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Pitfalls Of Success Pride

By ONYEKA
20 February 2016   |   3:26 am
  A feeling of self-respect and personal worth. Satisfaction with your (or another’s) achievements. The trait of being spurred on by a dislike of falling below your standards. Unreasonable and inordinate self-esteem (personified as one of the deadly sins). YOU know the scripture, which speaks about how pride goes before a fall. We all know it…

 

Praying man at the altar. Image source erikbrewer

Praying man at the altar. Image source erikbrewer

A feeling of self-respect and personal worth. Satisfaction with your (or another’s) achievements. The trait of being spurred on by a dislike of falling below your standards. Unreasonable and inordinate self-esteem (personified as one of the deadly sins).

YOU know the scripture, which speaks about how pride goes before a fall. We all know it well really, but how rarely we think of ourselves as being proud.

Most times, you envision pride as having to be loud and pompous, but it is that pride that has been expertly hidden that is more dangerous.

Frankly, unless the Lord uncovers this deadly sin in your heart, you will live oblivious of it and wonder at your lack of grace.

In my life, it shocked me when God uncovered pride in my heart. I had always thought of myself as a reasonably humble fellow. That should have been the first sign of pride.

Why is it that that which is plainly beneath our nose is that which we cannot see? Jesus said that if we first remove the plank in our eyes, we will see to remove the speck in another’s eye.

The question arises: How can you know that you have a plank in your own eye, even if you were looking into a mirror? Only the Lord can open the eyes of your heart to see this.

Here are some signs that show this horrendous vice might be lurking in you. (Do not feel judged in anyway. The truth is not meant to reject, but to correct, save and direct).
Signs Of Pride

Let us take one of the definitions of pride and examine it: “Unreasonable and inordinate self-esteem.”

Read that again if you will and examine yourself if this speaks of you? If that is a bit difficult, examine the practical side of your behaviour, that which you do without conscious thought.

Do you tend to set and demand that shared items at home or at work are closer to you than others?

Do you step aside to let another get ahead of you… in traffic or in other situations?

Do you think of yourself or of your generation wiser than the ones that have gone before?

When you pray, do you pray more for yourself than for others or do you pray at all for others?

Regardless of what reasoning you might come up with, the bottom-line is that if you esteem yourself and things that concern you as being more important than others, you are working in pride.

The Danger Of Pride

Pride is what made Lucifer fall from his exalted position. Likewise any man who falls prey to this vice walks the same road as he and will have the same judgement if he doesn’t change.

Pride is what has kept mankind increasing in knowledge and yet making the very same mistakes that history has shown to be the downfall of many. Thus, life in this world is getting worse and not better.

With pride in your heart, you cannot receive from God, grace, help or mercy. This is a fact.

The worst thing about pride is that it is so blinded by its own self-importance that those who are taking away by it cannot tell when they are running towards the edge of a cliff.

The wicked deception of it is that your selfishness will take you places. Frankly, it will take you really high, so that when it deflates, by the virtue of its shallowness, your fall will be great.
The Way Less Trodden

I find it befitting here to mention that virtue so disdained and underestimated- humility. Humility is marked by meekness, which is the feeling of patient, submissive humbleness and a disposition to be patient and long suffering.

Patience, submissive, humility and longsuffering are not virtues celebrated or acknowledged by society, and that is why humility is hardly considered a virtue. Instead, it is considered as weakness.

The past few weeks we spoke about changing one’s perspective. Now, in this place, more than many, the evident conflict demands a change of perspective.

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