I May Be Bad, But It Makes Me Mad 

REFERENCE: 2 Chronicles 26:16-19 But when he had become powerful, he also became proud, which led to his downfall. He sinned against the Lord his God by entering the sanctuary of the Lord´s Temple and personally burning incense on the incense altar. 17 Azariah the high priest went in after him with eighty other priests of the Lord, all brave men. 18 They confronted King Uzziah and said, "It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord. That is the work of the priests alone, the descendants of Aaron who are set apart for this work. Get out of the sanctuary, for you have sinned. The Lord God will not honor you for this!"

 19 Uzziah, who was holding an incense burner, became furious. But as he was standing there raging at the priests before the incense altar in the Lord´s Temple, leprosy suddenly broke out on his forehead.

Observation: There are two things we can learn from this short story: 1) When we feel powerful, like we can take care of life on our own without God's help, we are tempted to become prideful. When we become prideful, we will fall. God has promised to oppose the proud but to give grace to the humble. The time to be careful is when we are feeling powerful. It is at our strongest times that we are, in reality, most vulnerable. We need to pursue humilty at all times.

2) When we are confronted with our sin, we may feel like responding in anger instead of repentance. How often do we find ourselves getting mad at those who point out our mistakes (especially our family)? We should, instead, be grateful that they care enough to save us from greater error.

We want to protect our wounded pride when we should be concerned about our soul.

Application/Confession: I hate it when my wife or kids confront me for being angry, dismissive or disrespectful. I know that my response should be sarrow instead of anger. I am asking God to help me to react the right way.

PRAYER: Dear Lord, may I stay in a place of humilty before You and before others. May my pride never get in the way of submission to You and openness to hear the concerns of others.