Pride & Destruction

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II. Pride In Life

We have discussed several Scriptures pertaining to Pride, from Proverbs to Ezekiel to Isaiah to Matthew. Everything that we have discussed says one thing: pride in the wrong context will lead us to destruction. We cannot escape it, we cannot hide from it nor can we say it does not affect us. We must call it what it is and deal with it appropriately. So what I want to share with you is the How. How do we recognize the pride in our life that can lead us to destruction and how do we deal with it. There are several areas that I could address, but I want to limit this to two areas, our spouses and our kids. If we can master the use of our pride in these two areas, we can transfer the things we learn into other areas in our lives as well. Let me walk you through pride as it relates to our kids first.

A. Pride that impacts our kids. Ephesians 6:4 says “Fathers (mothers also) do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” For a long time I misunderstood what this meant – I thought we could not make our kids angry. What this is saying is that we should not provoke anger within them but raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. How can we bring them to anger? Men who were in prison and on death row were interviewed and asked about their relationship with their fathers. You know what they said? Many said it was bad, some said that the father never disciplined them and other said they hated their father. We bring our children to anger when we as parents do not walk before them as God commanded. Our kids need our love, our patience and our respect. They need to know that they are valued, that their opinion matter and that they have something to offer. Finally they need to know that there are boundaries that they should not cross, that the respect goes both ways.

One of the gravest mistakes ever made by a parent, including me, is to tell our children “do as I say, not as I do”. That’s hard for them to do. Where does this come from? Pride. Because of our pride as parents, we do not believe that our kids have the right to question us, our authority, our position on issues, etc. They should be “seen and not heard”; marching behind us like good little soldiers and never step out of line. I am not advocating that we let the kids do and say whatever they want, but we cannot address them from a pride standpoint without explanation.

Another example – school sports. I have seen parents scream and shout at their kids or the coaches in anger. They yell at the kids if they make a mistake. Why? Because it’s embarrassing to them as parents – it hurts their pride. Their child should be the best – nothing else will do. What about when our kids make us angry? They come to us for forgiveness, but sometimes we may feel the need to teach them a lesson. Why? Pride – we want them to know who holds the upper hand. I told my daughter last week that raising kids is hard – I didn’t

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know I could make so many mistakes. In order to raise our kids scriptually, we must humble ourselves before them, listen to them, and reach out to understand them. I struggle with this sometimes as I am sure other parents do too. Not only must we swallow our pride when dealing with our kids; we must build up their pride. How do we do this? First whenever there is conflict between you and your kids ask yourself, am I responding based on pride, or rational common sense. When they question us, do not withhold answers because your pride says they do not have a right to ask the question, answer the question so that they will know the “why” behind your response. Never tell them to do what you say if what you are doing is the opposite of what you are telling them to do. Humble yourself before them. They will learn humbleness and what it means to keep their pride under control in every situation as they continue to learn.