAVING FULL CONFIDENCE IN GOD RATHER THAN MY WORKS
- Kim Johnson
- Jan 27, 2024
- 13 min read
Philippians 2:12-13
12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
Romans 12:2
2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will.
In previous entries, I have shared about my struggles with my two forms of pride—arrogance and insecurity. I also wrote about my reliance on my ability to “do” different tasks and how I tend to get most of my worth from my performance. I had shared how God has been exposing these character flaws within my heart and how he has helped me with repentance in my thinking and actions as I continuously choose to cling to Jesus and to his teachings. God has been consistently answering our many prayers that I would surrender to his good, pleasing, and perfect will. Those times when I have completely surrendered, I have been able to bask in his presence, being comforted with his special peace despite the chaos of life and the spiritual battle that is constantly going on for all our souls.
My latest struggle with my pride and my trust in my works had been brewing for a long time, and it had finally exploded. I had noticed this huge character struggle for the first-time last year when I had to embrace the fact that I could no longer work a fulltime job with the physical limits of my cancer. Though there have been times when I had come to accept it, my need to “be still and know that God is God” had finally taken a toll on me these past few weeks. With the recovery from my surgery on December 29th taking much longer than what I had anticipated, I had been forced to slow down and stop relying on my own works. My response for quite some time has been “What God this AGAIN!” or more like “Regardless of how much I don’t want to rely on my own wimpy abilities, I seem to still struggle with the same thing again and again!”
I understand that these flaws are just a part of being human and that my worldly views are constantly fed as our societies of doers are continuously training me to be this way. I know that only God can do the impossible of changing my heart and granting me the ability to repent.
So, I continually pray, study, and meditate on Jesus—the Bible. I also have been confessing to others about these constant struggles going on in my heart and mind, asking for help in processing these emotions and requesting others for more prayers for my surrender to all of God’s plan for my life and for the lives of those that I love so dearly. I am continuously begging God that I should rely on him alone and not place confidence in my own works.
Recently, God revealed to me that there was nothing wrong with my questioning of his plan and that as I wrestled with him for better understanding of his will, our relationship has been growing deeper. What I have discovered though is that it is important to humbly go before God and his people with these questions and not just “do” what I think is right as Eve had done when tempted in the Garden of Eden. I now see that when I just “do” what I think is right or if I just try to rationalize things on my own, I am choosing to be separated from God—choosing death over life. So, I am desperately trying to respond to God’s call for humility. I want to humbly go before him, asking him for the impossible. I want to fully rely on and trust totally in him working within me, most especially during the times that I may be faced with various physical and emotional limitations. I must trust that God is always working mightily in my heart and in my life, even when I think that he is not because of my limits as a human being.
So, as I said, my latest struggle with my surrender had finally exploded in my recent need to have complete rest. Though I believed that I was going to God consistently about my feelings and begging him for acceptance of his plan, I found myself wrestling more with him than I had in the past and I began shutting down.
The result in my lack of humility and having all this time on my hands is that I started to rely on my own thoughts. I started to formulate in my own mind what I think is right and wrong and I began going over the conversations that I have had with others in the past with a desire to try to prove a point or something.
This particular time it was a statement that someone had once said to me as they professed knowing Jesus: “When I die, I know where I am going.”
So, I began to look at some scriptures to see why this statement came across to me as being a rather prideful declaration. Unfortunately, my initial motive as I studied Jesus’ teachings was more to prove that the individual was “wrong” rather than to understand what the Bible says pleases God. My ugly pride began rearing its head in my heart and my self-righteous, judgmental attitude began to corrode my thoughts. I noticed this about myself, so I began to have a little internal battle in my mind as to what is right and what is wrong. I thought, “Surely, I can figure this all out. I should know a lot about pride because I struggle so much with it.” I even threw a little “God” into the equation. “I know that God will show me what the Bible says about all of this.”
It began with Luke 18:9-14, known as the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. This is a look into some of the thoughts that I had with this scripture: “Okay so I am not supposed to be confident in my own righteousness, looking down on everyone else like the Pharisee did, but I must have the heart like the tax collector who just begged God to have mercy on him as he identified himself as a sinner. Therefore, it is prideful to think that any of us know where we are going when we die. And oh man, I am responding to this whole study with looking down on the person who made this statement. Ok thank you Jesus for showing this to me. I remember that there are some scriptures that talk about the fact that we can be confident in our relationship with God. Perhaps that is what the person was referring to.”
