John 3:30 "He must increase, I must decrease"

One thing that I've learned in the past few months: God becoming more prominent in our lives happens in proportion to us becoming less important. Meaning that one doesn't occur without the other; if God is to occupy a larger part of our lives, we necessarily have to occupy a smaller part. And vice versa: If we start to take more control of our lives, to magnify ourselves instead of God, then God's role is accordingly diminished. What exactly does magnifying ourselves mean, though?

Magnifying ourselves can make us either proud or anxious, but both are born out of deception. To be proud is to buy the lie that we can impact our own lives more effectively than God can; in other words, it is to trust ourselves more than we trust God. We then catch ourselves saying things like "I guess all we can do is pray", as if prayer were a last resort to fall back on when all else has been exhausted instead of a powerful weapon. Or we let our relationship with God become centered on our own needs - as if God were our servant - and we seem more intent on whining than on humbly seeking God's guidance. To be anxious is to deny God's power in our lives, for we are told that God is love, and there is no fear in love (1 John 3:18). But friends, amidst a bleak generation of self-indulgent and godless emo-ing, we are called not to conform but to turn our eyes away from ourselves and our anxieties and to fix them upon Jesus' beautiful face.

God longs to and is waiting to bless us more abundantly that we could ever imagine, but first we need to let Him! Somtimes, God is unable to work in our lives simply because we refuse to make any room at all for Him. If He is to increase, we must first of all must decrease. How? Well, since the process of magnifying ourselves consists of a confidence in man and a complete lack of trust in God, the process of magnifying God is simply the opposite!

Jeremiah 17:5-8

5 Cursed is the one who trusts in man; who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the Lord

6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

7 But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord.
whose confidence is in him.

8 He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit

So I encourage all of us to examine our lives carefully. Let's come before the Lord and ask Him to search our hearts (Psalm 139:23) - are there areas of our lives where we are refusing to let go: academics, a particular relationship, ungodly desires? If so, let us humbly repent. And as we start the second half of the June holidays, do continue to keep each other in prayer. May we be men and women who place their confidence firmly in the Lord!