Tag: Pride

Digging in Deeper: Philippians 2:3-4

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“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When was the last time you came across someone who was truly humble? That’s not a virtue we see very often nowadays, especially from people who spend their lives in the spotlight. More than that, it’s not a virtue that’s taught as something worth striving for in the first place. Instead, the message we have preached at us from every direction is that we need to look out for ourselves. We need to work to advance our own interests. We need to toot our own horn because if we don’t, no one else is going to do it for us. We are told that we are the most important person in the world and should behave accordingly. This trend was all sold to us as something positive. So…what have the results been?

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Digging in Deeper: Obadiah 3-4

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“Your arrogant heart has deceived you, you who live in clefts of the rock in your home on the heights, who say to yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’ Though you seem to soar like an eagle and make your nest among the stars, even from there I will bring you down. This is the Lord’s declaration.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

On occasion I’ll help my boys work on something that they’ve never done before. Oftentimes it is something that I have done and know how to do. In these instances it is not uncommon for them to get a little resistant to my help. Parents, give me an, “Amen.” They protest that they don’t need me because they know how to do it. In my more gracious moments (I don’t have those all the time…) I let them go a bit and help them up when they fail. But their pride can be pretty maddening at times. Sometimes it is downright infuriating. Our heavenly Father feels the same way.

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Morning Musing: Psalm 138:6

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“For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar.” (ESV – Read the chapter) ‬‬

Have you ever met someone who was too big for their britches? We like to give lip service to the idea that people are people no matter who or where they are, but in reality we don’t really believe that. We don’t believe it whether we think we are something or whether we’re sure we aren’t. Our celebrity culture makes this as plain as day. Celebrities are a little (or sometimes a lot) like spoiled children. The worst of them act in the zany ways they do not only because they think they can, but because all the people around them enable them to do it by catering to them. 

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Digging in Deeper: 2 Samuel 24:10

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“David’s conscience troubled him after he had taken a census of the troops. He said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I’ve done. Now, Lord, because I’ve been very foolish, please take away your servant’s guilt.’”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter) 

Have you ever done something you knew in your heart was wrong only to feel guilty about it immediately afterwards? You set out on a particular path, some trusted friends told you not to take that path, you took it anyway, and knew almost before you finished doing whatever it was they were right? That’s a miserable feeling, isn’t it? 

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Resist Pride

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In this final part of our series, Pursue: Chasing God in a Godless World, we talk about the one thing that has the greatest power to throw us off the path to life.  Having this thing in our lives is like having mold in our houses.  It can grow in ways we don’t notice or see until we’re sick from it.  What is it and how do we deal with it?  Keep reading to find out.

Resist Pride

We had a rainy November,didn’t we?  As the rain was falling a couple of weeks ago, I looked out at our swamp and we had more water standing in our yard than we did during Hurricane Florence.  And, given that we had almost as much rain over those few days as we did in the bigger storm, I shouldn’t have been surprised.  It still wasn’t the catastrophic rain they had not all that far east of here.  The real problem from that amount of flooding isn’t just the floodwaters themselves. It’s what comes next.  The North Carolina Baptists have and will continue to have disaster relief crews busily at work for the next 2-3 years to get life restored to where it was before Florence rolled through.  It’ll take that long because the clean-up is hard work. You’ve got to go into these homes and demo and replace everything from the ground up to above wherever the final water line was.  And you have to do all of that because of the threat of mold. 

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