In the same way, you younger men, be subject to the elders. And all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares on Him, because He cares about you.
1 Peter 5:5-7 HCSB

Pride is a scary, scary thing. It’s something we should avoid. It can sneak into our lives in many forms. But the Bible tells us the end result is one thing-destruction (Proverbs 16:18). No good comes from our being prideful. The devil loves to try to make us think more of ourselves than we should. Romans 12:3 says just that, “I tell everyone among you not to think more of himself than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.”

The devil knows if he can puff us up with pride, he can cause us to be disobedient. He can cause us to think we’ve got this- instead of God’s got this. The devil also knows prideful people tend to be more disobedient. They tend to think to need they don’t need Jesus as much.

Even us devout, church going people can fall into pride. We don’t see it in ourselves, but it’s easy to see in others. I have worked with people who would steal company time to spend an hour or so working on their Sunday School lesson. They made sure they did it where all could see. They would even look down their noses at those of us they considered to be less of a Christian than they were. That’s pride on display.

My dear friend and co-worker used to often tell her probationers and parolees, “So, you think you’re all that and a bag of chips.” Now this was usually when they were full of themselves or prideful and disobeying the rules and the court ordered conditions or those conditions ordered by the parole board. Their pride made them disobedient. They thought they could do whatever they wanted and would suffer no consequences.

When we are prideful, we figure we’ve got it going on. We don’t need rules. We don’t need to listen to some other lower life form telling us what to do. Even as Christians, we can fall into pride. We can figure we don’t need to pray as often, or we don’t need to study our Bible. My friend be very careful there. We need Jesus in our lives every second of every day.

Think about it this way, when we put ourselves on a pedestal, we are in danger of being knocked down. But if we position ourselves on the bottom, we have nowhere to look but up. We have nowhere to go but up. Let God exalt you. He will do so at the proper time.

In our Scripture passage, Peter says we must clothe ourselves with humility. We need to be mindful to put humility on just as we dress ourselves each day. We must check ourselves in how we treat others as we check our clothes in a mirror.

If God resists the proud, we want no part of pride. We want God to hold onto us with His righteous right hand. We want Him to draw near to us. And last but not least, we want Him to exalt us at the proper time.

When we are worried or anxious, it’s easy to fall into pride. It’s easy to start thinking about what we are going to do or how we are going to handle the situation at hand. Give it to God. He will not only handle it, but He will exalt us at the proper time.

Let go of any pride you may have. Humble yourself before God. Give it all to Him. Trust in Him and obey Him. He cares for you and will take good care of you if you will only let Him.

Have a great day!