The Thin Line

“Guard your heart above all else, for out of it flow the issues of life.” — Proverbs 4:23

I read a note from a friend on Substack that spoke about the thin line between narcissistic tendencies and healthy self-worth. It spoke about the difference between celebrating your wins and finding your identity in them.

And it made me think, as I reflected on it, my mind went to Scripture and to a reality I have been confronting in my own walk with God: just how deceitful and vain the human heart can really be.

Lately, I’ve been encouraging myself in truths that every believer should know and embrace. Through Christ, I can pray for the sick. I can give accurate words of prophecy, wisdom and knowledge. I can operate in the gifts of the Spirit. I can flow in the supernatural and I can be used by God in powerful ways.

These things are true.

The problem used to be me not believing them, now it has changed.

The problem has now become that somewhere along the line, those truths can stop pointing me to God and start pointing me back to myself.

What do I mean?

I pray for someone and God moves.

I share a word and it blesses someone.

I step out in faith and see God work.

And then, if I’m not careful, a subtle thought creeps in:

Yeah… that’s me.

Prophetic sniper!

Ministerial bulldozer!!

And these thoughts are dangerous because suddenly, I find myself enjoying not only what God has done, but also what it says about me. I begin to seek validation in being used by God rather than in God Himself. The gift becomes intertwined with my identity and my sense of worth.

That’s when I realize how true Jeremiah’s words are:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” — Jeremiah 17:9

We often think this verse refers only to obvious sins and destructive desires.

But the heart can corrupt good things too.

Good feelings.

Good intentions.

Spiritual gifts.

Spiritual experiences.

A desire to serve God can quickly become a desire to be seen serving God.

A desire to glorify Christ can slowly transform into a desire to be associated with His glory.

A desire to be useful can become a desire to be important.

The flesh doesn’t always tempt us away from spiritual things. Sometimes it tempts us to make spiritual things about ourselves.

And that is why the work of the Holy Spirit is so so precious.

One thing the Holy Spirit has been helping me do is catch those thoughts when they arise.

The moment I start feeling myself.

When I begin to start taking ownership of what belongs to God.

The moment my heart starts building a throne out of something God intended to be an altar.

In those moments, He reminds me to say:

Lord, it’s You.

You’re the One who gave the gift.

The One who supplied the wisdom.

The One who healed, spoke, delivered, and transformed.

The glory has always been Yours.

Never mine.

And honestly, these moments have shown me more than ever that:

I cannot trust my flesh.

I cannot leave my heart unattended.

I cannot assume that because my intentions started pure, they will remain pure.

You would think that being a “good person” means the issues of the heart are not really that big of a problem, that because your desire is to serve God, pride cannot find a way in.

But there is a very thin line between realizing who you are in Christ and becoming impressed with yourself because of what has been accorded to you in Him.

A thin line between functioning in the gifts of the Spirit and allowing those gifts to get into your head, and a thin line between confidence in God and confidence in self.

The heart blurs those lines so easily.

That is why Scripture repeatedly calls us to deny ourselves, mortify the flesh, put it under subjection, and walk in step with the Spirit. Because the flesh is so relentless. It seeks its own gratification, recognition, and glory. It can rear its head in the most unexpected moments, even in the middle of genuine spiritual desires.

Sometimes it shows up when you are praying, when you are prophesying.

Even when you are having what you thought were good, holy thoughts.

It quietly tries to corrupt what God is doing by redirecting the attention from Him to self.

The more I walk with God, the more I understand that spiritual maturity is not arriving at a place where you no longer need help.

It is arriving at a place where you recognize how desperately you do.

Every day, I need the Holy Spirit to search me.

I need Him to expose motives I cannot see.

I need Him to help me catch those thoughts as they come, to redirect my gaze from myself back to Christ.

Because truthfully, I cannot help myself.

My thoughts can be terrible.

My heart wants to gratify itself.

My flesh wants to exalt itself.

And left to myself, I know where that road leads.

When the flesh is gratified, sin is conceived. And sin, when it is full-grown, leads to death.

That is not the life I want.

I don’t want a life centered on self-glorification.

I don’t want the gifts without intimacy.

Don’t want influence without surrender.

I don’t want to have spiritual experiences that make me more aware of myself than I am of God.

And I don’t want to build my identity around what God does through me instead of who He is to me.

So my prayer would always be:

Help me, Jesus.

Help me guard my heart.

Help me remember where every good and perfect gift comes from.

Help me stay small in my own eyes and large in my view of You.

Help me catch every thought that tries to steal Your glory.

And whenever my heart begins to take credit for what only You can do, help me lay that glory back at Your feet, where it has always belonged.