In Deuteronomy 8, the Israelites are warned to not think that it was by their power they accumulated wealth. God says, “It is by my power that you have received all this.”

In Deuteronomy 9, the Israelites are warned to not think that it was because of their righteousness that God has brought them into the land.

You don’t get to heaven because you are good. You get to heaven because God is good.

You don’t get God’s promises of provision and protection and His help because you are good, but because He is good.

He gives grace to the humble but knows the proud from afar. (James 4:6 and Psalm 138:6) What a fearful thing for God to keep His distance. We need to keep humble before Him, which should be easy.

If we have a right view of ourselves and of Him, we can’t help but be humble.

So, if there’s a problem with pride, we must not know Him well enough. To know Him is eternal life. Christianity is extremely simple, not easy, but simple. We just have to know Him.

We need to take the time to get to know Him, the real Him of the Bible, not the god taught anywhere else. You need to take in all of God’s Word, not just the bits and pieces that seem pleasing.

Maybe that’s why the Lord has us going through the entire Bible chapter by chapter, sometimes even verse by verse, which was not at all my intention when I wrote the first handful of lessons on creation and the fall of mankind and such, thinking I would just be hitting some highlights to tell the story of God’s redemption.

But the whole counsel of God’s Word gives us a whole picture of God, and even then, we desperately need His Holy Spirit to teach us through the Word. We can read it and miss Him.

Probably the biggest hindrance to really seeing God and knowing Him is that our eyes are on ourselves. We look at ourselves and miss seeing God.

We need to turn our eyes onto Jesus and know Him. That’s probably the biggest challenge of the trial of suffering and hardship. We want to look at ourselves. We want to look at our problems. We want sympathy.

That’s when we need to look to Jesus the most. We need to get our eyes on His goodness and love and glory and rejoice.