PRIDE

 You know, I really hate it when a group of people takes a word or a thing that was once held in such high esteem, and they make it the mascot of something really ugly. No, I won't go into details with that one; but what I will say is that the word "Pride" could and should be used with a certain group because it is exactly what is keeping them in their trouble.  No, they don't see it as trouble, and that's the real problem. They are blinded by that pride. They are captured by it. They are enslaved to it. You can stand there and try to explain it to them until you turn blue; it won't change them. They are given over to their depravity, which is again, EXACTLY what the Bible said would happen to them.

    Pride is a terrible thing. We can be proud without being prideful. We can be happy that something or someone has accomplished something. We can be boastful to a degree that our kid has won this or that award. We can have pride in our kinship, and we can have pride in our appearance, but when we allow that pride to take over and be the subject of worship or too much admiration, we have been deceived by ourselves! We have allowed this deception, and we will no doubt become what the end result is when that happens. We are given into that depravity.  We are no longer useful in our capacity because of the pride we clung to. The cold pride, by the way; demands from us, but never satisfies.

    I am as guilty of this as anyone else, so I think maybe I have the right to discuss it. When we are so bent on being right, and we refuse to hear the opinions of others, we set ourselves up for failure. We could be right. It could be that we are 100% correct about a matter, but perception is real, and if the other person believes they are correct, we can at least listen to them, and try to either show them the truth, or acknowledge that they feel that way, that we (me) feel another way, and you know what, it's OK to disagree! We don't have to wave our flags and scream at each other; we can be on different sides of the issue and still remain friends and/or civil. 

    Pride, according to the Bible, (no better source) comes before a fall. We know this, even if we're not into reading the Word because people tend to quote that one passage if nothing else. Pride comes before mistakes. Pride comes before we suffer. Pride comes before we lose it all because we were just too proud to budge, bend, or behave correctly. When we allow such feelings of overt rigid thinking, we can become as useless and as worthless as the very person or thing we were standing against because we simply aren't good enough to have been the end-all in the first place. If our pride and our devotion aren't in Christ we have NO reason to boast and say we are anything more than the walking dead. We're on our way out as soon as we get on the planet! We're not ON this planet long enough to be so full of pride and self-love.  Again, I am speaking from experience. I have fallen over and over again, and no, it's not fun...in fact, it hurts.

    When we get it in our heads and in our hearts that someone is a liar, or someone is a jerk, simply because they disagree with us, we are the problem. When we get it in our heads that it's OK to talk about someone we disagree with, we are the problem. When or if we begin to believe the lies we tell ourselves about someone else simply because they are not our favorite person, we again are the problem. God knows this. We need to figure it out before our pride (yes, it's pride in ourselves) topples us and causes God to take away our blessings. It's really truly not worth losing a blessing over.  It would be CRAZY to lose a blessing just because you (I) decided to be nasty in our hearts and our heads about someone who really never hurt us, but we thought they did (somehow).  

    Can we agree to agree on that one?  I hope so.

Photo Credit: Pinterest.com