by Graham Mol
About a month ago I shared a blog post based on the song Lean On Me. Today I want to start by looking at a verse from the same song. Here it is:
Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill those of your needs
That you won’t let show.
This verse got me thinking about just how costly pride is – and how much it costs us to hang on to it. Instead of asking for help we try to do it ourselves and despair when we can’t.
In doing some reading up on the topic I came across an article that says this about the cost of pride:
And we need to come to grips with this because pride always costs us way more than we realize.
When we sin, the people around us suffer from our pride.
And we also suffer the consequences of our own pride by loss of trust, loss of friendship, loss of reputation, ministry opportunities. We spend time out of fellowship with God, perhaps the most tragic consequence of all.
(Sarah Beals, Humility and the True Cost of Pride)
The Bible warns us about this last consequence of pride, that it impacts our relationship with the Lord.
“God opposes the proud
but shows favour to the humble.”
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
(James 4:6-10)
And…
All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you. Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour. Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world.
(1 Peter 5:5-9)
From these two texts we can see that answer to the problem of pride is humility. God’s grace is to the humble not the proud. We are also given a picture of what humility means in these two passages of Scripture.
Humility is:
- Submitting yourself to God. By doing this we are declaring that Jesus is worth more than my pride.
- Resisting the devil. Satan’s chief sin was pride, we follow him and his example when we hold onto pride in our own lives.
Let us actively pray against pride forming in our hearts and lives. Let us ask the Lord to search our hearts and reveal any offensive way in us (Psalm 139:23-24). May we serve the Lord humbly and trust in His exaltation rather than our own.
God Bless
Graham
