“Your skin is pretty thin here,” the lab tech told me as he placed a Band-Aid on the crook of my arm after drawing blood. I didn’t need a dictionary to understand what he was telling me. I guess it is part and parcel with getting old.

As I walked to my car I felt the Lord whisper to me, “Are you thin-skinned?” Well, yeah; the lab tech just told me I had thin skin. Classic deflection response. It doesn’t work with the Lord, the Omniscient One. “Are you thin-skinned?” I probably need to check with Merriam-Webster again. Definition one — “a thin skin or rind” — applies to me and an orange. Definition two — “unduly susceptible to criticism or insult” — struck a nerve. “Let me think about it,” I said in my mind — another deflection.

That was Friday, but Sunday was coming. David “Coach” Nelson was preaching. In military parlance, we call that a “double tap” (two bullets on the same target, preferably a head shot). This was a heart shot! Coach was teaching from the Beatitudes on meekness, wouldn’t you know. To cap it off, he quoted a large portion of A. W. Tozer’s Chapter “Meekness and Rest” from The Pursuit of God. I am always sending this to guys who I think need to hear it. I guess I needed to reread it myself.

“Let us examine our burden. It is altogether an interior one. It attacks the heart and the mind and reaches the body only from within. First, there is the burden of pride. The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? Only yesterday you were telling God that you were nothing, a mere worm of the dust. Where is your consistency? Come on, humble yourself and cease to care what men think. The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather, he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is, in the sight of God, more important than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring.” —A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Paul nailed it when he told the Corinthian believers, “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27, ESV). That is a more articulate way of saying, It’s easier to preach than to practice! Paul isn’t talking about physical discipline, though. His epistle to Timothy gives this insight: “While bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:8).

It won’t be a lack of physical fitness that will disqualify me; it will be a lack of perfecting godliness in my walk with King Jesus. It is my good fortune, and frequently my hard lesson, that God will not allow me to preach what I don’t practice. While I have learned this lesson on multiple occasions, I cannot coast on that victory. Every day I must bring my attitudes and conduct before the Holy Spirit, who knows my heart so much better than I do.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick [wicked, KJV]; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Fortunately, God can, and if we are willing to submit to His godly discipline, He will reveal it to us. I think Paul had me in mind when he said, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). If Paul didn’t, God most certainly did.

My prayer today is simple. “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24).

What say ye, Man of Valor?