It is good to once and a while pause and reflect – to take a personal inventory of where we stand in various areas of life. Professionally we have regular reviews and evaluations. An annual physical keeps our health in check. But what about our spiritual life? Do you take time to stop and reflect on how you are doing.
A good barometer of one’s walk with God is how you’re doing with pride and humility. It is good to stop and ask yourself some of those tough questions about whether or not you a humble and honoring God. Pride can be very destructive and it goes contrary to what God wants and how He instructs us to live.
To understand the role of pride we looked at the life of King Uzziah. He became king when he was sixteen years old and reigned for 52 years. He followed his father in doing what the Lord approved and the Bible says “As long as he followed the Lord, God caused him to succeed.” There was a lot of success. So much so that the passage we looked at closed by saying, “But once he became powerful, his pride destroyed him. He disobeyed the Lord his God.”
There was another interesting part of our passage though that grabbed our attention. We discussed the accountability relationship Uzziah had with Zechariah. The passage said, “He followed God during the lifetime of Zechariah, who taught him how to honor God.”
Wow, that is so powerful. Uzziah had someone who asked the tough questions and held him accountable. There was a clear tie between Uzziah’s humility and this accountability relationship. We had some great table discussions along this very line with each of us ultimately needing to ask ourselves the same question about who we have in our lives that holds us accountable. Who is your Zechariah?
May God help each of us to have those kind of people in our lives and may we be someone who helps to teach others how to honor God.