The wise man must not boast in his wisdom; the strong man must not boast in his strength, the wealthy man must not boast in his wealth.  But the one who boasts should boast in this,  that he understands and knows Me-that I am Yahweh, showing faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things.  This is the Lord’s declaration.   Jeremiah 9:23-24  HCSB

Bragging is kind of like cussing, there are those that love to do it and there are those that hate to hear it.  It has always been my philosophy that if someone does something well, they don’t need to say a word, everyone will clearly see it, right?  The proof is in the pudding.

In Isaiah 10:15 we are given the illustration of instruments boasting as they work.  Like an axe boasting about cutting a tree or a saw magnifying itself above the lumberjack.  Tools are useless without someone to work with them.  We do nothing without God.  Just like the axe, we would just lay there without God picking us up each and every day.  We are nothing without Him and we accomplish nothing without Him.

Our scripture passage today is from the book of Jeremiah.  The Lord is telling us that we are not to boast in wisdom, strength, or riches.  We are told that we are to boast in the Lord.

I have learned the hard way that I am nothing without God.  All I can make without God in my life, is a mess.  But I know that with God in my life, there is nothing that I can’t do through Him.  One of my favorite go-to verses is Philippians 4:13,  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.   

In order to boast of the Lord, we have to empty our hearts of ourselves.  Sometimes we are so full of ourselves that there is little room for anyone else.  It’s hard to love others when you are consumed with yourself.  It took a while for me to get that.  But when I did, what a relief that was.

When I got all that me, me, me stuff out and started focusing on God, I felt much better.  You see when we focus on God, he puts other people in our paths that we can help.  When we focus on helping others, we don’t have time to sit around and brag about ourselves, which God has clearly told us not to do.  We don’t have room in our heart for selfish, egotistical behavior.

Being full of yourself is sort of like being full of some awful virus like the flu.  You may go around trying to make everyone think that you are all that and a bag of chips, as my dear friend used to say.  But, inside it makes us miserable.  We were not made to be full of ourselves.  We were made to live in peace with others as to the best of our ability.  We were made to live in close relationship with God.  When we turn to Him and focus on Him, things just go way better in our lives.

I encourage you to empty yourself of you.  Ask God to fill you with His Holy Spirit.  It will be an awesome exchange!

Have a great day!