You called my name

Its worth reading and identify whether you are in this category as you read.

Proverbs 6 : 16-19 (King James Version)

¹⁶These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: ¹⁷A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, ¹⁸An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, ¹⁹A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

PRIDE!!!!

God has a plan for your life. God is perfect, therefore, His plan is perfect.

It is impossible for you with your sin nature to execute the plan of God for your life. Therefore, God has provided through His grace a way for you to execute His plan, purpose, and will during your lifetime.

Whenever a Christian fails in executing the plan of God for his life, sinful pride is the primary reason and motivating cause.

Pride is the basic mental attitude sin. As you will see in this study, sinful pride (or arrogance) precedes and supports all of the sinful mental attitudes the sin nature produces.

Satan was the first creature guilty of pride. His motivation of pride is found in one line of Isa. 14:14. "I will make myself like the Most High God." The original sin of pride is amplified in the following passage.

Ezek 28:14-17. "You were the Anointed Cherub who guards; I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God; you walked among the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. By the abundance of your slander, they filled your inner life with violence and you sinned. Therefore, I have cast you as defiled from the mountain of God. I have excluded you, O Guardian Cherub, out from the stones of fire. Your right lobe was lifted up because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom because of your glamor. I have cast you to the earth. I have placed you before kings that they may see you."

A Description of Sinful Pride

Pride is a lofty self-respect totally apart from reality. It is high esteem of oneself from some imagined or real superiority.

Pride is the antithesis of grace. The believer who is arrogant is totally blind to the grace of God.

Pride is synonymous with vanity, which is empty pride in regard to one's person, attainments, or possessions coupled with an excessive desire to be noticed, a lust for attention, lust for approval or praise from others.

Pride is the pomposity of vain glory. It is supercilious and haughty contempt of others.

Pride supports a whole array of sins, such as jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, implacability, revenge motivation, revenge tactics, self-pity, conceit, inordinate ambition and competition, slander, gossip, and maligning.

Pride is a mental attitude sin which overflows into the motivation, decision making and activity of the individual. Pride includes several different concepts.

* Egotism. This is an excessive preoccupation with self and must be distinguished from ego, which is self-consciousness and is perfectly normal.

* Vanity. This is self-admiration and an excessive desire to be admired by others. Hence, vanity is easily flattered and patronized.

* Conceit. This is exaggerated estimate of one's abilities and attainments.

Scriptures Related to the Sin of Pride

Prov 11:2, "When pride comes, then come dishonor."

Prov 16:18, "Pride precedes destruction, and before a fall there is a lifestyle of pride."

Prov 23:29, "A person's pride will bring him low, but a lifestyle of humility will attain honor."

Rom 12:3, "For I say through the grace which has been given to me to everyone who is among you, stop thinking of self in terms of pride beyond what you ought to think, but think in terms of sanity for the purpose of being rational without illusion as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from doctrine."

Pride is defined in terms of the sin of jealousy in

Jam 3:14-16, "But if you have bitter jealousy and inordinate ambition in your right lobe, stop being arrogant, and stop lying against the truth [Bible doctrine]. This pseudo wisdom is not that which comes from above, but is earthly, natural, and demonic. For where jealousy and inordinate ambition exist there is disorder and every evil deed."

Prov 13:10, "Through pride comes strife, but wisdom is with those who receive instruction."

1 Pet 5:5, "Likewise you younger men be subject to the elder [pastor], and all of you cloth yourselves with humility toward one another. `For God makes war against the arrogant, but He gives grace to the humble.' Therefore, humble yourselves under the powerful hand of God, that He may promote you at the proper time."

Application

If God does not promote you, you are not promoted.

God promotes men and women of who have absorbed the Word of God.

God promotes humble or grace oriented people.

Promotion is a matter of doctrinal inculcation and grace-orientation.

Promotion is a matter of glorifying God through the execution of the plan of God for the believer in the Church Age.

Promoted believers are the invisible heroes of the Church Age..

2 Tim 3:2-7 describes facets of pride. "For persons [believers] will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without virtue-love, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of God, treacherous, thoughtless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but having denied its power, in fact, avoid such persons as these. And among them [immoral arrogant believers] are those who creep into households and captivates silly women who are loaded down with sins and lead on by their multifarious lusts, always learning but never able to come to metabolized knowledge of the truth."

The Arrogance of Nations Brings Them Under Divine Discipline

Lev 26:19, "And I will break down the pride of your power. And I will make your sky like iron, and your land like bronze."

Isa 9:8-9, "The Lord sends a message against Jacob and it falls on Israel. And all the people know it, that is, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, who spoke with pride and pride of heart. The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with smooth stones."

Ezek 7:10, "Behold, the day is coming. Your doom has gone forth. The rod of discipline has budded because pride has blossomed."

Pride is Always Related to the Rejection of the Word of God

1 Tim 6:3-4, "If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not concur with sound doctrine, those doctrines of our Lord Jesus Christ, even doctrines pertaining to godliness [spirituality], he has become arrogant, understanding nothing. Furthermore, he has morbid obsessions about controversies and verbal conflicts from which originate jealousy, discord, evil speculation."

Pride distracts the believer from doctrine. Pride divorces the believer from reality, both personal and historical. Pride is the corruptor of the soul and the sign that the sin nature is dominating the soul.

Pride destroys capacity for life, love, and happiness.

The Effects of Pride

The arrogant person rejects authority.

Pride motivates emotional sins, such as:

fear, worry, anxiety

hatred, anger, violence, murder

guilt and guilt complex

self-pity.

Pride reproduces itself in jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, implacability, revenge motivation and function, inordinate ambition and competition, gossip, slander, maligning, and judging.

Pride transformed into self-righteousness produces legalism.

The Solution to Pride

Occupation with Christ is the ultimate problem solving device regarding pride. [Refer to the notes on Occupation with Christ}

Prov 8:11, "The respect for the Lord is to hate evil, to hate pride and pride and the evil way. And I hate a perverted mouth."

Daily attention to the techniques of the Christian Way of Life will give you a grace mental attitude that becomes more and more free of pride as you grow in Christ and in the knowledge of His Word.

http://www.realtime.net/~wdoud/topics/pride.html