“In church today a man fell to his knees, crying and shaking as God reduced him to nothing. That man was me... God finally answered my prayers, he broke me and stripped me of all of my pride.”
This was my last status update on Facebook. I posted it on September 12, 2010: A day I will never forget. I woke up that morning, and decided I was going to go to church all by myself. My family was away at a baseball game for my brother. Instead of using the “I don’t want to go alone” excuse, I just followed my heart and went. To be honest, I remember very little about this morning. I couldn’t tell you what I wore, I couldn’t tell you what service I made it to, I couldn’t tell you where I sat, I could’t tell you who was sitting by me, I couldn’t tell you what songs they sang, and I could’t tell you what the sermon was about. But I was indeed there.
How then could a Sunday morning at church be so special to me, if I don’t even remember a thing about it?
Let me explain... Have you ever had a day where you wake up just exhausted. Where you fight and fight the desire to go back to sleep because you HAVE to get on with your day. You tell yourself, “I just have to go to class, then go do this, then go do that, and THEN I can finally come back home and lay down!” One of those days where all you think about and long for is that next time where you can lay down and sleep... You are exhausted and worn our beyond belief! And then you finally reach that point, after counting down the hours you finally get everything done, you get home open your door, you see your bed there just waiting for you, and you fall onto your pillow with this huge release.
That was me on September 12, just in a different sense. I didn’t want to wake up early that morning, I didn’t want to take a shower, I didn’t want to get dressed, and I didn’t want to leave my room! But I went through all that “trouble” because something was just drawing me to church that morning. I just wanted to be in the house of my father, I was following my heart, it was all I could think about. I knew that I was going to get this big release from it, getting to church was all I could focus on and think about...
And here is the amazing part... It was like God was calling me into his arms, I couldn’t explain my it, but I followed my heart. I made it into the building that morning, and found a seat somewhere. That’s when it hit me....................
I didn’t even get to sit down, I literally crashed. Within seconds (that’s no exaggeration, it only took 3 or 4) my knees got weak, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t think. I fell to my knees in front of the chair, I wept, and I shook out of control. I found myself in a state of total humility there just crying. Before that day, I think maybe 4 or 5 people had ever seen me cry. I don’t know how many people watched, I don’t know what people saw or what they thought, but I didn’t care. I was in my own little hole, on my knees without A SINGLE ounce of dignity.
Falling down in front of my chair, I literally FELT God go into my heart and strip away my pride. I FELT him come in and take away everything. It wasn’t losing my girlfriend that did it, it wasn’t that lonely feeling, it wasn’t health issues, it wasn’t my elbow injury, and it wasn’t the loss of any worldly thing that caused this. It was GOD reaching into me and stealing all my dignity. I can’t describe it, and you probably can’t imagine it. But one moment its there, and the next it isn’t. One moment I am “Anthony-Fricking-Sylvester” and in the next I am crying in front of hundreds of people feeling worthless on the ground. I can’t emphasize enough that this was God. It is impossible to try and think about God stealing a human condition (pridefulness), it is impossible to try and imagine how one moment you can be a prideful person, and totally humbled in the next. But don’t put limits on God....
Its sort of like the movie Austin Powers and the Spy who Shagged Me. In that movie Austin, the International Man of Mystery, wakes up one morning and realizes that his "Mojo" is suddenly gone. He doesn't know who took it or how (at least not at this point), but just like that it is gone! He can't explain it at all, but he just knows and feels that it is gone... Austin goes on to realize later on that he doesn't need his Mojo... He still gets the girl, still defeats the bad guy, and still saves the world.
Other than using that stupid analogy and comparison, I really just can’t find the words to describe what happened to me in those few seconds. I am not poetic enough, and I am not a good enough writer. But I assure you that I am not crazy, I felt God come into me and “strip” me of my pride, and I felt what it is like to be reduced to nothing. And I can assure you, doing it as God did was the only way....
When I prayed for God to break me and strip me of my pride, I imagined something way different. I imagined God enacting some sort of terrible event, I imagined him doing something like taking away the love of my life. BUT THAT WASN’T WHAT BROKE ME. God broke me in an entirely different and inexplainable way. And he had to!
Pride works in a vicious way. It compiles itself, and only grows. How do you break someone’s pride?
-I could have lost my scholarship... So what? "I will find another way to pay for school!"
-I could have woke up bruised and cut up in a ditch... So what? I survived, I would tell myself, “Look everyone, I can’t be beat'
-I could have lost an arm in a car accident... So what? "I will show the whole world that I can do more with one than others do with two!"
The scenarios are endless, I don’t think it would have mattered how drastic, because I was that prideful. And so yeah, I lost my girlfriend, that SUCKED! But that wasn’t what broke me, my pride would have eventually told me “Don’t worry, you are Anthony Sylvester, you will move on, be fine, and find another one.” No, losing her didn’t take away my pride, not even close. God did... He didn’t do it by a series of hardships or terrible events, nor in any way that I could have imagined. He just did it, he just came in my heart and took my pride! Weird and hard to describe/imagine? Yes... But if you think about it, for a person AS prideful as me, it was the only way to do it. Its no wonder God HATES pride so much... It’s just a never ending, ever growing, almost unbeatable evil. An evil that was destroying my life...
And so I will wrap it up like this. I just want to take a second to praise God: He works in the most mysterious yet amazing ways. He always has a plan for us, he always acts out of love and has our best interest in mind. What he did to me that Sunday morning was by all accounts AMAZING. I am so thankful, it changed my life.... Thank you God... You deserve all the glory.......................
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