“Everyone proud and arrogant in heart is disgusting, hateful, and exceedingly offensive to the Lord; be assured [I pledge it] they will not go unpunished.” – Proverbs 16:5 (AMPC)
“Your boast becomes a prophecy of a future failure. The higher you lift yourself up in pride, the harder you’ll fall in disgrace.” – Proverbs 16:18 (TPT)
“But when [King Uzziah] was strong, he became proud to his destruction; and he trespassed against the Lord his God, for he went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.” – 2 Chronicles 26:16 (AMPC)
“That was the last straw. God had had enough of Herod’s arrogance and sent an angel to strike him down. Herod had given God no credit for anything. Down he went. Rotten to the core, a maggoty old man if there ever was one, he died.” – Acts 12:23 (MSG)
There are few sins and vices in God’s word that receive as much warning emphasis as pride. All through Scripture, we are warned very strongly to flee from it.
Pride is the very first sin listed among the seven things that the Lord hates. (Proverbs 6:16-17)
Dictionary.com defines pride as “a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.”
The war against pride is a continuous battle that we must fight with everything we’ve got and emerge victorious every time as the Lord helps us.
I love that one can see very clearly from the definition above that pride can be “cherished in the mind” or “displayed in bearing”. In other words, pride can simply exist in the heart. It is possible to master the art of appearing humble while maintaining a heart filled with nothing but arrogance and pride.
All the secrets of a man’s heart are open before the Lord. Beyond the things we say and do to appear humble, our hearts must be indeed humble before our God.
I see playing out very often, two dimensions of pride.
The first dimension is reflected in our relationship with others. This is the one that considers itself better, smarter, richer, more spiritual, more beautiful than others. It’s the one referred to in Proverbs 16:17 as haughty eyes – eyes that look down on others. It has its roots in comparison.
Comparison is not just the thief of joy; it is the mother of pride. It is an insidious vehicle through which people get puffed up and set up for destruction. Truth is, you cannot look down on others if you’re not comparing yourself with them in the first place.
You know you are about to step into the trap of pride when you start comparing yourself and accomplishments with other people’s. If your comparison exercise doesn’t result in you feeling less than others, the reverse will surely be the case – you will come out feeling better than others!
Dear one, if you’re going to deal with the spirit of pride, you’re going to have to learn to focus on your lane and what God is doing with you. You’ll need to be blind to what others are doing and maintain laser focus on what God is doing. There’s no other way to go about it!
The second dimension of pride is the state of our hearts in relation to God. This one is really big! This is where we attempt to appropriate some of the glory due God for ourselves; where we try to take credit for things we had no hand in; where we allow others inflate our egos when they compliment our hard work or talent and we forget to say “hey, all the glory is God’s! It’s all Him.”
Every time we allow others give us the glory that’s due our God without immediately setting the records straight, we are trespassing and treading on dangerous grounds. This is not a joke and we must be very conscious of it. We may not fall down and die like Herod did, but we actually begin to die on the inside when we attempt to take God’s glory.
Dear one, in your walk with God and work for Him, He’s going to lift you up. Men will reward you, wealth will come, opportunities with open up, favour will surround you.
Think about all these benefits as fruit-bearing trees (as in the garden of Eden). He is saying to you, “Precious child, you may eat the fruits of any of these trees – favour, prosperity, open doors, e.t.c. – but do NOT touch the tree of my glory. That tree belongs to Me. You die when you eat of it.”
The percentage of God’s glory that belongs to you is zero. Don’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Pride is evil. It’s a tool in the hands of the devil to ultimately destroy us and rob us of everything the Lord has in store for us.
Pride corrupts wisdom. Speaking about the downfall of Lucifer in Ezekiel 28, the Bible says “Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.”
Pride places a lid over what God can do in you, through you and for you. Pride keeps you stagnant and hung on your past. When God is about to do a new thing, you will not know, perceive or prepare for it because you’re still stuck on, and gloating over what He did (which by the way, you’re taking the glory for) last year!
Pride hinders your intimacy with God. Pride is just something God cannot stomach. When God calls a man to Himself, one of the very first things He deals with is that man’s prideful heart. If you treasure your relationship with God over anything else, you will hate pride like God does!
Spend some time asking the Lord to search you thoroughly and show you if you’re walking in pride in any area of your life. Ask Him to help you deal with it and to give you a heart that’s truly humble.