Creeping Christians

We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments….Each, putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbor’s footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master’s, although it is but his own. Or, having committed a petty fault, I mean a fault such as only a petty creature could commit, we mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame of it before our friends, children, or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and amends to our fellow, and then, forgetting our own paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken the true man in us, and kill the peddling creature we so wrongly call our self.
by- George MacDonald- UNSPOKEN SERMONS, First Series, The Eloi

A “Creeping Christian”, this I am! Oh, that I would be humbled before God, and man…but sadly the humbling I fear the most is that which is before my friends…I would hope to be humbled before God, but have my friends not know...Christ forgive me!?!…as I still think of myself and fear what a person might think rather than what God thinks. So, when I am humbled, may I look to Christ rather than once again being “shocked” by my sin.