#105 Pride Dissolves in Healing Solitude
Posted: Saturday, August 4th, 2018
PrintAbout Rule and Reign Like Daniel Series
Daniel believed in God as Ruler, so he brought Heaven’s Rule into his earthly government and heathen captors. Do you rule and reign like Daniel did?
Devotional
You will be driven from human society…until you learn that the Most High rules over the kingdoms of the world and gives them to anyone He chooses.
Daniel 4:32 NLT
The king of Babylon was so related to the people that he believed it was him who they worshiped and feared. But when Nebuchadnezzar was taken away from mankind, he could see himself as nothing more than just a man, no different than other men. And that is the humility which alone can see God. In isolation, there is only one comparison: me to God – and that contrast decimates me.
Too much ‘with’ people and there can be distortion of reality in either direction, up to superiority or down to inferiority, both of which are pride by self-focus. And that is actually being god.
Healing Solitude
A healing solitude sets us before God alone, and pride simply dissolves. Arrogance thrives only in the realm of mankind, by comparison or dependence. Without others, pride has no food supply. ‘Isolation from mankind’ was Nebuchadnezzar’s restoration and sanity. It took solitude to see God as the Only and himself as the nothing.
This is why Jesus demands one loyalty above all others, even family. The disciple is one who has only one Relationship – to the Perfect Son – and only one Voice, that of the Shepherd. It is blessed isolation unto One. It is how Jesus lived with the Father. He lived, He loved, and He walked with people but His one focus, His only loyalty was His Father.
After this time had passed, I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up to heaven. My sanity returned, and I praised and worshiped the Most High and honored the one who lives forever.
Daniel 4:34 NLT
Anyone who looks to heaven can see God. To look toward heaven is to turn from self, from the world, from people. To look to heaven is to get outside what seems real and leave obsession with the self-worshiping-self. Reality is in God alone, but it exists in another realm. Heaven!
Madness is unreality. Any exaltation of self is insanity. All tyranny issues from madness. The cure of the mind is to turn from this realm and look to another.
God’s throne in heaven is available to any who will first turn away and then look up.