The Sneakiness Of Pride Series

Every conflict has to due with pride. My way or no way.

“As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”

? C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

He could have admitted, apologize, repent.

But pride took hold of his heart.

Pride led him into:

? Isolation

2 Chronicles 26:21 (NLT)

21 So King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in isolation, excluded from the Temple of the LORD. His son Jotham was put in charge of the royal palace, and he governed the people of the land.

• Leprosy symbolizes the defilement of sin

• which results in exclusion from the Temple and the community.

• And do you know that pride has the ability to isolate ourselves from God and people?

Because proud people are full of themselves.

Psalms 10:4 (NIV)

4 In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.

Pride can push away the people around you.

May God grant us grace to overcome this area of our lives.

Quote from Warren Wiersbe:

Because of pride,

Moses lost his temper and was kept from the promised land (Num. 20:1-13).

Pride kept Joshua from seeking God’s will at Ai, and he lost the battle (Josh. 7).

King Nebuchadnezzar’s pride turned him into an animal (Dan. 4), and

Peter’s pride led to his denial of Christ (Lk. 22-31-34)

“God is against the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.”

??James? ?4:6? ?NCV??????

2 Chronicles 27.

Even in our relationship with one another.

Pride can cause disunity, competition, comparison.

Let’s learn to keep unity with the humility modeled by Jesus.

Philippians? ?2:1-9? ?NIV??????

“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,”

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Saint Augustine said pride makes the angel became the devil and humility makes men become like an angel.