The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.
Proverbs 8:13

The Bible has a lot to say about pride. Proverbs 16:5 tells us that pride is an abomination to the Lord. This means that God hates pride so much that it disgusts Him. Proverbs 16:18 tells us that pride goes before a fall. Proverbs 29:23 says that one’s pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor.

James 4:6 tells us that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. If you have any pride in you, I beg of you to spit it out! I have often heard people say that we should swallow our pride, but I don’t agree. When we swallow something we ingest it and we digest it. They say you are what you eat, so, we don’t want that.

Pride is defined as a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction from one’s own achievements. Now, you may read that and say what is wrong with that? Well, it’s the fact that we are proud of our own achievements. It doesn’t acknowledge that we were created by God and that everything that we accomplish is through God. None of us are self-made when you really think about it.

Pride causes us to think more highly of ourselves than we should. Romans 12:16 says that we should never be wise in our own sight. Philippians 2:3 tells us that we should do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

If we want to be lifted up, we are told in James 4:10, we should humble ourselves before the Lord and He will exalt us.

The problem with pride, is that it causes messed up thinking or stinking thinking as my pastor likes to call it. When we are prideful, we think it is okay to talk bad about our enemies instead of praying for them. When we are full of pride, we think it is okay to plot vengeance on our enemies instead of giving it over to God and trusting him to take care of it. When we are full of pride we think that it is okay if we have an affair. When we are full of pride we think it’s okay to treat others badly. Pride is not only a sin (Proverbs 21:4), but it leads to other sins such as lying and wickedness.

God’s way and the way of the world stand in opposition to each other. If you want to lift yourself up in the world, then go ahead, but you will be lowering yourselves in God’s eyes. If you lower yourself and clothe yourself in humility as we are instructed to do in 1 Peter 5:5, God will give you grace. But, that same scripture passage tells us that if you are prideful, God will oppose you. Take no part in boasting or prideful behavior. If God opposes you, you will find yourself in a really rough place. I promise you, you do not want this to happen.

We can look all around our nation and see the problem with pride from the White House to the Church House. Prideful behavior will destroy this country once founded on God if we are not careful. We have gay pride. We have pride, which is an abomination to the Lord (Proverbs 16:5) in homosexuality, yet another abomination to the Lord (Leviticus 20:13). So we have one thing which disgusts the Lord for another thing that disgusts the Lord. Does anyone else see a problem, here?

If churches are not careful and discipline is not dealt with, members can become prideful. They can try to take over God’s church. Churches can be infiltrated by a Jezebel Spirit.

We also have Black Lives Matter. The Bible tells us in Philippians 2:3 that we should consider others as being more important than ourselves. Shouldn’t all lives matter?

Our country has come so far from what our founding fathers originally intended that it is scary and it is due to pride. People flaunt their sinful ways brazenly and are proud to be in defiance to the living God.

2 Chronicles 7:14 tells us that no matter what God sends our way as punishment, if we will simply call on God’s name and humble ourselves, pray and seek His face, and turn from our evil ways, He will hear us from heaven and forgive us our sin and heal our land. Are you willing to humble yourself today?

Are you willing to seek deep within yourself to see if there is any pride in you? Are you willing to spit that pride out and be done with it? Are you willing to seek Jesus first and put others second and yourselves last? Our pastor often uses that acronym for joy.

This is the only way we will see healing come to our land. I pray that you are willing to join me and do this for not only our sake, but for the sake of generations to come.

Have a great day!