“Ephesians 3:12 says that in Christ Jesus, our Lord and through faith in him, I may approach God with freedom and confidence. So okay because of Jesus not because of me, I can declare something like this, but then there’s that scripture in Matthew.”
“Matthew 7:21-23 says that only those who do the will of the Father actually get to enter into the kingdom of heaven. The scary thing is that it says MANY will “do” a bunch of things that look “good” for Jesus ,but in the end, Jesus will say that he never knew them. Ugh!”
I began to question myself, “What is my attitude before God? What am I confident in? Do I trust more in my own knowledge of the scripture and in what ‘good’ works I can do? Am I looking down at the one who made such a remark and think that I am any better? Can I even claim that I have any confidence at all to come before God because of Jesus as I don’t even know if I am doing the Father’s will in my current struggle?”
Then I read:
Romans 9:16-18
16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 17 For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
Initially, I said to myself, “Okay God is in control of all things and what he says goes and if he wants to harden my heart as part of his plan then so be it. I don’t believe that he will harden my heart for the sake of his kingdom, but whatever he decides, I am okay with it.”
But then I just kept thinking about that and I started to feel discouraged and a little hopeless. The “what if” statements started: “What if I do all that he has said for me to do, but then he decides that it would be better for others if my heart was hardened. What if I am not doing what he has said for me to do and he decides to keep my heart hardened.”
(Bear with me as I relay this story. I know now that I was pulling this scripture totally out of context though the truth still is that it is only because of God’s great mercy that any of us are saved.)
Of course, the problem with the way that I was studying out these scriptures and thinking about them was that I was not going to God nor to others about these questions. I was relying totally on my own ability to process my thoughts and my feelings about what I was reading to the point I became very discouraged and began shutting down, withdrawing from God and others.
And the worst part of all this was that I knew that I tended to have a very distorted way of thinking with my depression. Most times, I have viewed things in absolute, black-and-white categories or I have blown things out of proportion. I also have tended to see one negative event as a never-ending pattern of failures.
I still had the deep-seated conviction as I shared in previous posts that as with the man born blind in John 9,God has created me a certain way for the specific reason that his name will be glorified as he works through me. I also trusted in what I had quoted above in Philippians 2:13 that God is the one who works in me to will and act to accomplish his plan.
Yet, somehow during this time, I had forgotten about these truths, and I was just going on autopilot, trying to rationalize these thoughts and feelings away all on my own. I tried to escape or deny them—“runaway, runaway”—going back into the same inefficient pattern of trying so hard to be in control because let’s face it, it takes a lot of work to change—to get rid of the old way and embrace God’s new way. Basically, since I had forgotten that Jesus has healed me from being spiritual blind, I kept going back to get that old, dilapidated cloak: https://www.abideinlove.com/wp/?p=1690/
So, to further aggravated this issue, I tried to dig deeper into other books or videos to get help in processing all the junk that I was feeling and to try to find out why I was wrestling so much with God about this issue of confidence. (This is what I tend to do: gather more knowledge and rely more on my own understanding.)
Days were now turning into weeks, and I still was clinging onto my old way of seeing things. The pile of unprocessed thoughts and emotions was getting larger as I was constantly getting stuck because I was focusing solely on what I could not do. I kept wondering, “What am I not getting ‘right’? What’s wrong with me? Why do I keep getting stuck as I try to process what I think are supposed to be simple things?”
As long as I chose to rely on my own abilities, I could not take my focus off of myself and my failures, so I progressively got worse, crawling further into my hole of despair and hopelessness.
One morning, I got stuck on the first chapter of a book called, “Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be: A 90-Day Guide to Living the Proverbs 31 Life”. Looking back at the event now, the name of the chapter is rather comical. “Day 1: Place Your Full Confidence in God”. At the time though, I thought God had a sick sense of humor. “Yah right. Like how can I even put “FULL” confidence in God when I don’t have any confidence at all or I don’t know what my confidence is in!”—Yep, that all or nothing thought process.
To begin with, I had hesitated with getting the book, thinking that I did not want to start studying yet something else that would challenge me to “do” things that I am already having difficulty with “doing”. Yet I purchased the book, since I have always wanted to be part of a “book” club. The SAGE (Seeking After God Everyday) women were wanting to read this book together and to discuss it during our meetings. (There might have even been a bit of trying to please others in there too since again my worth is often wrapped up in my performance.)
