Pride

Most dictionaries define Pride as ‘an arrogant or disdainful conduct or treatment; haughtiness’. And human understanding of what the word represents is not too far from this. Pride is often linked to a sufficiency in self; an ‘i can do it’, ‘i am better than’ attitude. So imagine my surprise when a dear friend of mine spoke to me about pride a few days ago. I had always looked at pride as ‘self-righteousness’, which i look upon as a sin which God hates as it’s a hindrance to seeking him. In my wildest dreams i never thought of myself as one who fell into this category, neither did i think it applied to the situation he was counselling me about. But i took his advice and prayed.

Bingo!!!! Now i see it. I have found that the best way to actually tackle this issue of pride is to break it down to examine what it implies, once we see pride as ‘self-orientation’ which is contrary to the character of God, it becomes much clearer, and we can see ‘inverted pride’ for what it really is.

It is easy to recognise the 'big prides' (as stated above), however ‘inverted pride’ is a hidden pride that has to do with self condemnation and perceived inadequacies. This kind of pride is disguised as the virtue of humility, but brothers and sisters it is soooooo far from that. Using myself as an example, mine was looking at my motivation for doing certain things instead of looking at what God had accomplished using me......’pride is giving ourselves credit for something God has accomplished’ even if it’s by removing him from the equation and giving ourselves negative credit. By feeling bad about my ‘not so selfless’ reason for doing something good, i removed God from the equation and completely disregarded what he had used me to accomplish. In my mind i was being humble by downplaying what i had done, but this is a lie from the devil, most times to deceive us, to lead us to despair which might gradually draw us away from God as we continue to feel inadequate.

I guess the lesson here is, the devil is a liar (no big surprise there), we are not perfect by any means, but we are all gifted in our own special ways. Anything satan tries to use for evil, God can turn and use for good when we commit totally to him. We all need to remember that the devil will try to find ways to destroy the good we try to do, be it by questioning our motivation for doing it, or by letting us believe it’s not good enough. But remember, it is not by our power nor our might Jehovah is the author and finisher of all things.

Scripture refs

John 5:44

Psalm 10:4

1cor 4:7