"Pride will kill you. Forever. Pride is the sin most likely to keep you from crying out for a Savior. Those who think they are well will not look for a doctor.
As seriously dangerous as pride is, it’s equally hard to spot. When it comes to diagnosing our hearts, those of us who have the disease of pride have a challenging time identifying our sickness. Pride infects our eyesight, causing us to view ourselves through a lens that colors and distorts reality. Pride will paint even our ugliness in sin as beautiful and commendable.
We can’t conclude that we don’t struggle with pride because we don’t see pride in our hearts. The comfortable moments when I pat myself on the back for how well I am doing are the moments that should alarm me the most. I need to reach for the glasses of Christ-like humility, remembering that nothing good dwells in my flesh, and search my heart for secret pride and its symptoms.
In his essay on undetected pride, Jonathan Edwards points out seven sneaky symptoms of the infection of pride.
1. Fault-Finding
While pride causes us to filter out the evil we see in ourselves, it also causes us to filter out God’s goodness in others. We sift them, letting only their faults fall into our perception of them.
When I’m sitting in a sermon or studying a passage, it’s pride that prompts the terrible temptation to skip the Spirit’s surgery on my own heart and instead draft a mental blog post or plan a potential conversation for the people who “really need to hear this.”
Edwards writes,
The spiritually proud person shows it in his finding fault with other saints. . . . The eminently humble Christian has so much to do at home and sees so much evil in his own that he is not apt to be very busy with other hearts.
Read the rest HERE.
If you would like additional reading, we recommend this book:
From the angel Gabriel's announcement of God's plan for her, through the adversities presented by Christ's work on earth, Mary, the mother of Jesus, exhibited courage and humility. In this study, readers will walk beside Mary the teenager...the wife...the mother...the widow...the church member. Women of all ages will discover how to:- Sustain a humble spirit with overflowing prayer
- Hold God's assurances deep within
- Walk humbly through good times and bad with a heart fixed on God
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1 comment:
I love your blog. It is beautiful and so helpful. I wanted to ask you where all the beautiful art comes from that you have in your posts?
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