🌳 Success Can Make You Forget God | Ezekiel 31 Devotional (7-Step QT)
7-Step QT Notes
1. 🙏 Quiet Time
Pause.
Take a deep breath.
Ask God to reveal whether his blessings are leading you toward gratitude and humility—or toward pride and self-reliance.
2. 📅 July 26, 2026
Today’s passage reminds us:
True humility does not come from success or failure, but from knowing that every good gift comes from God.
3. ✝️ Ezekiel 31:1-18
God points Pharaoh and his multitude to Assyria’s fate. Like a majestic cedar nourished by abundant waters, Assyria grew beautiful and great, sheltering many nations. Yet its height made its heart proud, so God gave it to ruthless foreigners, who cut it down and left it for Sheol. Pharaoh and all his glory will likewise be brought down to lie among those slain by the sword.
4. 📖 Key Verse
“Whom are you thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden? You shall be brought down with the trees of Eden to the world below. You shall lie among the uncircumcised, with those who are slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, declares the Lord GOD” (v. 18).
5. 📝 Reflection
One of my responsibilities at a former workplace was to identify “correlations” between different phenomena and apply those findings to sales. Correlation is a statistical relationship in which changes in two variables, A and B, occur together in a consistent direction. If a company’s goals are to increase sales, profit margins, and customer satisfaction, my task was to determine which variables could be controlled to improve those indicators.
Of course, real life never involves only two variables. In addition to various company policies that can be controlled, uncontrollable factors such as economic conditions and the international environment also become variables. Therefore, it was by no means an easy task. This may sound a little boastful, but perhaps I received recognition and generous compensation because I was fairly good at it.
This way of thinking in terms of correlations is also deeply embedded in our daily lives. For example, when our children excel academically and become successful, we may think it is because they resemble their parents or because their parents supported them well. When our business prospers, we may attribute it to choosing the right product or working ourselves nearly to death. When our church grows, we may think it is because we have a fine building or because the church runs many beneficial programs effectively.
I am sorry to say, however, that these things do not ultimately determine the success or failure of our lives. The world may say that such conditions have a strong correlation with the outcomes of our lives. Scripture, however, teaches us that one truth is more important and decisive than anything else: knowing God.
Beloved congregation, like Assyria and Egypt in today’s QT passage, we easily become proud when we are exalted. Yet being brought low does not automatically make us humble. Neither exaltation nor humiliation can produce true humility by itself. We become genuinely humble when we know God.
As we grow in our knowledge of God’s love and justice, we learn to live as his children. Because we know his love, we give thanks; because we know his justice, we fear and obey him. We also come to delight in knowing God more deeply. Therefore, the most important thing in our lives is to know God. May you come to know more deeply who God is through today’s QT passage.
6. 💬 What does this passage speak to you today?
- What achievement, ability, or advantage am I tempted to take credit for?
- Have God’s blessings made me more grateful or more self-reliant?
- Am I measuring my worth by my career, income, relationships, appearance, or influence?
- How does knowing God’s sovereignty change the way I view my successes and failures?
- What gift has God entrusted to me, and how can I use it to serve someone today?
7. 🙏 Prayer
Our heavenly Father, thank You for being the giver of every good gift.
Forgive me for taking pride in the abilities, opportunities, relationships, and achievements You have given me.
Help me know Your love, justice, sovereignty, and grace more deeply.
Teach me to receive Your gifts with gratitude and to use them for Your glory and the good of others.
May my identity rest not in what I accomplish, but in Your grace through Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Scriptures
📖 (Ezekiel 31:1-18, ESV).
1 In the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me: 2 “Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his multitude:
“Whom are you like in your greatness?
3 Behold, Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon,
with beautiful branches and forest shade,
and of towering height,
its top among the clouds.
4 The waters nourished it;
the deep made it grow tall,
making its rivers flow
around the place of its planting,
sending forth its streams
to all the trees of the field.
5 So it towered high
above all the trees of the field;
its boughs grew large
and its branches long
from abundant water in its shoots.
6 All the birds of the heavens
made their nests in its boughs;
under its branches all the beasts of the field
gave birth to their young,
and under its shadow
lived all great nations.
7 It was beautiful in its greatness,
in the length of its branches;
for its roots went down
to abundant waters.
8 The cedars in the garden of God could not rival it,
nor the fir trees equal its boughs;
neither were the plane trees
like its branches;
no tree in the garden of God
was its equal in beauty.
9 I made it beautiful
in the mass of its branches,
and all the trees of Eden envied it,
that were in the garden of God.
10 “Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Because it towered high and set its top among the clouds, and its heart was proud of its height, 11 I will give it into the hand of a mighty one of the nations. He shall surely deal with it as its wickedness deserves. I have cast it out. 12 Foreigners, the most ruthless of nations, have cut it down and left it. On the mountains and in all the valleys its branches have fallen, and its boughs have been broken in all the ravines of the land, and all the peoples of the earth have gone away from its shadow and left it. 13 On its fallen trunk dwell all the birds of the heavens, and on its branches are all the beasts of the field. 14 All this is in order that no trees by the waters may grow to towering height or set their tops among the clouds, and that no trees that drink water may reach up to them in height. For they are all given over to death, to the world below, among the children of man, with those who go down to the pit.
15 “Thus says the Lord GOD: On the day the cedar went down to Sheol I caused mourning; I closed the deep over it, and restrained its rivers, and many waters were stopped. I clothed Lebanon in gloom for it, and all the trees of the field fainted because of it. 16 I made the nations quake at the sound of its fall, when I cast it down to Sheol with those who go down to the pit. And all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, were comforted in the world below. 17 They also went down to Sheol with it, to those who are slain by the sword; yes, those who were its arm, who lived under its shadow among the nations.
18 “Whom are you thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden? You shall be brought down with the trees of Eden to the world below. You shall lie among the uncircumcised, with those who are slain by the sword.
“This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, declares the Lord GOD.”
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