Life Compass

It was only a three-minute escape. Listening to my name being chanted over and over, louder and louder, with greater urgency, along with pounding on the door, you might imagine me to be a rock star. But in reality, I’m the mother of a toddler who has decided he is only content when he is in my arms. My escape was merely a trip to the bathroom in which I took a deep breath behind the locked door before re-entering my world of diapers, blocks, and Daniel Tiger. And even though I love this little guy with all my heart, at times he can definitely be a difficult person to keep showing love to, especially in the midst of tantrums and tears. Difficult People Are Everywhere It probably isn’t hard for you to think of a difficult person in your own life. In our broken, sin-filled world, they are everywhere. The co-worker who is willing to do anything to get ahead, including taking credit for your ideas. The in-laws who always seem to be peering over your shoulder, critiquing your parenti...

“Who is my neighbor?” a lawyer asked Jesus ( Luke 10:29 ). The lawyer had made the mistake of trying to catch the law’s author contradicting the law by asking how he should inherit eternal life. The author turned the tables by asking the lawyer what he thought the law said. The lawyer then summarized the law in these two commands: We must love God with all we are ( Deuteronomy 6:5 ) and love our neighbor as ourselves ( Leviticus 19:18 ). The author agreed and said, “Do this, and you will live” ( Luke 10:28 ). But the author’s agreement pricked the lawyer’s conscience. So the lawyer sought to “justify himself” by asking, “Who is my neighbor?” ( Luke 10:29 ). The author answered with the Parable of the Good Samaritan ( Luke 10:30–37 ). The Neighbor We Wouldn’t Choose One observation from this application-rich parable is this: The neighbor we’re called to love is often not one we choose but one God chooses for us. In fact, this neighbor is often not one we would have chosen ha...

In 1908, the British writer G. K. Chesterton described the embryo of today’s full-grown immature culture called postmodernism. One mark of its “vulgar relativism” (as Michael Novak calls it) is the hijacking of the word “arrogance” to refer to conviction and “humility” to refer to doubt. Chesterton saw it coming: What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert — himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt — the Divine Reason. . . . The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. . . . There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it’s practically a more poisonous humility than the...

Pride is perhaps the greatest evil that exists. It wreaks destruction at every level of human experience. It’s present in small irritations and in the collapse of great civilizations. Pride is the root of every sin and pollutes every otherwise righteous affection, motivation, and action. While humility sees glory and wants to praise it, pride sees glory and wants to possess it. Pride turns ambition selfish, perverts sexual desire into unspeakable lusts, interprets net-worth as self-worth, infects the wound of grief and loss with the bacteria of bitterness, and twists competition into conquest. To be proud is what it means to be fallen, whether angel or human. Pride is our most deadly enemy — it is what makes Satan deadly to us. And it is alive and active within us. But Jesus came to deliver us from the power of pride and restore all the joy it steals. “Death to the tyrant pride!” is the great gospel battle cry of freedom. The Killer of Our Happiness To understand what pride...

Pride will kill you. Forever. Pride is the sin most likely to keep you from crying out for a Savior. Those who think they are well will not look for a doctor. As seriously dangerous as pride is, it’s equally hard to spot. When it comes to diagnosing our hearts, those of us who have the disease of pride have a challenging time identifying our sickness. Pride infects our eyesight, causing us to view ourselves through a lens that colors and distorts reality. Pride will paint even our ugliness in sin as beautiful and commendable. We can’t conclude that we don’t struggle with pride because we don’t see pride in our hearts. The comfortable moments when I pat myself on the back for how well I am doing are the moments that should alarm me the most. I need to reach for the glasses of Christ-like humility, remembering that nothing good dwells in my flesh, and search my heart for secret pride and its symptoms. In his essay on   undetected pride , Jonathan Edwards points out seven snea...

John 14:1-11 , “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.  2  In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  3  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.  4  And you know the way to where I am going.”  5  Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”  6  Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  7  If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”  8  Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”  9  Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you sa...