Obediah 1 As I’m reading through all the prophets and their messages of doom (and the occasional glimmer of hope) it’s easy for me to wonder what on earth I can learn from it. And then today, as I read a commentary on Obediah, it smacked me in the face! OUCH! The man who wrote the commentary points out that the struggle between Israel and Edom (of whom Obediah speaks) is an ancient one that originated in the struggle between Jacob and Esau! That this struggle is symbolic of the struggle between the Spirit and the flesh. This fleshly part is pride. That’s what the Bible says was Esau’s problem, and it’s ours too. I read that and kept going filing it away as interesting. Until I read: one way it might be expressed is in self-sufficiency… Bam! That caught my attention! This is something I struggle with constantly! It’s also an area of my life that I feel God has been working on for a while through all these financial issues. My first thought when there’s a problem is, “how can I fix this?” And there’s that self-sufficiency rearing its ugly head. I had never connected that with pride until now. So, that right there put the whole thing in perspective. I asked God to speak to me this morning, and man, did He ever! To a great degree, the struggles of the past year make sense. It’s the eternal struggle between Jacob and Esau, Israel and Edom, Spirit and flesh (pride). I am getting a little better about the self-sufficiency thing. Not so much because it’s second nature, but more because God has removed my ability to be self-sufficient. Most times there’s nothing I can do but trust that He’ll take care of things. Self-sufficient is itself an interesting term. Self – that’s me, me, me (the essence of pride). Sufficient – that’s the ability to be enough. God says His grace is sufficient (2 Cor. 12:9). Paul hopes that his courage will be sufficient so he won’t disgrace his Lord (Phil. 1:20). 2 Corinthians 3:5 says that “our sufficiency is from God.” So when we believe we are enough by ourselves or in ourselves, we shut out God and make ourselves higher than He is. What a mistake that is! Every time I’ve done this, I’ve found that I’m not everything I’ve made myself out to be, and the consequences of my pride are pretty ugly. So what can I learn from all these prophets? I look for the metaphor. And realizing that I fall victim to pride (my flesh) I can learn to recognize those moments of self-sufficiency so I can stop trying to play God and let God be exalted and sufficient for me. And hopefully, sooner rather than later, I’ll get better at this lesson.