During the first meeting after some women shared some positive things about the book, I finally broke down and cried about being stuck on the first day.
Of course, the women had offered to be there for me to help with whatever was going on and said to reach out to them for help. Somehow though I knew that it was now all beginning to unravel. I knew that, as much as I did not want to do this because certain feelings just make me feel so uncomfortable, I needed to take the time to go to God to begin processing all that had happened. I cannot rely on my own abilities, my own works, my own understanding, and I cannot deny what I have felt. I MUST RELY ON GOD to deal with my issues of confidence.
So, I started to reflect on my response last year when I needed to stop working because of my cancer and when I had to get on Social Security Disability Insurance. Though I always knew I was a work-a-holic, this was the first time that I had seriously noted that I put way too much of my value in what I do. Even in October 2023, I had responded with a tremendous amount of anxiety when I had to decide to go to the last-minute cariologist’s appointment instead of going into work as I had originally planned. I have always noted this struggle of my worth each time that I have been sick with a cold or when I am taking longer than I think I should with healing whether physically or emotionally. Though I know that this is a core character flaw that I will always have to deal with, God wanted me to once and for all come to him to ask for deliverance from this.
But “How?”, I kept asking. “How can I be delivered from this issue?” I understood that I needed to keep going to God in prayer as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. Though there had been times that I remembered that I had placed my full confidence in God for a certain period, it just kept looking like I kept failing at continuing to do so. “How can I continue putting my full trust in God? How can I make certain that I won’t fall back into the same pattern of relying just on myself again?”
The point is that I CANNOT. As Jesus kept saying as he was here on earth that he can do nothing (okay Jesus is God himself in the flesh and he says that he can do NOTHING—whoa!) by himself but only what he sees God his Father doing.
John 5:19
19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
Thanks be to God. Once again, God gave me an AHA moment. As I began going to him for guidance and talked with others about my issues, he gave me a better grasp of what he has been always so graciously doing for me—in fact for all of us. I believe that this is the reason why this particular story is in the Bible. It is the story of faith of two different people who went to Jesus--a synagogue ruler, named Jairus, and the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years.
My heart was pricked as I was watching an episode of season 3 of The Chosen called “Clean Part 2”. I had seen this episode several times, but there was one section that I kept hitting repeat.
It was when Jairus, Jesus, and Jesus’ three besties—Peter, James, and John—are on their way to Jairus’ house. As they are approaching his house, there is wailing and flute playing from the professional mourners. When Jairus is being told that his daughter has died, he says, “No! No! I went to find the teacher; he was going to heal her.” And when he was told not to trouble Jesus anymore and that his wife was with his daughter’s body, he said with big tears, “No! No! I was getting Jesus. I went as fast as I could.” Then Jesus tells him, “Do not be afraid. Only believe.” There was something that had resonated with me, but I could not identify why so I decided that I would study out that story and talk it all over with God the next morning.
As I was praying and studying Jairus’ response in The Chosen, I realized that Jairus had emphasized what He himself was doing as a human being. Now the words he said in the episode of The Chosen are not what is written in the Bible, however because of what Jesus said to him, I can believe that Jesus had picked up the issue of Jairus beginning to lack his faith in what Jesus could do. Jesus could not just heal his daughter, but actually raise her from the dead.
Mark 5:36
36 Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”
This was my conclusion: I tend to put limits on what Jesus can do in my life. Jesus meets me with where I am at. I just need to listen to him as he tells me to not be afraid and just believe. Jesus will continue to do mighty and powerful things in my life and will help me to grow and use me to help others grow as well. Jesus tells all of us: “Don’t be afraid. Just believe.” God will meet each of us where we are at and will challenge us to think outside the box, in which we typically put Jesus. I just need to continue taking my steps out on faith in Jesus, and God who began a good work in me will carry it onto completion (Philippians 1:6). This is always the way that God works because he knows that we all need to grow, and he understands that with growth there will be a lot of pain and challenges as we are looking for our faith and confidence in him.
Though God has been consistently answering our many prayers that I would surrender to his good, pleasing, and perfect will and that I have had experienced much of his peace, I will always wrestle with God as I experience many different troubles. The point is though that GOD is doing it. He is guiding me as I process all these crazy thoughts and feelings, and it is HIM who is working within me.
Ephesians 3: 20-21
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
YouTube of a song that the Virtual Choir of the Chicago Church of Christ performed during COVID-19 in 2020.
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