you're not the boss of me

St Vincent of Lerins talks to us about accepting authority today in A Year with the Church Fathers. He is talking about the Catholic church, and how we should determine if what we believe is truly Catholic. But what he says applies to all believers.

We have to be humble in order to learn. That goes for any situation in our lives. As long as we think we have all the answers, we won't listen. For us Christians, we pretty much all believe that God is wiser than we are. But we don't act like it sometimes. We're so used to the motto of western civilization, "Don't tell me what to do!" that we even find ourselves yelling that phrase to God.

We don't do it consciously. But when it comes to a choice between what we KNOW God wants for us, and our own preferences, we tend to talk ourselves into our own preferences, don't we? In our mind, we know that God is all knowing, and wants what's best for us. But when the rubber hits the proverbial road, we oftentimes find ourselves doing what WE want over what He wants for us.

So learning humility is important, right? Like the pic above tells us, obedience to God BEGINS with humility. That's just the FIRST step. If you find yourself tripping over your pride when you begin trying to follow Jesus, ask Him to teach you humility.

And then trust Him. It's a joke that we should never pray for patience, because God will teach you patience by doing terrible things to you. The same could be said for humility. But we shouldn't be afraid. We should trust God to teach us what we need to know. To help us learn the humility we need to follow Him.

God, thank You for teaching us humility. Please help us to apply it to our lives.