One November morning, I got up early to play in a pickleball league for the first time ever. I had played pickleball with my wife, my kids, and a couple of friends, but playing in a league was a step toward officially becoming “one of those” pickleball players. When I arrived at the pickleball club, I started to warm up and get ready for league play. I was placed in a group of five people that I would play with for the next two hours. The five of us in that group had a great time playing together, until, in the last game of the day, we all heard a pop, and my Achilles tendon ruptured.
Over the last 10 weeks, I have had surgery, been in a cast, been in a boot, and am now wearing a heal lift in my right shoe at all times. While the full recovery time for this injury is a year, it really is a small trial compared to so much of what others are going through. However, while it may be a small trial, it is still a trial, and one of my primary prayers during the last 10 weeks is that God would use this trial to refine my character and make me more like Him. I realize each time I pray this prayer that it is a prayer that is asking for painful revelation about areas of sin and weakness, but I also recognize that I need the Lord to reveal those things to me if I am going to make progress.
One of the ways God has answered this prayer over the last 10 weeks is through revealing pride in my life and forcing me to deal with that pride. Pride manifests in people’s lives in several self-oriented ways. One of those ways is self-sufficiency. This is a battle in my own life. I don’t like to have people do things for me. I don’t want to feel like I owe anyone anything. I want to make sure the scales of social interaction are even, or tip in the favor of me having done more for you than you have done for me. All this stems from sinful pride that wants to be seen as self-sufficient by others. God has used the last 10 weeks to reveal the pride that was lurking in me and start the needed refining process.
While I have been hobbled, I had people from the church get my food for me at events. People I work with have brought my coffee to me, so I didn’t have to get up. Friends hauled chairs around for me to teach from and shoveled my driveway when it snowed. One man in the church came to my house repeatedly, to give me rides to meetings and appointments when I couldn’t drive. I could list many other ways that people have served me during this time, and I am so thankful for all of it. However, it also makes me uncomfortable. Why does it make me uncomfortable? It makes me uncomfortable because in my pride I feel like I should be self-sufficient. It makes me uncomfortable because in my pride I don’t want to feel like I owe anyone anything.
God has been using my inability to do certain things for myself to show me hidden ways I long to be seen as self-sufficient and totally capable by others. I am grateful that the Lord has been using every ride, every cup of coffee, every time someone has served me during this time to reveal this pride in me, and to remind me that pride is the opposite of life in the Kingdom.
Salvation can’t be ours if our primary heart attitude is pride. Salvation requires the humility to owe something that we can never repay and rejoicing in the fact that we can never repay it. The Kingdom isn’t about self-sufficiency, but complete dependence on God and interdependence with the community of sisters and brothers that He has called us into. Kingdom living isn’t about reciprocating every kind thing done for us. Kingdom living isn’t just about serving others who are in need. Kingdom living is about the willingness to be humble and accept help and service from others. After all, isn’t that how we entered the Kingdom in the first place…by realizing we couldn’t save ourselves; we needed the King to do it. Now in the Kingdom we are people who crucify our prideful self-sufficiency and receive the grace of Jesus and the kindness and service of our fellow-believers.
I pray that God would continue to strip away lingering pride from my life and use whatever circumstances He needs to use to do it. I pray that each of you who is reading this will be able to ask the Lord, what He wants to reform in your character through challenges that you face in life. May God continue to use small and large trials to transform our character so that we Love, Live, and Serve like Jesus.
Pastor Matt Clausen
Matt Clausen grew up in St. Cloud and graduated from Yale University, where he earned a degree in history. He received his Master of Divinity and Doctorate of Ministry degrees from Bethel Seminary. For 17 years, Matt served as pastor at First Baptist Church of Minneapolis. In the fall of 2017, he became the Lead Campus Pastor at Friendship Church in Prior Lake. Matt is married to his high school sweetheart and they have two kids.