Pride and Fitness
Today I want to talk about something I’ve been thinking on in my own life… pride. I am qualified to talk about it because I can be pretty prideful at times. God has shown me some things about pride and I want to share it with you.
The Bible says God opposes the proud. What makes the sin of pride so bad is that it’s not just a sin, but it’s the mother of so many other sins! Pride causes us to not only exalt our own self and our own needs above others, but it actually wants to exalt itself above God! It leads to jealousy, lying, anger, coveting, lust, and fighting… and those are just a few examples! Why? Because pride is the preoccupation with ourselves and our own needs. Pride wants it’s own way! Pride is easily offended. It is a lie that says we are worth thinking about all the time! It is the wrong notion that everything revolves around us! Pride is an obsession with ourselves. It isn’t necessarily having too high of an opinion of ourselves either… we can be prideful and have a low opinion of ourselves. How is this? We can constantly be obsessing over how well we performed at something, what others think of us, do we measure up, do people like us, are we a good parent, how does this situation affect me, how do we look….but whether the thoughts about ourselves are positive or negative… we’re still obsessing over SELF! We can obsess over our successes, or we can obsess over our failures… but we’re still obsessing over ourselves.
James 4:6 says,” God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
He gives grace to the humble! Oh, I want this! But what exactly does it mean to be humble? C.S.Lewis defined it pretty well I think. He said that humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less! Wow! A person can be confident and have high self-esteem and still be humble. He knows His worth in the Lord! A humble person isn’t thinking about himself all the time…. in fact, a humble person forgets himself. A humble person sees himself through God’s eyes and through the Word. He knows that anything He is or anything He does is Christ in him! He is striving to be more like Christ. Christ left His throne in heaven to take on flesh and lived a lowly life on this Earth, loving and serving others. He humbled himself to death on the cross for others. A humble person has Christ as his example and puts the needs and feelings of others above himself. Then, he ends up being the one blessed and the one God gives grace to! The humble person is the one with a peaceful mind because he isn’t obsessing over himself. He knows it’s not all about him and that is freeing!
Humility will set us free because it frees us up to think of ourselves less and Christ more. It frees us to serve others expecting nothing in return. It frees us to put ourselves out there doing what God calls us to do because we know it’s not about us! Humility puts us on the road to grace! Less of me and more of you Lord; that is my prayer today!
Action Step 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼
Read James chapter 4 today. Pray for a humble heart and let it set you free today to spend your time thinking about Christ and serving others. Look around and see how you can be the hands and feet of Jesus to someone who needs Him today!
