I was thinking about pride. It’s something we all have to deal with. I have to face it every day myself. The more I think about it, though, the more I see it for what it is.
Pride is something that, if you ask pretty much everyone if they’re prideful, they’ll most likely say, “No.” Especially the people who are the most prideful. They seem to see it in themselves less than anyone. I think it seems like it’s the pride that lies to them. So, that if they ask themselves if they’re prideful, the pride itself lies to them and says, “No, that’s not you. That’s not your style.” So, many people go on being their prideful selves and can’t even see it. That makes it a difficult issue to ever try and address, doesn’t it? How do you start to deal with an issue you don’t even realize you have?
Some of us mask our pride with something called false humility. False humility is really when we get a compliment and we try to downplay what the person said. We make it look like we’re trying to shift attention away from ourselves, but in reality, we’re actually fishing for a compliment. We may be saying on the outside, “Oh, I’m not that great.” But on the inside we’re saying, “Yeah, I’m pretty great.” This doesn’t necessarily have to happen when we receive a compliment. It can sometimes happen, too, just when we use self-deprecating humor. We may appear to be taking attention off ourselves, but it’s really a covert attempt to draw attention to ourselves.
So, why did I write the title like I did? Well, I guess I was using it as a metaphor. Because pride seems to be like a bad relationship that you just can’t seem to let go. You know you shouldn’t be hanging around it, or listening to it, but the pride lies to you about itself even being a bad thing. And if you just keep listening to it, you’ll never let it go. Pride will never say for you to let it go. It will just keep getting you into deeper and deeper trouble.
The reason pride gets us into trouble is because we lose perspective. We get an inflated sense of self, and a huge blind spot to our faults. This will likely create the scenario where we end up tripping over our faults down somewhere down the road. And sometimes we can end up doing it in spectacular fashion. But the ironic thing is that this can often be the best thing for us. There’s nothing like a disastrous failure to bring a renewed sense of perspective to our lives. So, maybe I should welcome the failures just for this reason alone—it helps keep me humble. The main thing is, though, that I don’t want ultimately fail. I want to, at some point, learn from my failures. This is probably why a wise person, as they get older, is more likely to be humble and have a clearer perspective of themselves. They’ve learned the lesson about the cruelty of pride and they don’t want to have to repeat the lesson.
Well, the Bible has a lot to say about pride. Probably because it’s such a damaging vice. Pride was one of the first sins ever committed. Lucifer fell when he decided to exalt himself above God. This didn’t just happen overnight, though. The pride had been building until one day it caused his fall.
AV Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride [goeth] before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” This Proverb is a universal truth. We see it happen every day. People who got too full of themselves and it ultimately led to their destruction or failure. The sad thing is they most likely didn’t even see it coming. But they were blindsided when their pride reached its height, and it was reflected in their failure.
In AV Galatians 6:3 it says, “For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.” When we fall prey to pride, we are really only deceiving ourselves. And often the enemy tempts us with pride to help along our failure. He sees us taking hold of pride and he helps along the deception. And it’s usually the deception that makes the failure so great.
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So, what’s the solution to this? Well, the answer to pride is humility. AV 1 Peter 5:6, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:” What we ultimately need to do is humble ourselves. We need to recognize the pride for what it is. Then we not only humble ourselves, but humble ourselves before God. When we admit our own frailty and acknowledge God’s greatness, he will honor that. He will honor it and, when the time comes, He will make sure we get any recognition we deserve. He will also lift us up out of our mess of failure where the pride caused us to end up.
AV Ps 25:9, “The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way.” This verse talks about God guiding the humble person in right ways. When we are humble, God is then able to show us things and teach us things, not only about ourselves, but about Himself. When we’re humble, we’re teachable. And we have a willing heart for Him to show us things.
AV John 3:30: “He must increase, but I [must] decrease.” These are the words of John the Baptist. He recognized for Jesus to increase in his life. He also recognized that for Him to increase, there had to be a corresponding decrease of himself. This is one thing that allowed John to be used so greatly by God. And it’s the same for us. This is what we need to recognize in order for God to work in our lives. And this is what we have to recognize in order for God to use us in greater ways.
AV Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride [goeth] before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
AV Galatians 6:3 it says, “For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.”
AV 1 Peter 5:6, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:”
AV Ps 25:9, “The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way.”
AV John 3:30: “He must increase, but I [must] decrease.”