subject: Encourage Yourselves Daily & Harden Not Your Hearts [print this page] Encourage Yourselves Daily & Harden Not Your Hearts
"Encourage yourselves daily while is is still 'today', so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin." (Heb 3:7-14)
My own observations have led me to believe that the seemingly least offensive sins can cause us the most harm. Surely I am not the only one that has wondered why pride and vanity have been ranked among the same level of severity as theft and murder. In reality, a thief or murderer likely have no doubt of their acts being sinful. Yet when their lives have gone astray to that extent, repentence or any acknowledgement of sin is likely the furthest from their thoughts. Why? Could it be that their paths have likely traveled a road heavy laden with pride and arrogance? With a habit of prideful assumption, we all can justify many wrongdoings and distance from God.
Pride is the beginning of that path that leads souls astray. It is like marijuana, the gateway drug, that has the capability to lead people to more dangerous choices and vices. If is not recognized as the seed of evil that will eventually lead to ruin, the seed continues to grow into a problem that creeps into various other aspects of our lives. Pride serves as a roadblock to the desire to "encourage ourselves daily" in the way of God's plans. If we deem ourselves already so wise, without seeking wisdom from prayer, scripture and discussion - we are separating ourselves from God's plans for us. Through daily encouragement, we find wisdom and truths from generations of scholarly witnesses set forth by our Creator himself. When we rely solely on the perspectives and experiences of our small little worlds of minimal timelines, we fail ourselves and we fail Him. We need daily renewals and reminders as much, if not more, than our nightly rest.
Several days, weeks, months and years of 'discouragement' can sneak by under the pretenses of pride and lead our lives into disarray. In a nation so rampant with depression and saturated with antidepressant medications, the prideful root has often long since been buried. People find themselves in a place so miserable and hopeless that they care not how they 'fix' it, just as long as it is 'fixed'. Broken hearts and broken lives can only be mended and softened by encouragement from the Creator that gave us our capacity to love and to find hope. So often, I hear people blame God for lives gone astray, for tragedy and disappointment. Our hardships are almost always directly a result of our own or someone else's failure to encourage ourselves to use our free will wisely and with softened hearts.
It is precisely this fate of prideful attitudes that can harm ourselves and others. As the One who can see all and as the Creator of our hearts, our Lord warns us to protect us from the deceit of such a sin. Although a seemingly small offense, pride builds upon the unattended todays and yesterdays in which we fail to "encourage ourselves daily".
