There are 2 forms of pride, the first being when people take pride in what they do, …”we pride ourselves making the best sausage roll in town”, “we take pride in our this and that”. Quite frankly I think we are so quick to take pride in mundane things because we are all looking for easy ways to be celebrated. Also, maybe taking pride in making the best sausage rolls offers some benefit to other unlike the other form of pride.
The second for of pride is the full blown deal – the pride of life. This is the pride that makes us place ourselves above others most in subtle ways. You can imagine a man giving all the excuses on why he is having an affair or wanting to separate from his wife. He may say things like “I’ve alway made all the effort but she doesn’t…”, or “I am never happy around her, she is very toxic and a danger to my mental health”. These reasons can take several forms but they are all about his self convenience which is why any decision or argument initiated by pride is always going to side toward our self seeking ambition and will never be just or fair to all sides.
Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18 NLT
It is very important for us to know the end result of pride but before this understanding could be of any help to us, we need to first learnt to recognise and acknowledge pride. If we think we are always right, we will be denying humility because only God is always right. Even if you live your life by the spirit of God, it will be impossible for you to say you are always right but you will say “God is never wrong”. This goes show that such expressions that tend to glorify ourselves are hinged on pride. In this case, we can replace pride with “lack of humility”.
Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2 NLT
Acknowledging our pride helps us to divert to the road that leads away from disgrace and towards Godly wisdom. A wise person will seek a correction of heart, they will thinks of checking their wrong first in case the issues they face has anything to do with them. However, this is where you and I need to be determined to be brutally honest about ourselves. What I really mean is that: we need to allow God to convict us of our wrongs and be willing to accept them as our wrongs. Accepting our wrongs will quickly help us own up and take responsibility to see what we can do to appease the situation on ground and if all parties do the same, we will not have damaging misunderstandings imposing strain on our relationships as rampant as it is today.
Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.
Philippians 2:3 NLT
Pride is an expression of selfishness. It makes us feel that we are better than others so we mentally position ourself to be superior to them. This self certified promotion is unjust and unwise because we really only see what our eye can capture but there is a lot more our eyes cannot see and our minds cannot comprehend about others. We need to humble ourselves and let God renew our heart do that we a start to see others as better than us by default.
Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all!
Romans 12:16 NLT
Don’t think you kow it all. Even you don’t know yourself. What you claim you are today may go against what you find yourself doing tomorrow because you have not fully yielded yourself to God for counsel. You may say “I am the nicest person at my work place” or you may think in your heart, “I have always put you first and treated you better than myself “. I have an advice for you, don’t think you know it all and rush to quickly promote yourself vefore others.
Humble yourself before God. And if you are reading this and do not know God, maybe this is your chance to know God, who is able to walk us down the humble lane. Jesus is the son of God. He was given to die on the cross for our sins, so that we can be redeemed from this world’s final destruction. We can already see the pot of rage boiling up and waiting to exploded in homes, in the geopolitical arena and even our climate is joining in.
Life as we know it here on earth is not the final destination but when we leave the world through death or rapture, we face God who will be the judge of all we have done here in earth. God has given us Jesus as the model of life He approves of. I pray that we will accept the gift of the life of jesus by allowing our nature to be cultivated after His nature.
Remember! Humble yourself, accept your pride an bin it. God bless you.