Pride Vs Humility

The definition of pride in a negative sense is, being boastful, or having an excessive vanity and a higher opinion of your own abilities and having a feeling of being superior over others. In a positive sense, it is having a proper feeling of personal dignity and self worth. The definition of humility is the state of being modest and meek, meaning (long suffering and gentle), being real and not showy, and (teachable and easily approached).

If you have ever really taken a good, look at human nature and studied your own behavior at any time with a soul-searching attitude of attaining perfection of any kind. You have to come to the conclusion that pride in its negative sense is not only a stench in God’s nostrils, but as well to us the people who have to deal with it in its many forms, in ourselves and others.

The spirit of pride in all its ugly forms comes from a spirit of jealousy. The definition of jealousy is, being resentful and suspicious of a rival or being hostile or envious over the advantages and good fortune of others. Us participating and co-operating with this spirit makes us live in a continual environment of strife or (strong opposition) in our relationships with God and with others.

Isaiah 14:12-14, tells us that, “Lucifer who is defined as the light bringer, son of the morning meaning, (with great diligence and total purpose to do evil to humanity) fell from heaven to earth and became the ruler over this world system and now he has the capability to weaken and destroy human natures intense purpose to seek the Lord.” He became jealous of all God had and because of the adoration God received from all the other heavenly beings. Because of this, he was thrown out of heaven with all of the other angels who sided with him. Therefore, we see here that the original author of pride comes from the nature of Satan himself and if we submit to this spirit, rather to the Spirit of God, it puts us cross wise from God’s nature and within our soul, it brings an addiction that controls our thought life and actions.

King Solomon in all his wisdom and wealth at the end of his life states in Ecc.11: 8, “ if a man lives many years, let him rejoice in them all, but let him also remember that, he will have many days of sorrow, ignorance and be very little noticed by men. All that life consists of without a hunger for God is, vanity, being boastful, valueless and useless.”

Now knowing this let, us look at scripture and allow the Holy Spirit to search our heart and see how much of God or the Devil we have working in our lives. James 3:14-16 states, “ If you have bitter jealousy, rivalry and selfish ambition in you heart, do not pride yourselves on it and thus be arrogant and be living in a false sense of security.

As I am sitting here writing this I cannot help thinking, who in their right mind would want to participate in this type of addiction. It takes a person with some real intense passion and a desire for freedom to acknowledge to God that demonic forces are controlling them and living in this alienated condition from Him. Pride in our lives when the Holy Spirit exposes it, should make us bow our hearts and bend our knee in thankfulness to Him for exposing this vile and disgusting nature that originates from Satan. It is a life of fulfillment and appreciation to God as He delivers me from all the things that separate me from enjoying His friendship and the revelation of His ways. This condition is extremely serious and we need to take into account when it says, where this condition exists, there is all sorts of evil and vile (disgusting and corrupt) practices taking place. This takes into account about all of the opposition against God that can separate us from experiencing His love. There is a continuous theme in the bible that brings out this principle of pride, which causes jealousy and strife. Let’s name a few.

Prov.20:3 says, “It is an honor for a man to cease from strife and keep aloof from it, but every fool will be quarreling.” Romans 13:13 says, “let us live and conduct ourselves honorably with wisdom; not in having a showy outward condition, drunkenness, immorality and sensual indecency. Not in quarreling and jealously.” 1Timothy 6:4 says, “Any one puffed up with pride and having dull spiritual senses with fanciful elaborate ideas, although he is woefully ignorant, has an un-wholesome fondness for controversy and loves to argue and debate over words.” This type of spirit produces envy, jealousy, quarrels, abuse and insults with placing guilt on people rather then thinking the best of them. You notice here that it says, we can be ignorant of this attitude. This happens because, we are not walking in the Spirit of God and it has become a deception and decease in our soul.

In Galatians 5:19-20 it names every evil and vile thing that we said pride represents. These are defined as flesh sins or sins of carnality. Paul the Apostle names these sins as, “ immorality, impurity, indecency, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, divisions, party spirits, factions, heresies, envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like. He goes on to say to say, I warn you, that they who participate in these things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Now if you are really saved and know Jesus as your savior, why would you want to live in bondage to the Devils devices in any of these areas?

There are too many in the body of Christ that really have not become aware of the lack of freedom and control that they have over their own lives. I can understand people who do not know the Lord living in this type of a life prison of ignorance and emotional behavior. However, to be a child of God and still participating in this type of bondage is beyond my understanding. How blind has the Devil made us to live in such poverty and away from God’s favor and mercy? Paul gave a warning to these people who were born again believers that while they were in bondage to these things they could not participate in enjoying the heritage that God gave them when they became born again believers. He did not mean that they were going to hell like we here in many pulpits today.

