Pride...

Life's too short to be full of pride.

Everyone suffers from pride once in a while. Now, I'm not talking about the pride where we feel good and comfortable about ourselves, the pride where we stand up for what we believe in, like Aussie pride or azn pride, or like the kid who makes his mum proud. No, that's good. I'm talking about another kind of pride that is evident almost everywhere in the world - the selfish kind of pride; the cocky pride; the pride that causes people to judge, accuse, and badmouth others; the pride that puffs people up. And who would have thought? Being shy can involve pride.

Mark Driscoll hit it right on the head. The message that really stood out to me, while I was listening to his video sermon on Friday night, was that worrying about what others think about you involves pride. If you don't know already, I'm abnormally anxious, at least in my mind. I might have mentioned before that I'm a "worrier king". Part of it (a significant chunk) is involved in worrying about what others think of me. I'd never really thought about it, but the sermon gave me a kick-start. Worrying about what others think, to me, is synonymous to worrying about self-image. While I don't really worry about how I look, I do worry about how others perceive me by the way I act; by the things I do or say.

My biggest concern is about how this has affected my interactions with others. It's worry that drives my actions. I find it hard to talk to strangers. Yes, I'm an introvert, and yes, I'm aware of my higher-than-usual level of neuroticism (anxiety, worry, etc. as a personality trait), but thinking back on my past encounters with others, I realise that part of it was due to pride. It led me to be distant from others, eg. people in my lectures and tutes. As for the people I do know, I don't seem to be as close to them as I'd like to be. These people include my friends from church and high school, my family, and higher authorities who are there to look after me, eg. our youth pastor and other older adults at church. Oh, and God. Can't forget the large-and-in-charge. It seems to me that I haven't been sharing as much of my life with them as I should be. Relationships, I believe, are the most impostant things in this life. Through my pride, though, I've been hiding in the corner, and, in effect, have been neglecting them.

If I really think about it, being negatively judged is not really a big thing. We're all the same according to God, so who cares? One day, it's all going to disappear, anyway. This life is nothing more than a puff of smoke. Besides, it's not doing me any good. I can get rid of it by the grace of God. To me, that means to drop to the ground, drop my prideful ways of thinking, and let Him pick me up. There can't be two in the driver's seat after all. Finally, I'd like to share some lyrics from two great songs I heard this week: Say the Words and Jesus Freak, both by DC Talk. Both songs deal, at a significant degree, with pride.

"But still we choose to hide behind the face of pride
Pretending we are blind to the calling.
This is my point and case, if hate can be erased
With such a simple phrase, why are we stalling?

Say the words, say the words, say, 'I LOVE YOU' "

"What will people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus freak?
What will people do when they find that it's true?
I don't really care if they label me a Jesus freak;
There ain't no disguising the truth!"

Life's too short

Life's too short...

-To be worrying all the time
-To be carefree
-To be overworked
-To be lazy
-To be moping around all the time
-To be chasing fantasies
-To be hostile towards others
-To be fighting against others
-To be wasting your time
-To be cramming everything in
-To be hesitant
-To be impatient
-To be scared of everything
-To be reckless
-To be caught up in philosophies
-To be living for freaking money
-To be living for freaking education and knowledge
-To be LOVING your mansion
-To be living for cars
-To be LOVING your WRX STi
-To be living for games
-To be LOVING your XPS
-To be LOVING your 50-inch plasma screen
-To be living for your own happiness! Gah!
-To be living for yourself
-To be worshiping yourself
-To be searching for knowledge
-To be searching for happiness in life
-To be searching for meaning in life
-To be holding grudges
-To be lying to yourself
-To be lying at all
-To be arguing and reasoning all the time
-To be making excuses
-To be aimless
-To be focusing too much
-To be worrying about the past
-To be worrying about the present
-To be worrying about the future
-To have your head in the clouds
-To have your head down all the time
-To have your nose up in the air
-To have fear all the time
-To have no fear: to be reckless
-To try to be good in your own strength
-To ignore the warnings
-To worry, worry, worry about the warnings
-To 'fix' the world
-Not to invest in relationships
-Not to say sorry
-Not to forgive others' wrongdoings
-Not to make things right with others
-Not to honour your parents
-Not to love others
-Not to hug someone
-Not to BE a friend
-Not to stomp on your selfishness

Recently, I've been noticing how short life is. The thing that reminded me most was the skit I performed in (ehhh...bad grammar). There was a part where we made shapes with our hands under UV light to "Who Am I" by Casting Crowns. Nice song; reminds us of how small we really are compared to God. Since we kept on practising the skit, I kept on hearing the song over and over. There was a particular line that stuck out:

"I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow."

It's so true. O_o

The amount of time I have on this earth is...well, anything but plentiful. I figured that I should make the most of what I've got now.

Also, I've concluded that my life, and all the is in it, is worthless; absolutely WORTHLESS with God here with me. It is now my mission to give Him all I've got.