The Sin of “Self-Enhancement”

Self enhancement involves the things we do to telegraph our importance.  Self enhancement comes in many forms and most of them are obvious and irritating to the people we are trying to impress.  A polished self enhancer dominates conversations with tales of their travels, the important people they know, their accomplishments and overall wonderfulness.  They are obsessed with things of the world and the things that impress.  Self enhancers are into acquiring things they believe will impress others.  They spend their time,  money and effort creating an image they hope will impress others.

Self enhancement in Christian circles is as prevalent as in secular society.  Christians just enhance themselves under a spiritual cloak.  We talk about all the witnessing and work we do for the Lord.  We brag about how some wonderful thing we said led someone to the Lord.  We point out that so and so celebrity attends our church and they are a personal friend of ours.  A Christian involved in self enhancement is proud and haughty.  The Holy Spirit will not invade such a will as this and the possibility of such a person being filled with Holy Spirit is nil.  It is only when we hear and yield to the words of Jesus about the meek, the humble and poor in spirit and begin to allow God to produce those qualities in us that the Holy Spirit can show us the way to actually become a person who is meek, humble and poor in spirit.