I read the book Bride of Heaven, Pride of Hell in the fall of 1999 as a sophomore in high school. I was already in the midst of a time of explosive growth in my personal walk with Christ as a result of some awesome biblical teaching that I was receiving, and this book literally broke me. It revealed to me much of the pride that still remained in my heart and enabled me to truly repent and be humbled before the Lord as never before.
I vividly remember sitting in one of my afternoon classes. I was reading this book and was examining my own heart for sins that remained. Conviction fell upon me once again, and I remember laying my head down on my desk and silently crying out to God in repentance and thanking Him for his mercy and grace.
Today I spent quite a bit of time studying Luke 18:9-14:
And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:
“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’
“But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’
“I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Bride of Heaven, Pride of Hell will attempt to show you in vivid detail who within the visible church is the true Bride of Christ, compared to those who are like the Pharisee in the story above.
As I was studying this passage, I came across a quote in my Matthew Henry Commentary:
“Note, Among the worshippers of God, in the visible church, there is a mixture of good and bad, of some that are accepted of God, and some that are not; and so it has been ever since Cain and Abel brought their offering to the same altar.”
This is one of the passages of scripture that I studied today together with our young Christian (former Muslim) brother, so that he could continue to learn true repentance and be able to flee from all pride and self-conceit. I could tell that this passage spoke to him deeply, as it has done to me so many times since I became a Christian.
May we all learn this lesson and humbly come before God to be justified, as the publican was!
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