Church Revival Series: The Impact of Pride

On June 22, in the WeChat account "Morning Prayer", Pastor Bai Yu'e shared how pride is a serious problem in our lives.

In the eighteenth sermon in the series on church revival, she said that pride is leaving your own place, so it is the root of all kinds of evil. Pride glorifies the self and is jealous of others. It breeds sin, and results in death. The opposite of pride is humility. When we humble ourselves, we can appreciate and care about our co-workers, working well with others. 

The opposite of humility is pride.

Humility is giving up power, and pride is seizing it. Humility is returning to his place and pride is leaving it and challenging God. Pride is interested in seizing power for oneself, leave his own place, and serving self.

Pastor Bai cited a number of characteristics of pride. Can you check if you have some of these?

1. For yourself. A proud person wants to be famous and fears if others are better than himself. Moreover, an arrogant one cannot accept correction from others and desires power.

2. Exalt yourself. A proud person likes others to exalt him to high position. He doesn’t like to cooperate with others and control the people he has helped.

3. Glorify yourself. He values what other people think of him and is concerned about his reputation. He hides his shortcomings and feels insecure.

4. Relying on yourself. He is unable to break through the pressure and is full of fear.

5. Pride: He is just considerate of himself and envies others. The Bible says that envy rots the bones, so envy is undesirable. One type of envy says that you may be good, but I will be better than you. Another kind of envy says that I can’t stand that you are better than me, so I hope you will do poorly.

Pride leads to wrong judgments. For example, Saul thought David was a bad person, so he pursued and attempted to kill him. Cain was jealous of his brother Abel and killed him. David had never schemed against Saul, but followed and loved him with all his heart.

The result of pride is death.

Pride is not only sin but also the root of all kinds of sin. Sin brings suffering of which the ultimate end is death.

Pride seems to be invisible to others, but God can see the arrogance, pride, self-pity, self-love, greed, and deceit within us. Only when we come to God with the truth and say: Lord, I am this kind of person, please have mercy on me. I want to be humble and renounce pride. We can pray for God's mercy and help and rely on God to succeed.

How many persons’ lives are destroyed by pride? Because of pride and greed, some leave the Lord and some can’t go on serving God. Because of our pride and carelessness of speech, how many people have been hurt, hindered or have fallen? Why can't we be fruitful? Why can't others find the security, tenderness and love of Christ in us?  

In the Book of Daniel, we can see King Nebuchadnezzar was a very powerful king at that time. But because he was so proud, in the end, he ate grass like a cow and turned into an animal.

They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died. (Acts 12:22-23)

God hates and blocks pride.

There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community. (Proverbs 6:16-19)

Here, haughty eyes mean that you put yourself before others. A lying tongue is two-pronged. The end of the proud person is very poor. A proud person cannot even accept himself, and he is weak and easily injured. And without a sense of security, he may easily become mentally weak. At the same time, he is very stupid and attempt to cover himself with fig leaves as Adam did. He is living in panic and fear but is brazen in the face of others. He is timid and not generous at all.

We must be honest and transparent before God. We will be at ease in our hearts when we are open before God. We pray that the Lord will be especially kind to us and not don't let us use leaves as skirts. We should repent if we are wrong.

“God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” (1 Peter 5:5) Almost everyone of us is proud. As long as we have a little specialty and are slightly better than others, we look down on others. Only when we are humble will we find that every co-worker has something to appreciate and something to learn from. I can find that everyone around me is talented. If we work together and function individually, I can bring glory to God.

 -Translated by Abigail Wu