Pride

I had an experience recently that has enlightened me about the issue of Pride that I thought I would share with the few of you who view my blog. I am writing from the heart here…nothing fancy…just a little story about my most recent revelation.

Pride completely clouds your mind of what is right and what is necessary. Pride puffs you up into thinking that the entire world revolves around what makes you comfortable and happy. Pride makes you feel really important…in your own head. Pride destroys perfectly good relationships and puts a huge wedge between you and your most important relationship…your’s and God’s. Pride causes you to make decisions that you will definitely later regret.

My recent experience was that I made a mistake. A pretty decent sized mistake. I committed the total pride crime: I decided that I mattered more than others. That only my thoughts and my personal life mattered. That my decision only affected me. But this wasn’t the only bad part about my prideful mistake. I had committed to someone…something…that I would not make this choice and I was trusted. And I got caught. And you know what happened when I was caught? I got defensive. I wasn’t outwardly defensive at first, but inside I was boiling. Of course in my head I made about 25 excuses for why it was a ridiculous situation and how I should have not have to deal with it. And the very cruel but obvious truth was, I was really wrong and my pride was clouding my judgement.

Luckily, when I finally let God in enough to slap me around a bit, He did. After I had this revelation of my own stupidity, Sunday night David preached a sermon on Joy and how pride can sometimes rob us of joy. And that was a confirmation in my spirit that this was definitely a lesson that God was teaching me. And because of my recent experience, I was able to share with a few of the youth girls how I had let my pride rob me on about 20 hours of joy because I was so focused on how I was affected by a situation. And how my day changed and my heart was lighter and more joyful once I let go of the pride and just said, "all justifications aside...I was wrong and I need to apologize and let it go."

So, while I apparently have to keep learning this lesson over and over again, I get a little better at it each time. God is so good to have patience with me and continue to teach me. My moment of joy today is in realizing that my character is getting stronger because I am allowing God to shape it...sometimes slowly, but little by little i'm changing for the better. More of Him, less of me.