Understanding Pride and how to overcome it:

It’s commonly known as the spirit of self-exaltation. This is a spirit which seeks fame, human glory, control and domination of others. Pride is the root of most evil. It’s an independent spirit which wants to do its own thing without any authority from anyone else. Pride manifests itself through various ways and sometimes it can go unnoticed. It’s against submission, whether to God or man. Pride is very dangerous to man because it destroys everything one has ever achieved and worked for. It does not acknowledge God and has no fear for Him; it is rebellious and disobedient. It is a very powerful weapon of the enemy. Pride can attack anyone.

Believers have not been spared by pride and in some cases it has taken deeper root in some of our hearts. A proud heart is disloyal, both to God and man; it defies the prophetic voice and authority. Some of the proud people fight tooth and nail to bring those in authority down in order to take up their positions and be in control. They simply don’t accept defeat or allow anyone to order them around. If you have submission problems whether to God, your boss, husband or any authority that God has placed over your life, check yourself out; you could be dealing with a real serious issue of pride. It is one of the things that God hates (Proverbs 6:16-19).

A proud person thinks highly of themselves and always expects others to give them the best treatment. They like to be served, but cannot become servants themselves. Jesus warns us against such people in the book of Luke when he says;

“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts…”~ Luke 20:46 ESV

Proud people are likely to be harsh, hard and pressing and are hard to please. To such a person, enough is never enough. They are oppressors to some extent.

King Uzziah was a humble man who served the Lord faithfully and God blessed him. God gave him victory after victory and he became so powerful because of the help he received from the Lord. But when king Uzziah became strong, he grew arrogant and this led to his downfall. He defied the Lord his God by going into the temple to burn incense yet no one had the right to do this except the priests who were descended from Aaron. He refused to listen to Azariah and other priests who warned him against it and God punished him for the rest of his life. He became ritually unclean and could not rule the country any more.

In Numbers 16, we meet Korah, Dathan and Abiram who decided to rebel against the leadership of Moses. They failed to submit to him and they ended up punished. I can think of so many other examples in the scriptures of people who were brought down and punished because they allowed pride to dominate their hearts.

One of the most important things for us to understand is that we can never stand on our own and neither can we achieve anything on our own. God is the giver of everything; He is the ultimate source of all wealth, riches, power, achievements, success, blessings and honor. He is able and more than able to bless and make anyone successful, great and strong. He can exalt you and give you great honor among the high and mighty, but the question is, can you give him all the glory, humble yourself before Him, worship and acknowledge Him for who He is even after all this?

Many times our proud hearts have become a real obstacle in our lives. God constantly searches and tests our hearts, but in most cases we fail big time because of pride. We must be very careful not to let our hearts to be dominated by pride otherwise we will end up destroying ourselves. We must learn to submit to God and to the authorities He has put over our lives, and to honor and respect His servants.

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.~ 1 Peter 2:13-14 ESV

And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, on the fifteenth day of this seventh month and for seven days is the Feast of Booths to the LORD…You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” ~ Leviticus 23:33-34, 42-43 ESV

One of the reasons why God commanded the children of Israel to observe the festival of the shelters, booths or tabernacles was to remind them of their humble beginning. Pride sprouts because we forget so easily where we are coming from. To truly live a confident, humble life, we need to remember where we are coming from; where our abilities, talents, gifts, strengths, achievements and success come from. We need to go back to our ‘booths’ and remember our humble beginnings. The more successful and great we become, the more humble we should become. It should actually amaze us that God could give so much to us and that He could enable us to do and accomplish much. With such an attitude we will bless, honor and glorify God and give him a thanksgiving offering.