Philippians 2:3 says, “do nothing by being cliquey and taking a constant argumentation stance which causes strife, being motivated by only your own personal needs and being overbearing and arrogant. Instead, in the true Spirit of humility (lowliness of mind) let each regard the others as better than himself, thinking more highly of one another than we do of ourselves. Let us not only look at our own interests, but on the interests of others. In turn we will have the same attitude of Jesus when He being equal with God, put away His equality with God and became a servant by becoming a human being and dying on the cross for our sin.” I do not believe we fully understand what Jesus gave up to become human and a servant to mankind. It is only as we begin to see Jesus the man and His humanity in the scriptures that, we can learn to be as humble as He was because of His desire to walk in total obedience to God’s will in His lifetime.

Let’s try to apply these principles and get right to the heart of the problem on how this attitude affects our lives. God wants us to walk in this purification process because; he wants us to walk in more freedom. Now to do this, the most important thing is to get God’s opinion on what He sees in us. In James 4:1-10 in talking to born again believers he states, “What leads to strife and how do quarrels start among you people? Isn’t it from your sensual desires that are ever warring in your bodily members?”

These sensual desires represent the word lust, which is an intense craving, or appetite that is inbred in our senses from birth, like touch, taste, smell and hearing. These senses come from the rational reasoning from our own minds and human nature. In 11Cor: 5:17 it says, “When we received Jesus into our heart we became a new creature, received a new nature and were regenerated. When this happened we received the mind of Christ and now have the capacity to hear His thoughts and submit to His will and appetites.”

We know have two natures with in us. The nature of what we were born with and the new regenerated nature that we received when Jesus came into our hearts and we now have the nature of Christ Himself.

Paul in trying to define this warring going on inside of himself states it this way. In Romans7:18-25 he states, “I know that in my natural mind and the nature that I was born with. He’s referring to the earlier condition that I defined as carnality or appetites of our flesh. I have no power to deliver myself from the things that have me in bondage to continually breaking God’s laws. I have another desire in me to do God’s will, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t deliver myself to walk in obedience to God’s will. So I have a war going on inside my mind and soul that has taken control of me and I have lost my resolve to control my own destiny and have become depressed and have feelings of being worthless.” In essence, he was having a hard time loving himself. He concludes that, he had to learn how to tap into this new nature that was given to him by Christ.

Let me point out that once we come to grips with the warfare going on inside of our own bodily member or self and let Jesus take over then, the warfare going on between us and other people will be handled with ease. There are many giants in the land that have to be conquered but first, we have to conquer the giant fighting on the inside, which is self. We said earlier that there is a healthy self-pride of accomplishment and self worth. However, that has to be seen through our eyes by allowing God to evaluate and showing us what real self worth He sees in us. Unless we allow God to show us this type of self worth, we will always focus on us taking the credit for the things of accomplishment that have been done in our lives. Once we fall into the I syndrome as Satan did, we become addicted to this unhealthy life style. There was a song that came out some years ago that was entitled; I did it my way. God never wants us to thing we can ever do any thing our way or in our own strength. We are not having a fight with other people the fight is taking place in the spiritual sphere with the Devil, as he is playing with our minds. Once we see and conquer this fight. We won’t want to do it our way and compete against the world and our fellow beings.

In these next verses James says, “Because you continually give in and live in this bondage to your old nature that you were born with, your desires for fulfillment go unanswered and you never live in contentment. With this attitude, you really have an addiction to a spirit of murder. Some of you don’t even ask for help and others of you pray for things that are totally out of God’s will because, if God were to answer those prayers, you would waste the outcome on your own selfish needs. Because of this condition that you are living in, you are like unfaithful wives having illicit love affairs with the world and breaking your marriage vows to God. Don’t you realize that being a friend of the world makes you stand as an enemy of God? Because of the stand you have made, you are the enemy not God. All the while that you are living in this control of Satan, God’s attitude is one of a jealous lover who longs for you to come to your senses, so He can rush to your aid and hug and heal you of this wretched life style that you are addicted to. Even in spite of this condition God gives more of His grace or (unmerited favor) to combat this tendency to be prideful.”

