I will often ask God to reveal my sin to me. I want to see my pride so that I can repent of it and walk in humility. In my desire to be a humble man, I know that I must turn from my prideful ways, but I cannot do that until I see where the pride is to turn from it. So I pray that God, the One who see everything in my heart, would reveal the pride.

Then He does this. He allows me to completely fall on my face and pride is totally revealed and I don’t like it. It is painful. It reflects poorly on me. I have to apologize to people. It is just ugly and I don’t like it.

But did not God give me what I asked for?

It is strange to me that I am so eager to ask for my sin to be revealed, and then think that when God does that, it will be easy. But I think this true-ism could rightly be said of the process of turning from pride to humility:

Humility cannot come without the revelation of sin.

Sin must be exposed if we want humility to be cultivated in our lives. There are no shortcuts. It would be nice if I was humble simply by choosing to walk obediently, but the reality is that I don’t. I naturally choose my own wicked, deceitful, self-serving ways.

So, I am learning (again) that being a godly, humble man does not mean that I simply live that without ever doing the opposite. It means that I see the opposite ways more often and I turn back to the cross and there gain the correct perspective.