I've got a big problem with pride.  Go figure.  I've heard and sought out plenty of sermons and books on humility, but I never really understood how to get there.  Almost every prayer that I pray I ask God to shield me from my pride and teach me humility.  Be careful what you ask for.  About a month ago, I gradually began to stop hearing God's voice.  I had just started a book called "The Explicit Gospel" by Matt Chandler.  In the first few pages, it completely blew up my dangerously small view of God.  I began to see how I had foolishly confined his uncontainable and infinite power, wisdom, riches, glory, knowledge, and love.  But the thing I couldn't stop focusing on was his furious wrath for sin.

Because I couldn't stop my mind from being fearfully blown by God's anger and severity toward my sin, I stopped letting the love, goodness, and truth of God shower down on me.  The thing is, I was fully aware that this was happening and I couldn't stop it.  Praying was difficult, but I diligently tried.  I would throw my hands up after feeling like my prayers were bouncing off the ceiling and think to myself, "Well, that's it!  I'm the guy in James 1:6-7!"  After days of begging God for faith, telling him I absolutely cannot do anything to bring myself out of this fog and I needed his voice, God began to lead me to compare Christ's sacrifice on the cross to the severe wrath that I was so fearfully dwelling on.  I had always focused on God's love without deeply considering the immense wrath that his perfection satisfied.  Reflecting on the magnitude of the just punishment that I was saved from, that I was completely helpless and hopeless to escape, shrunk me to nothingness.  "Oh praise the One who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead!"