The way we receive His power of grace is to humble ourselves and admit that we cannot fight this in our own ability. Those that live in this addictive life style put themselves in a condition that causes God to resist them because they live in this bondage of self. This does not mean that God takes vengeance on us. It’s His intention to return good for evil. The more we lean on the Lord and run to Him for help the more we find Him giving us the power to overcome these tendencies and addictive life styles.

Let’s remind ourselves that this is not something we do when we feel we have a need for help from God. Like calling on Him like an errand boy for Him to run to our rescue. It’s a way of life and learning how to submit to His sovereign authority and experiencing His perfect love and friendship. I ask you as I ask myself isn’t this the type of a relationship that we are looking for? How many people that you know have the capability to love and accept you with no limitations? At one time, in my life, I didn’t understand this type of love and acceptance and I believe many of you reading this don’t really understand it either.

These verses go on to say, “Be subject to God. Stand firm against the Devil, resist him and he will flee from you.” If we have submitted to God’s authority and have an attitude of being His subordinate, it will only happen as we have our minds renewed by meditating daily, with knowing the scriptures. I have heard too many messages over the years that we supposed to go around rebuking the Devil over and over in our own strength, as if we have some superhuman power within ourselves to do this.

In the book of Zechariah chapter2 and 3: Zechariah the Prophet had a vision from the Lord and he went and told it to the people of Israel. The message given to Zechariah was this. God said that, “the people should rejoice because He was going to live in their midst and at a future time meaning now in these last days, he will have many more children in His family to bless and protect. He goes on to say don’t be disturbed and let your fear dominate you life and live in confusion.” He then says that he had a vision of Joshua the high priest who represents the people of God in this last generation, meaning now. As Joshua was standing before the Lord, the Devil was standing on Joshua’s right side. He was there to accuse Joshua and condemn him before God.

Chapter 3:2 of Zechariah states, “The Lord rebukes you, Satan; the Lord has chosen to defend His people and habitually chooses to do so. I am setting Joshua or my people free.” He says he saw Joshua wearing filthy clothes and God says, “I have made a choice to forgive all your sins and not remember them anymore, just as if they never existed. I am now going to put on you a clean rich garment and a turban on you head.” The angel then made a solemn promise to Joshua, “The Lord says, if you will walk in my ways and function in my authority, then you will also rule in my house and have charge over my courts, and I will give you the right to approach my presence and places to walk among these who stand here.” God gives us the same promise today.

These filthy clothes that Joshua had on represent the unfaithfulness of the Israelite people’s walk with the Lord. When God forgave them, of their unfaithfulness, it also represents what happened to us when we became born again believers in Christ when we accepted Jesus and He forgave us. The new rich garment represents a mantle of authority that equips us with God’s power and strength to help us not only walking humbly before Him, but know we are able to fight against demonic forces at work to destroy God’s purposes. The turban represents a crown of royalty showing the high esteem that God holds us in. We have been called by Him to become kings and priests in His service. Therefore, we see here in our own abilities we cannot resist the Devil. We must turn our lives fully over to God in submission to His will and then with Him living on the inside of us, His anointing that He gives us is able to rebuke the Devil in GOD’S strength not ours.

These last three verses in James 4:8-10 read like this, “come close to God and He will come close to you. Recognize that you are erring and falling back from receiving you total allotment from God your Father. Get rid of things in your life that are not God’s priorities. These excesses that are not God’s perfect will for you have made you double minded in walking in obedience to His will. God is not first in your life. As you draw near to God, be deeply sorry and even weep over your disloyalty. Let your laughter be turned to sorrow over your failure to walk in obedience to God’s ways. Put away your showy outward appearance and allow the Holy Spirit and His passion to expose those things that have held you back from living for the Lord. Humble yourselves by allowing the Holy Spirit to show you the great need you have for Him and God will elevate you to the position that you ought to be by living as His sons and daughters.”

It says here to come close to God. In the Greek translation, it actually means to wrap ourselves around God and be absorbed by Him. You can see how much more this means than just having a closer walk with Him. There is a symbiosis or mutual intimate advantages of a partnership of two different entities coming together to form one person. This can only happen by a miraculous application done by the Holy Spirit. It’s us allowing the Holy Spirits intervention into our lives and pointing out those areas that have not come under the rulership and obedience to God’s ways of thinking and doing. The very surrendering and honest trusting of ourselves to the Holy Spirit and allowing Him to carefully examine our motives and the intentions of our hearts is difficult and painful at times.

