PRIDE

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE GREATEST PROBLEM MAN MAY HAVE?

This question will provide a variety of answers, but what I want to share with you may surprise you.  The point of this teaching is that is factual and truth based according to the

Word of God which is total truth to me!

Our greatest enemy is self, and pride is the greatest problem of self. So satan is not our greatest enemy as most of the Christian population thinks.  Pride is the bottom of most of our struggles.  Man has a nature of pride that must be reconciled with and restrained.  Men fall because of pride.

Proverbs 16:18 “¹⁸Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.

Proverbs 29:23” ²³Pride ends in humiliation, while humility brings honor.

2 Cor. 12:7 “⁷even though I have received wonderful revelations from God. But to keep me from getting puffed up, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from getting proud.

Pride opposes God and seeks to exalt self above the will of God, even God Himself.  I believe that is why God says in His Word that He resist the proud.  When we take a look at Lucifer, he wanted something for self and God knew it was not good what he wanted, but Lucifer insisted that he wanted equal rights with God.  Lucifer said 5 times in the Word of God “I will.”  See “I” was the priority that was very important to Lucifer; he wanted to ruin the universe.  This fact alone will show us how pride is the bottom of deception, for it was the bottom of the “great deception.”

Pride is at the bottom of great iniquity and rebellion even in the church today. It continues to torment and tear apart and attempt to bring ruin to the body of believers. Pride is all about something for me! A desire to draw all attention and worship to oneself, this is the deification of self. Pride displaces God. That is why we must understand the “power of the Word of God” and why we must learn who we are in Christ Jesus and learn to declare and decree the Word of God.  For declaration and decreeing of Gods’ Word brings substance in the Spirit realm.

Pride is a concentration upon ME-my will, my ways, my wants, my ideas.  It pushes God off the throne and puts Me on.  Pride is at the root of sin because it displaces God and puts self on the throne.  It resists God and the will of God so that self will be exalted instead. Pride is saying in effect to God “get out of my life, I am running this show, and I don’t need You in it.” Is this displacing God or not? God shows us according to His Word what He does with us each day of our lives if our heart is open to receive which pride closes it because SELF knows it all.

Romans 1:18-32 “²⁴So God let them go ahead and do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. ²⁵Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies. So they worshiped the things God made but not the Creator himself, who is to be praised forever. Amen.

²⁶That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. ²⁷And the men, instead of having normal sexual relationships with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men and, as a result, suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved.

²⁸When they refused to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their evil minds and let them do things that should never be done. ²⁹Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, fighting, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. ³⁰They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They are forever inventing new ways of sinning and are disobedient to their parents. ³¹They refuse to understand, break their promises, and are heartless and unforgiving. ³²They are fully aware of God’s death penalty for those who do these things, yet they go right ahead and do them anyway. And, worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.

Luke 4:4 “⁴But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People need more than bread for their life.’”^£

Isa. 50:4 “⁴The Sovereign LORD has given me his words of wisdom, so that I know what to say to all these weary ones. Morning by morning he wakens me and opens my understanding to his will.

Pride is offended and insulted easily.  When a person is easily offended and/or insulted then you will see bitterness, and grudges manifest.  Pride cannot tolerate being crossed and so it becomes the source of most torments.  We know in today’s medical realm that there are advanced treatments being used in the psychology and psychiatry fields without any lasting effects in most cases.  No lasting solutions, why do you think this is the case? Could it be that we have not discerned that we have ignored one of the greatest enemies to mankind which is an inflated, self-centered ego otherwise known as PRIDE?

Pride never allows man to rest, an individual has no peace. There is continuous torment and restlessness going on. Pride and the absence of peace go hand in hand.  Jesus said, “I am meek and lowly in heart,” and He has told us that we must learn from Him and we will find rest in our soul. If this be the case then what is He saying to us literally?  From this saints we should learn that “humility is the key to freedom in our heart!”  Satan and any of mankind who is filled with pride, has no peace. NO peace KNOWS no peace!

Could a harden heart produce a proud heart which becomes a very strong heart? Ex.8:15” ¹⁵But when Pharaoh saw that the frogs were gone, he hardened his heart. He refused to listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had predicted.

There are many different forms of pride and we must realize that pride is at the bottom of most of man’s problems.  However, mankind becomes very frustrated when one is suffering and struggling with torment or bondage and you tell them that their problem is “Self” or “Pride!”  You have just hit a sacred cord and a person attempts to shut down because of what truth according to the signs as been spoken to him/her.  We must also realize that problems can be inherited (generational curses), or others could come from neglect or abuse as a child maybe even traumatic situations in one’s life.  We cannot ignore these factors. There are many complexes in additions to what has already been mentioned, hence we must see that low self image, and self-centeredness, pride, and hardened hearts which include wrong responses because of the pride will contribute to our bondage.

Interesting enough we have no reason to be proud and these are the nuggets I will share with you by making this statement showing you that this is what the Word of God says.

·         We were created by another. We came in as a helpless infant and didn’t even have a say in the matter, we couldn’t chose our parents, or our gender. Ps. 100:3 Acknowledge that the LORD is God! He made us, and we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.”

1 Cor. 6: 19-20 “¹⁹Or don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, ²⁰for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.”

• We have a sinful nature that we cannot change, nothing good originates in us. If there is anything righteous within us, it came from God.  Isa 64:6“⁶We are all infected and impure with sin. When we proudly display our righteous deeds, we find they are but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall. And our sins, like the wind, sweep us away.” 
• We have no ability or power in ourselves to do anything, only what God has granted. Deut.8:18 “ ¹⁸Always remember that it is the LORD your God who gives you power to become rich, and he does it to fulfill the covenant he made with your ancestors.”

      1 Cor. 4:7 “⁷What makes you better than anyone else? What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if all you have is from God, why boast as though you have accomplished something on your own?”

• We cannot control our destiny or guide ourselves.  We cannot control tomorrow, we have not answers to our real needs nor do we understand ourselves. Jer. 10:23 “ ²³I know, LORD, that a person’s life is not his own. No one is able to plan his own course.”

            The conclusion to all of these statements is that when a man is proud, he is deceived! See my nature we have a haughty mind.  God tells us in His word not to be wise in our own conceits, not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought.

Rom. 12:2-3 “²Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.

³As God’s messenger, I give each of you this warning: Be honest in your estimate of yourselves, measuring your value by how much faith God has given you. 

Obadiah 1:3-4 “³You are proud because you live in a rock fortress and make your home high in the mountains. ‘Who can ever reach us way up here?’ you ask boastfully. Don’t fool yourselves! ⁴Though you soar as high as eagles and build your nest among the stars, I will bring you crashing down. I, the LORD, have spoken!