Humility

is the key, I think. I read somewhere on someone's blog about how it is so easy to get proud when they have learned a lot. While it is true that knowledge can puff up, any REAL knowledge of value, wisdom, etc., I can't even really apply to myself. I can't choose to live out knowing my identity in Christ. I can't choose to have right motives in how I treat other people. I can have head knowledge of it, but I can't do much of anything. The more knowledge a person has (not fact-knowledge but application), the more it should make them dependent on the One who give the knowledge, the one that gives the ability to apply it. On my own, I have no real strength to carry it out. But there is a strength giver. A self-control giver. And that is the One that I am incredibly dependent on. The Christian faith becomes nothing more than facts and cliches if there is no dependance on God, no relationship with Him. But that's not the way it was meant to be. I have heard people complain that they have head-knowledge of God but don't know how to get it down to their heart. In my life it is only through spending time on my face before God, to truly put Him first and seek first His kingdom and righteousness that any application is actually lived out. The Christian life is dependence on God. It is throwing myself before Him, begging him, imploring Him to do what His Word says, to praise Him regardless of situations and circumstances, to thank Him in all things, and to live life in an attitude of worship. Anything less is settling for mediocrity, complacency, and deadness in walk. Why do so many Christians settle for so little in their walk with God? The Bible says, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with ALL your heart?" Where is our hearts at? How can we possibly expect God to annoint our times of worship and prayer if our heart isn't with Him? If we give up after 5 minutes because there wasn't any fireworks in our prayer time? Where is the seeking after Him? Where is the holy boldness to truly press our pleas before Him for His honor and glory? The truth is, I'm convinced it is impossible to truly have times of serious intercession without the power of the Spirit. And if we are praying while prideful how can we expect God to annoint what he opposes (James 4:6). In my life I have seen deadness in prayer when I have walked in any amount of pride and seen God answer when I ask the Holy Spirit to pray through me, knowing that any prayer answers that will happen will not be because of me, but rather because of the one who I ask to fill me more and more. I have a choice. Do I let my pride stagnate me spiritually so that I walk in complacency, unable to apply anything of value that God chooses to give me the opporutnity to learn? Or do I come broken before the One who is the Applier, the One who brings things from head-knowledge to heart-knowledge? Do I choose to essentially reject God due to living a lie of self-sufficiency until life becomes so out-of-control that I realize I HAVE to have God back and be dependent on Him, or do I choose to constantly throw myself before God, giving Him glory for anthing that has happened, thanking Him for His blessings, and then throwing myself at His feet to worship and magnify Him both in times of prayer and how He lives life through me. I have a choice. God, I want to choose the latter.