When we truly discover what God the Father is really like and how He delights in us, then we will not remain the same. He is not proud, for God is Love, and Love is not proud. God the Father is patient and kind; He does not envy or boast.
He is not arrogant or rude or act unbecomingly. Love, the identity of God the Father, is not easily angered. He does not delight in iniquity (everything and anything that hinders love), but rejoices with the truth. Jesus came to show us the Father and bears the very nature and character of the Father. (1)
Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light. He invites all who are burdened and heavy-laden to come to him, for He, like His Father, is humble and lowly of heart. The yoke of God is humility. Becoming yoked together with God is to receive grace to our neck.
For as the yoke is placed upon the necks of animals to steer them in the right direction, we need the yoke of grace and humility to bind us and Jesus together in love. If we don’t wear God’s yoke of grace and humility, then we automatically remain under a different yoke–what Isaiah 10 refers to as the yoke of the king of Assyria.
Essentially, the yoke of the Assyrian king is pride, the opposite of humility. Pride is impatient and mean. Pride is envious of others and is boastful. What is pride? It includes placing one’s identity in some secondary characteristic of one’s creation, such as one’s race, gender, looks, sexual desires or preferences, etc., and it sees one’s entire world through the lens of that secondary characteristic as being the primary center focus of one’s existence. (2)
Pride even will often manifest itself physically in neck problems and diseases. For instance, I was born with congenital hypothyroidism, a disease of the thyroid gland, which is located in the neck.
Concerning this disease, I had always reasoned, “I was born this way; and there’s therefore nothing I can do about it. It’s God’s will that I have this disease; otherwise I wouldn’t have been born with it. He doesn’t want me healed of it; He gave it to me to teach me humility, so I just need to accept that and manage it with medication for the rest of my life.”
That is the way that pride talks. “This disease, behavior, theology, lifestyle, sexual orientation, etc. was inherent at birth, and so it’s who I am. Nothing I’ve tried over the course of many years has ever changed that, so it must therefore be how God made me and saw me before the foundation or creation of the world.” (3)
But is that really true? Is that really God’s perspective? Is that really humility talking, or is that pride or “false humility” talking? Could that possibly be self-pity–a yoke of pride that binds us to the past–that is speaking to and through us?
What if God the Father did not intend for that congenital disease, belief, sexual inclination, or mindset etc. to be a part of us when He fashioned and imagined our spirit-being before the foundation of the world?
What if there are aspects that we are born with that did not come from the Father of lights, but rather from the father of lies?
Does the Father of lights, who gives every good and perfect gift from above, give diseases to His children to “teach them a lesson” (in the sense of mere punishment) without providing them with healing, freedom, or the solution once they learn their lesson and change the way they think and live? (4)
What if God created us “very good” before the creation of the world, but our human spirits received those negative emotions and aspects of the fallen world during conception and/or in the womb?
What if God is not the giver of those diseases, syndromes, and unhealthy emotions and mindsets that cause those diseases via the mind-body connection, but we instead inherited those things from the pit of hell by the decisions, mindsets, and ways of thinking passed down to us gene-rationally that don’t fully agree with God’s perspectives? Is that a possibility? (5)
“Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight—that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge. 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:4-5 NKJV)
In this passage, King David recognizes his sin and takes personal responsibility for it. Although he acknowledges the generational aspect of his sin struggle in that he was born that way (“in sin my mother conceived me”), he does not use that as an excuse to continue in that sinful pattern, belief, mindset, habit, perspective, or lifestyle. He doesn’t do what Adam did when he said, “It was that woman whom You gave me, Lord.”
David doesn’t say, “It’s not my fault. It’s my mom’s fault for not managing her negative emotions and stress better when I was in the womb.” Or “It’s my dad’s fault for being passive and for not loving my mom perfectly; he’s responsible for allowing for all the generational self-hatred, lust, rejection, fear, guilt, anxiety, strife, etc. to pass down to me both in the womb and during childhood.” (6)
Even if those things may have some truth to them, it is now our responsibility to be fathered by God, to pick up our own cross, to deal with those sins or negative emotions, and to let God heal our hearts.
It is now our responsibility to forgive our parents, siblings, friends, spiritual leaders, teachers, or anyone who hurt, wronged, wounded, traumatized, or offended us, and to repent and believe in the good news of what Jesus did for us on the cross.
Every time those negative memories or accusations re-surface, it is up to us to bring them before God and to ask Him to heal our hearts and to tell us the truth about these memories or accusing voices according to His Word. (7)
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. 14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. 15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. (James 1:13-17 NKJV)
Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! 12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:9-12 NKJV)
Has your earthly dad ever given you a disease in order to teach you a lesson when you were being naughty? Did your earthly dad desire deep down that you grow up in a perpetual cycle of poverty, disease, bad decisions, guilt, shame, anxiety, fear of the future, anger, rage, arrogance, disrespect for authority, lack, stagnancy, and no education or training for success?
If our earthly fathers desired for us to be successful, healthy, wise, loving, and to have good relationships with people, then how much more does our perfect Heavenly Father want good things for us? Only the father of lies, whom Jesus calls, “the devil,” wants us to grow up in all those curses of poverty, disease, strife, broken relationships, anxiety, terror, hatred, pride, etc. (8)
One can read Deuteronomy 28 for a contrast of God’s blessings and desires for us, and the curses that result when we don’t remain in His love, think how He thinks, and believe the truth that He believes. Those curses are not God’s desire for us, but they are the father of lies’ desire for us.
All the devil has to do for those curses to manifest more fully in our lives is to get us (or to keep us) in pride, bitterness, unforgiveness, rejection, self-hatred, envy, self-pity, complaining, anxiety, guilt, shame, fear, or anything else that is consistent with his fallen nature, and we will reap the byproducts of those negative emotions in our relationships, finances, and physical bodies (via the mind-body connection). (9)
For more information on overcoming pride through a relationship with God, I recommend my post “Crushing Pride” here.
- 1 John 4:16; 1 Corinthians 13:4-6; John 14:9-10; Hebrews 1:1-3; Colossians 1:15-23
- See Matthew 11:25-30; Proverbs 3:3-8, 21-22, 34; 2 Chronicles 32:22-26
- Job 41:1,15,22,34. For more information on the connection between pride and disease, I recommend my post “‘Healed’ Twice” here.
- Ephesians 1:4; Psalm 139:13ff; John 8:44
- Genesis 1:26-28, 31; Psalm 51:1ff
- Genesis 3:12
- See 2 Corinthians 10:4-6. Currently I am reading “Biblical Foundations for Freedom: Destroying Satan’s Lies with God’s Truth” by Dr. Art Mathias, and am benefiting from it greatly. Some of these ideas come from his work.
- John 10:10; 1 John 3:8ff; Hebrews 12:1ff
- Matthew 6:8-15; 18:12-35; Mark 11:22-26
