Appendix 2. A Proud Heart
Believers who live as God’s servants are blessed people who have received the blessing of living with a peaceful heart in a harsh world. But people want to make God their servant. They turn it around and give God orders, telling him to take care of everything they plan and decide, from behind them, so that not one thing fails. I hope you will take a look at whether you yourself might be like that. When God gave you the time, the chance and the means to turn back, you said you had no time to be faithful because you were busy enjoying your hobbies and living as you pleased. Then, when the plenty in front of you looks about to disappear, you panic, make a show of turning back, and complain: I have turned back like this, so why won’t you help me? Did you really turn back? Where does the confidence come from, to tell God so boldly that he must help you, on the strength of pretending for such a short time?
To give an easy example, a father follows his beloved child around, nagging that the child must study. But the child pretends not to hear and is absorbed in the worldly games they like. The father tells the child, who has an exam in a month, that they will regret it if they do not start working hard now. As the exam day draws near, the child gets scared and starts studying three days before the exam. The father sees the child working almost too hard and, feeling sorry, asks why they did not start earlier, and the child answers bluntly: can’t you see I’m doing it now?
What the child means is that since they have turned back, even now, the father must help them. Of course the child worked hard for three days, but when the father tells them to repent of not doing their best before that, the child grumbles: didn’t you say that if I turned back you would forgive me even if I had done wrong? Are you telling me to repent even of what I did wrong in the past? But behavior and words like these are the thinking of a very small child who has not understood at all what the father’s words mean.
Aren’t you, too, standing before God with a childish faith right now? Whether a believer worked hard for a whole month for the exam and won a prize, or studied for three days, did badly and was punished, it has nothing to do with God.
He only told you to make the trials you go through into a chance to receive a reward. If you have no wisdom to understand the word, you will probably fail to grow into someone of real spiritual stature and may find it hard to stand on your own. When he tells you to live diligently by the word, he is urging you so that you will receive a reward. God does not receive glory because you worked hard, and God does not suffer because you sinned. Of course the Father’s heart aches to see souls who do not share in God’s glory, but not doing your best is evidence that you are the center of your own life. When a human being becomes the center of life, neither the word of God nor the counsel of brothers and sisters in faith can be heard. God only looks on that pitiful spirit and wants it to change its center to God and be blessed. If you have the wisdom to live the life given to you now with all your might by the word, you have received a great blessing as a believer, and it is evidence that you are receiving the great reward only God gives.