GRM day 6, May 10, Defense and pride

So today, I learned that as Christians, we neeeed to be on defense!  If you look at the armour of God, all of the things are defense! the only thing that attacks is the sword (His word). But yah! We need to be on guard all the time! and be fighting our flesh and the devil!
ONE sort of counterintuitive thing we need to do tho, is to break down walls to increase defense! What I mean by breaking down walls to increase defense is that we need to be transparent with other brothers/sisters in Christ! We need to to be transparent so that we can help one another out!  When one falls, many can come to help! We are not called to be a legalistic, judging community! We are called to love and to rebuke and to urge each other to grow in Christ! Anyone can "do the right things" at church and seem like everything is going perfect, but that isn't what we're called to do! We need to break down our pride and REALIZE that "HE MUST INCREASE, but WE MUST DECREASE" (John 3:30)! What part of "keeping face" or "keeping my image" or caring what other people think of you have anything to do you with Jesus increasing and us decreasing?! nothing! except for the fact that they are polar opposites!  God is strong in our weaknesses! We are called to bring forth our weaknesses to Christ! that He may help us through them and that He will be made known through it! We aren't called to bring our best and hide our worst....we bring everything to Christ! and He heals us! Even our best is worse than Christ's worse! There is nothing we can do to earn anything...we have nothing impressive about ourselves...EXCEPT JESUS! He is the only thing we have a right do boast about! and What HE has done!  I did nothing! I deserve nothing! Actually, I deserve eternal punishment! But God extended His grace to us and that is something we should be taking pride in! and Joy in! Galatians 6:14 puts a lot of what I'm thinking really well into words! "But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the wold has been crucified to me, and I to the world."
Anyways, back to the whole defense thing, we need to break down walls, that Christ may enter! He must increase and we must decrease! We are not called to live this life alone! we are called to bear with one another's burdens and help restore one another! (Galatians 6) We need to build defenses to guard our affections! Our affections for Christ should be so strong that we would be repelled from anything that is against it!

Prayer:  That He may increase in my life, and that I would decrease.  That I would not be afraid to let my walls down and being transparent with brothers in Christ that we would build each other up! That we would boast only in Christ. Also, that my affections for Christ would overpower anything that seems tempting here! That I would put on the whole armour of God to defend and fight (Ephesians 6:10-18)!