2 verses came to my mind today.
“I must decrease so that HE can increase”
John 3:30
&
“And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. ... A thorn in your eyes is a thorn in the flesh.” 2 Corinthians 12:7-9
What the 1st verse speaks to me.
1. Our human will and desires must be put aside so that God can use our lives in the way he desires.
2. Don’t try to solve problems with human methods, instead pray and allow God room to move.
What the 2nd verse means to me.
1. There are situations that God allows to be used in our lives to show us our weak areas. We can’t fix something if we are unaware that it is an issue.
2.We will not obtain perfection in this life time. We can only pray to become better each day.
3. We will ALWAYS need God and his grace.
4. We don’t want to ever think more highly of ourselves than we ought. We do not want Pride to overtake us.
I started thinking about Pride and decided to do a search “Biblical Symptoms of Pride”
As I studied, I again felt my heart being checked. I can recall various times in my life that I have displayed some of these symptoms.
My prayer today is - Help me to push past human Pride so that your purpose can truly be fulfilled in my life.
I am sharing the main points below for you to also look over. You might also be surprised to find yourself there. But if you do.. don’t worry Gods grace abounds and prayer works.
The below Article credits go to - Seven Subtle Symptoms 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”
2. A Harsh Spirit
Those who have the sickness of pride in their hearts speak of others’ sins with contempt, irritation, frustration, or judgment. Pride is crouching inside our belittling of the struggles of others. It’s cowering in our jokes about the ‘craziness’ of our spouse. It may even be lurking in the prayers we throw upward for our friends that are — subtly or not — tainted with exasperated irritations
3. Superficiality
When pride lives in our hearts, we’re far more concerned with others’ perceptions of us than the reality of our hearts. We fight the sins that have an impact on how others view us, and make peace with the ones that no one sees. We have great success in the areas of holiness that have highly visible accountability, but little concern for the disciplines that happen in secret.
4. Defensiveness
Those who stand in the strength of Christ’s righteousness alone find a confident hiding place from the attacks of men and Satan alike. True humility is not knocked off balance and thrown into a defensive posture by challenge or rebuke, but instead continues in doing good, entrusting the soul to our Creator.
5. Presumption Before God
Humility approaches God with humble assurance in Christ Jesus. If either the “humble” or the “assurance” are missing in that equation, our hearts very well might be infected with pride. Some of us have no shortage of boldness before God, but if we’re not careful, we can forget that he is God.
Others of us feel no confidence before God. Which sounds like humility, but in reality it’s another symptom of pride. In those moments, we’re testifying that we believe our sins are greater than his grace. We doubt the power of Christ’s blood and we’re stuck staring at ourselves instead of Christ.
6. Desperation for Attention
Pride is hungry for attention, respect, and worship in all its forms.
Maybe it sounds like shameless boasting about ourselves. Maybe it’s being unable to say “no” to anyone because we need to be needed. Maybe it looks like obsessively thirsting for marriage — or fantasizing about a better marriage — because you’re hungry to be adored. Maybe it looks like being haunted by your desire for the right car or the right house or the right title at work: all because you seek the glory that comes from men, not God.
7. Neglecting Others
Pride prefers some people over others. It honors those who the world deems worthy of honor, giving more weight to their words, their wants, and their needs. There’s a thrill that goes through me when people with “power” acknowledge me. We consciously or unconsciously pass over the weak, the inconvenient, and the unattractive, because they don’t seem to offer us much.
Maybe more of us struggle with pride than we thought.
There’s good news for the prideful. Confession of pride signals the beginning of the end for pride. It indicates the war is already being waged. For only when the Spirit of God is moving, already humbling us, can we remove the lenses of pride from our eyes and see ourselves clearly, identifying the sickness and seeking the cure.
By God’s grace, we can turn once again to the glorious gospel in which we stand and make much of him even through identifying our pride in all its hiding places inside of us. Just as my concealed pride once moved me toward death, so the acknowledgement of my own pride moves me toward life by causing me to cling more fiercely to the righteousness of Christ.
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23–24)
Author: Amanda Wilson
