Who Makes You Differ from Another?

For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?--1 Corinthians 4:7

To My Precious Daughters:

Beloved, ask God to implant these words deeply in your heart!  Pride is such deception!  It is of all sins the most ridiculous and foolish. The Bible makes it pretty clear that man is but a breath...a flower that fades and grass that withers. How arrogant we are as human beings to think we are anything!!  We are the work of His hands.  We are the thing formed...not the One who did the forming!  Spurgeon calls us "animated dust."  All we possess comes from the hand of our God...all our gifts are from Him...we cannot glory in them as our own without wronging God.  We owe all to the exceeding riches of His kindness to us in Christ.  As Matthew Henry says "boasting is forever excluded."  

In reality, if we had a proper view, all of who we are would be a reason for humility, NOT pride. A poor man or a beggar glories in those who help and support him.  He does not glory in himself because that would be glorying in his very helpless estate.  In and of ourselves each of us is a beggar...helpless and destined for destruction.  It is only in Christ that we are even made alive!  Without Him we are dead men walking.  He is our all in all.  The more we have received from His hand the more we are in His debt!  Put off pride and put on humility.  By pride and selfish ambition comes nothing but strife, but by humility comes riches, honor and life. God, the high and lofty One...the One who inhabits eternity... dwells with the humble but the proud He knows from afar.  It is Him who formed us, it is Him who works in us...it is Him who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began!  

Beloved, do not envy the gifts and the calling your brother or your sister may have received from  God...do not compare one with another. John 3:27 tells us that a man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven.  Each one of us are used by God for His purposes and have been made and molded with exactly those purposes in mind.  Enjoy the rest that brings. Revel in how fearfully and wonderfully you are made. Walk in the works He has prepared beforehand for you.  Rejoice in how all that comes into your life is not only for your good but His glory.  Surrender all and trust Him to do His work in your heart.  There is NOTHING that we have that we can boast or glory in except our God.  He must increase, and we must decrease!