I was listening to pastor Brian Dainsberg talk about the Bride preparing herself for Christ’s return and this quote came up: 

“The bride can prepare herself only when God provides the wedding gown for her because this garment is beautiful and pure. Her own clothes are but filthy rags but Christ cleanses and presents her to Himself without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish” 

~Simon Kistemaker

And my thoughts were about us as believers, always afraid that we're going to come across prideful or be prideful–and that fear is warranted to a degree–but on the other hand, if we land too heavily there, we're going to keep ourselves from being productive in the authority Jesus has given us because we're going to be living under fear instead of faith. 

Fearing becoming prideful also diminishes the power of Jesus’s active involvement in our lives to keep us from the heart attitudes that we don't want–like, the fact that we don't want to be prideful is Jesus–it's not in ourselves. And the point that I really want to make is if we are abiding in the Vine, if we are staying close to Jesus, if we are planted by the Water as it says in Psalm 1:1-3, we will bear fruit and everything we do will succeed–because it's not us living! It’s Him living through us! (Galatians 2:20)

I think we fail to live the life we're meant to live because of these subtle fears of: A. coming across as being prideful, which is only fear of man and disobedience to Jesus.  Or B. afraid that we will be prideful or we will become prideful–and what does that say to Jesus? “I don't think you can keep me. I don't think your blood is powerful enough to keep me, I need to keep myself.” 

I mean, that fear is rooted in pride and unbelief. 

So, I just think Jesus wants to set us free from these worldly thoughts that sound good but are really detracting from us using our Kingdom authority. Jesus said he's given the church the keys to the Kingdom. He said, “All authority has been given to Me therefore go and make disciples and I am with you always to the end of the age.” 

The only thing we need to fear, brothers and sisters, is falling away from Jesus. The only thing that we need to keep after is staying close to Jesus and connected to him and trained to discern his voice. You know his voice is uplifting, rebuilding, rejuvenating, refreshing, it's corrective, yes, but always with love, not with condemnation. And so we have got to discern where we are fearing man, where we are not fearing Jesus, where we are not trusting him and that means we're not obeying him. 

The same thing goes for dealing with offenses. We would prefer to walk away than obey Jesus because it's costly and scary and it takes courage to obey him, to go to that person. And when you do, it’s an act of love. Loving your brother enough to want to keep the relationship, number one, loving them enough to want correction–whether it's in them or you–and sometimes it's both, but sometimes it's just . . . it's a misunderstanding and a failure to see! 

And we have guards up. We, instead of having the breastplate of righteousness that protects us, we set up this human guard and try to hide behind it–and then we keep people away from us that way.

So, we just need to discern these things. We have been given authority and Jesus can keep us humble–his blood purifies us. His mercies are new every morning! So we're gonna slip up, yeah, but in the morning when we're sitting with him and we acknowledge where we slipped up, then we grow, because we don't want to slip up! We hate the fact that we offend Him and that we need that mercy every day. But we love the fact that it's free! It's given to us and He is bringing us from glory to glory, he's continually maturing us. 

And frankly when you're at a point of maturity, you might find that people will look down on you. They might think you're being superior, when in fact, you're just staying true to the Lord!

But, that's the price we pay. That's the price He paid! They didn't want to believe him–the Pharisees wanted to trip him up and knock him down and kick him in the head—but He just stood there and he let them eventually kill him, because he knew who he was and what He was called to do. He knew his identity. He knew the authority the Father had given him. He trusted in it, and he just stood His ground, and that's what we have to do—in Jesus' name!