At times, I find myself in competition with some fellow Christians who seem to want to brag about everything. While I think it is proper and required to acknowledge to others that God is the source of all our blessings and all our fruits, I see some Christians pointing to such things as something they deserve in return for their faithfulness and their quantity of faith.
Make no bones about it… we deserve nothing good that God gives to us. We deserve eternal damnation in Hell separated from Him. However, the atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross has allowed us to cross the bridge to Heaven. When I see Christians bragging about God’s blessings in the context of their piety, it makes me wonder if they understand such concepts as humility and giving in secret instead of trying to demean others in order to make themselves look like favorite children of God.
How should my faith in the invisible world affect my day-to-day life in the visible world? According to Jesus, it’s what God thinks of us that matters, not what others think. Jesus instructed us to pray in a closed room, where no one could see us, rather than in a public place where we might get credit for being spiritual (Matt. 6:6). In other words, live for God and not others.
Do we clamor for attention and achievement? Jesus invites us to let go of that competitive struggle, to trust that God’s opinion of us is the only one that ultimately counts.
How would our lives differ if we truly played to an audience of One? Certainly our sense of ego and rivalry would fade, because we would no longer need to worry about proving ourselves to others. We could concentrate instead on pleasing God by living in a way that would attract people to Jesus.