When it says for us to be deeply sorry and weep over our disloyalty it means, we have to recognize and be honest with ourselves of the misery that we are living in and acknowledge the great hunger we have for His friendship. These conditions are what the bible calls trials or testings that after we go through these times, we come out with a greater understanding of the love that God has for us.

It like a warring going on inside of us where the Lord and the Devil are at odds for control of our lives. It’s so very important that God and the adult spiritual people of God around us are constantly encouraging us. We need to know that, if God is for us no weapon formed against us will ever win out and make us miss God’s perfect will. This warfare needs a lot of fervent devotion from us for God that, only the Holy Spirit can give us so; we can get through these trials.

Romans 8:26-27 states, “the Holy Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weaknesses, for we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it worthily as we ought. The Spirit Himself goes to meet our earnest pleadings in our interests or in our defense, since we aren’t able to put these feelings into intellectual words. He does this by moanings and groanings deep with in our own spirit where He lives.” God is in a constant pursuit to persuade mankind to, let Him search our hearts and minds. When we submit to the Holy Spirit, we give up the right to bail ourselves out of our own predicaments. The Holy Spirit prays for the right things that are needed for us and God answers that prayer. In essences, we allow God to use our own spirit to pray for us. The neat thing about this, it brings peace, joy and wholeness to our entire being.

It goes on to say, let your laughter be turned to sorrow over your failure and walk in obedience to God’s ways. Put away your showy outward appearance and allow the Holy Spirit and His passion to expose those things that have held you back from living for the Lord. God is not telling us to become depressed, bored and not have anymore fun. Some people that I have talked to believe that. He is trying to tell us to take our lives seriously. Let’s not continue to go off half-cocked and live in emotional passions not considering the consequences of our deviant behavior. Let not be like the man in James 1: 22-25 where it says, “He listens and reads the word of God and the Holy Spirit shows him those areas that need changing. He looks at his condition in a mirror and seeing his true condition, instead of deciding to change with the Holy Spirit’s help; he walks away and doesn’t take his condition seriously.” Therefore, the consequences are, he never changes.

This word laughter that has to be changed to sorrow in the Greek gives the connotation of meaning, gratification or a desire and need for pleasure. There is pleasure in sinning but it will only continue and be fulfilling for a short period. Eventually you will pay the consequences for violating what I call spiritual laws of life. It’s a law of life that you reap what you sow. No one can escape this principle. Let me give an example of this.

Have you ever been hurt emotionally by anyone and gotten angry. You have this feeling of getting even and you start planning in your mind how to do this. Well there is pleasure and gratification in having these thoughts. They even feel very good. Anger has a way of smothering the hurt feelings like a salve on a bad burn.

Some Christians live their whole life with these unresolved issues and end up going to heaven with all these pent up feelings. These types of addictions rob us of the joy, peace and prosperity that God gave us when we became born again and were adopted into His family. The longer we carry these hurts the harder it is for us to be delivered from these unhealthy life styles.

This last verse states, “Humble yourselves by allowing the Holy Spirit to show you the great need you have for Him and God will elevate you to the position that you ought to be by living as His sons and daughters.” God has to strengthen us because we said that, there is suffering as this change is going on inside us. It’s important that we become teachable and easily approachable. You never know whom God may bring into your path to gently reprove in love and expose some false concept or a lack of understanding of God’s ways that are in us.

We need at times to stop looking for love in all the wrong places. Where do we see perfect love only by looking at the CROSS? The perfect and complete role model of humility tells us that, “greater love has no man then this that, he lay down His life for His friends.” Jesus became insignificant when He stepped out of heaven and became a man and involved Himself in the time periods of mankind. He learned obedience in the things that He suffered here on earth as He walked with great passion and a total dedication to do His Fathers will. It was the miracles He performed and the authority He had that set Him apart from being another plain unnoticed person on the planet.

Philippians 2:7 says, “Jesus stripped Himself of all privileges and rightful dignity as to assume the outward appearance of a servant in that, He became like a man and was born a human being. After He appeared to people and related to them in human form, He humbled Himself further and carried His obedience to the extreme by dying on the cross. Because of this God has now made Him very significant. Because He (Jesus) has stooped so low, God has highly exalted Him and has bestowed on Him the name that is above every name. That at the name of Jesus every knee must bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue openly confess and acknowledge that Jesus Christ Is Lord.”

When we willing submit without intimidation to make Jesus Lord over our lives, it’s then we will begin to manifest an unending appetite in totally trusting in His mercy and grace, and openly confess our appreciation and walk in reverence and awe in us totally submitting to His example.