By: Steve Wilmot
Pride is ugly. We see it easily in others, but rarely in ourselves. Pride isn’t earned. It comes from our fallen nature. It’s not from God. It’s the primary cause of the Fall and one of the consequences passed on to us.
Satan’s temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat the forbidden fruit was an appeal to her pride. “You will be like God, able to decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong” (Genesis 3.5).
“You don’t need God,” hissed the serpent. “You’re bright enough to make your own decisions. Why do you need God?” Eve surrendered to pride and ate the forbidden fruit. And ever since that day, we think we know better than God.
You cannot negotiate or compromise with pride; you must kill it. Pride is the enemy inside us that speaks like a friend. Its counsel sounds so right we’re often blinded to the fact it’s destroying us and others. We can be easily deceived into believing pride is our ally, when in fact it’s our internal Judas betraying us with a kiss.
We cannot tame pride. We can’t compromise with pride. We can’t play nicely with pride. We can’t hope it will just go away. We must take decisive action to put pride to death before it destroys us and every relationship we have.
There is only one way to kill pride: Do the opposite of what pride prompts you to do. Both James and Peter tell us that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Pride and humility cannot co-exist. Only one of them can rule. If we’re going to kill pride, we must replace it with its opposite—humility.
James asserts that pride is like an “evil desire at war within you” (James 4.1). The war between listening to God or making our own decisions. The difficulty we have admitting we were wrong because, of course, we could never be wrong.
Pride won’t let us admit we were mistaken. Pride won’t let us admit how foolish and selfish we were in how we handled a situation.
Pride makes us focus on our wants and our feelings and our needs. So, we look at people as tools to get what we want, or as a problem that’s in the way, or as the reason we aren’t happy.
We’d rather our passions remain at war than surrender our pride, even if it means our families, friendships, and churches suffer collateral damage.
Pride is one of the greatest enemies of relationships because it makes it hard for us to say, “I was wrong” or “I’m sorry.” Pride is that something inside us that gives us dry-mouth and won’t allow these words to come.
Perhaps the best way to humble ourselves (and kill pride by doing so) is to look for ways to serve. Our constant question should be “How can I help you?”
Instead, we usually expect others to serve us. That only reinforces our pride. The major identifying mark of whether someone is humble or proud is that humble people want to serve. Proud people want to be served.
By this test, which are you? If you want to destroy the pride that lives in you, find ways to serve others. Get into the habit of asking, “How can I help you?”
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many (Mark 10.45).
Hours before his crucifixion, Jesus called his disciples together for one last meal. Everyone in the room knew that someone should take the servant role and wash everyone else’s feet. But no one was willing. Washing feet was the job for the lowest of the house servants. The bottom of the pecking order.
Jesus rose from the table, grabbed a towel and a wash basin and filled it with water. Then he knelt before each disciple and washed their feet. Jesus was willing to do the job nobody else would do! That’s humility. The absence of pride.
Do you do what Jesus did, or what the disciples did? John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach, won more national championships than any other collegiate coach in history—10. The next closest is a distant four. In a stretch from 1964-1975, his UCLA team only lost the national championship two times!
With all those national championships and the applause and recognition that went with such success, it’s surprising what Coach Wooden did in the middle of the week. Every week, he’d walk into the closet, grab a broom, and sweep his own gym floor!
The greatest college basketball coach ever doing janitor’s work. You want to destroy pride, grow humility, and make an impact on people? Find your broom! Every day, find your broom.
Make sure your servant’s towel is bigger than your ego.
———————–
Steve Wilmot is a former Edgerton, Ohio area pastor who now seeks “to still bear fruit in old age” through writing. He is the author of seven books designed to assist believers to make steady progress on their spiritual journey.