The Backs of the Proud Will Be Broken

The Helm

Welcome back to the ship.

Have you ever felt like it’s getting a little eldritch l out here in the waves of life, what with the way we influence and treat one another? Where events and choices take unnatural turns that seem out of purpose or character?

A couple weeks ago we looked at Wonder Woman 1984 as an illustration about how our internal actions don’t necessarily stay internal. Last week we talked about the importance of truth telling.

It didn’t occur to me at the time of writing those two posts that C.S. Lewis connected the dots in a perfect intersection in his sermon, The Weight of Glory.

That’s where our clash takes us today.

Only humility can get us there and the backs of the proud will be broken.

Clash of Tides

Do your kids fight with each other?

For a host of reasons, siblings have a unique amount of conflict. Imbalanced relationships with their parents, idiosyncrasies and interests and habits, communication styles, assertion for dominance and influence and space and attention. The opportunities for breakdown are legion.

With this powder keg of potential energy, which isn’t exclusive to siblings, our closest relationships are perfect targets for spiritual attack. With those we’ve known the longest, isn’t it easy to look to our past experiences as the predictors of the future? Next thing you know, you start believing statements like… They always do this. They never do that. There’s no point in me saying anything. This is just going to turn into a fight.

Hope is one of the plunders of spiritual warfare. What we believe in moments of conflict is going to dictate how we respond. This is more than mindset but it may be helpful to look at mindsets for a moments.

Have you heard of having a fixed mindset versus having a growth mindset? Either one of these is the narrative you tell yourself. It’s the story you’re living in. Perception does not define reality but without light shining into your own darkness, what you see becomes your perceived reality. A fixed mindset is when you tell yourself nothing’s ever going to change, it’s always going to be this way, there’s no point. That’s being stuck in hopelessness. A growth mindset is when you believe things can be different, people can change, conflict can be worked through, and new skills can be learned. It’s the opposite of stuck. As someone who’s experienced depression in the past, that feeling of hitting the wall with no way forward is 100% a trigger, but we’re talking about interpersonal conflict at the moment. Internal will have to wait for another sunrise but we do have to acknowledge that our internal dialogue is going to have an outward effect. Our hopes or resentments will leak out.

What does all of this have to do with glory? In my favorite narrative clarifying work by C.S. Lewis, glory is defined as as having the good report and approval of God. It’s not fame and it’s not luminosity. It’s the favor of the Lord that rests on you that gives you glory. The easiest way for me to think about this is with my dog. Even with the kids, sin can get in the way. Genuine love and complements can be taken as glazing. With the dog? Her delight is in me telling her she’s a good girl and giving her pets. Is she always a good girl? No, and there are times when I’m irritated at her, but her glory shines brightest with my favor. She loves it. We may joke about her wanting attention, but is it attention or the glory of her owners favor?

Lewis warns us that it is easily possible to think far too much of our own glory. In an age of moral therapeutic deism where our self-focus has the same effect as a magnifying glass channeling sunlight to an ant, Lewis leads us to the life giving aqueduct of humility where we focus on our neighbor’s glory instead of our own. Alas, as the saying goes, he can lead us to water but he can’t make us drink.

Which brings me to one of the many famous passages in The Weight of Glory…

Do you feel the weight of your neighbor’s glory?

Your sister’s? Your brother’s?

Your wife’s? Your husband’s?

Your friend who doesn’t see the solutions to the problems of the world in the same way you do?

The fellow heirs of glory in your church who grind your gears more than mid-2000’s Mazda with a bad synchronizer in its manual transmission?

I’ll ask again, do you feel the weight of your neighbor’s glory?

The Armory

Who do you need to be hopeful for today?

Prayerfully consider the following verse…

What relationships are you helping along towards immortal horror and what relationships are you helping along towards everlasting splendor?

Only humility can carry the weight of glory.

If right now you’re feeling the weight of your sin more than the burden of your neighbor’s glory, take it the God in prayer. Forget any lofty language. Just tell the Lord what you’ve done and ask Him to forgive you. Ask Him for the power to walk in a new way. Then go to the other person you’ve failed and ask their forgiveness.

Forgiveness is where true power over darkness lies.

Today is the day to live in the glory of your heavenly Father’s approval, found in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Sunbreak Stories

This is a story about how God came through for me recently.

As I was writing this issue, discouragement has been heavy on my back. Several physical factors have depleted many of my reserves and when you’re weak and weary, you are easy prey. Speaking from experience, external factors and internal failures wear down your alertness.

As I was sitting in my office drinking my coffee, the weight was feeling heavy. We have an older lady on staff who is a believer and she will frequently pop into my office to check on me and pray for me. A while ago, I decided to just be honest with her and without giving any situational details, just relay the status of my soul.

This day she told me, “You’ve just gotta praise Him. In the storm, keep praising.”

This resonated because over the last couple days, I’d been reading Psalm 34:1-3. My own prayers have been interrupted so I hadn’t made it through the whole Psalm.

If I’m being honest with you, my first response in every situation isn’t to praise the Lord. Maybe that’s how I got to this place to begin with. Either way, outside of my own will and doing, the Lord sent me encouragement to keep praising Him. Be humble, think of your neighbor’s glory, lest your proud back be broken.

Praising the Lord is truly a weapon of warfare against principalities and powers, spiritual enemies, dark forces and demonic accusations.

Praise God for faithful older church ladies who have praised Him throughout the storms of their years.

Keep praising Him.

Dropping Anchor

The enemy will do all they can to keep our eyes focused on ourselves instead of loving our families and friends and neighbors and even our own enemies. In this way, Jesus lived the life we could not live and gave up His life for His enemies to pay the price their sins deserved. Lest He be thought of as merely the ultimate example, He is far more than that. We were His enemies. He paid the wages our sins deserve.

I repeatedly used the phrase about how the backs of the proud will be broken in this post. As we come to a close, I’ll drop anchor with the whole quote.

Thank you for being here this week. Stay humble, friends.

Stay Anchored and keep fighting the good fight,

~ J.P. Simons ⚓️

Below Deck: A Deep Dive

Since I leaned so heavily on The Weight of Glory today, I want to share the entire message with you.

We’ll take a pause on Precious Remedies this week as we take a deep dive with C.S. Lewis on what glory means for us, our neighbor, and why there’s weight to it.

If you’re inclined, you can also tap here to access the PDF where you can download it to your phone so you can read it instead of doom scroll social media or the news while you’re waiting in line or using the bathroom.

The Weight of Glory is the first a series of nine sermons collected in a book of the same title. At the time of this posting, the paperback is less than $9 on Amazon. That’s less than the used book store sells Lewis’s books for.

They know what they’ve got.