Check Your Ego at the Door

  I wanta' share an interesting story I read on the internet somewhere…. back in the 80‘s there was a song recorded, “We Are the World”, whose proceeds went to help famine victims in Africa. Recording artists from a wide variety of fields all got together to sing the song. Now Quincy Jones, the producer, had been in the business a long time, and he knew very well what drama queens and drama kings stars and celebrities are. But he also knew that the project they were working on was important, and that if they did it well, the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts, their cause was bigger than any one star, or even than all of them put together. And so he put a note at the entrance to the recording studio when all the stars came: “Check your ego at the door.”  

   Apparently the sign did its job. It was quite remarkable how that group of very diverse stars was able to work and sing together to record “We Are the World”. They understood, for that little time, at least, that there was no room for pride, arrogance, or celebrity when they had such a big and important task ahead of them.

   So, it is with the Church. We have too important a task to do and there’s no room for drama queens and drama kings in God’s Kingdom. There’s no room for big I’s and little u’s. The ground at the foot of the cross is level.

  For anyone to be a part of what Holy Spirit is doing today through His church, he or she must leave all pride, self righteousness and arrogance behind. When you enter into God’s presence, you must check your ego at the door. Pride, Self Importance, Arrogance, Jealousy are just a few of the things that must be ‘checked’ at the entrance. There’s no room for arrogance in the house of the Lord.

  The Pharisees were an arrogant, egotistical bunch, always trying to manipulate Jesus to do things their way. Trying to mold Him into their image. It saddens me to say that people are still trying to do that today….manipulate Jesus to do things their way and trying to mold Him into their image. One way that people try to manipulate Jesus today is that they try to ‘redefine’ Him, as though He is some kind of play dough figure that they can push, twist, pound and shape into whatever they want Him to be….the kind of Jesus who serves their selfish purposes and justifies whatever it is they want to believe, teach, or do. Instead of allowing Him to put them on the Potter’s wheel to shape and mold them into His image, they’re trying to put Him on the wheel and re mold Him into theirs. Then if they can’t get Him to do things their way, they try to discredit Him by twisting His word to suit their own vain purpose.

  But that kind of manipulation doesn’t work any better today than it did then. Jesus is who He is, and that cannot be changed. He is a Rock that cannot be moved, and we thank God for that, because He is the Rock of our salvation! He is the solid foundation, the only foundation, on which we can build on. He’s the Author and Finisher of our faith, the Alpha and the Omega and everything in between. He is perfect and you just cannot improve perfection.

  The book of Philippians identifies all Jesus manipulators as what they are, “enemies of the cross of Christ”. Strong words, but true. The arrogance of trying to reshape the Son of God into a Savior more to your liking is absolutely incompatible with saving faith and to be honest, sickens me. Without the true and unmanipulated Jesus, there is no Gospel, no forgiveness, no salvation, and, quite simply, no point to being a Christian AND that's why a lot of people are leaving the Church today. Self-righteousness and faith in Christ are complete opposites! God help us!

  And for that reason, the Pharisees’ example of arrogance should not move us to a self-righteous pride that we’re not like them, but rather to repentance for every way and every time in which we ourselves have arrogantly tried to impose our selfish will on God, instead of humbly setting our pride aside and saying, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

And so we check our egos at the door.

In His love,
Elizabeth