Day 7 -Pride

I can’t believe its Day 7.

Pride.

The ugliest thing in the whole world in my opinion. I’d love to skip this post and it will take a lot  to hit publish today.

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” -Proverbs 11:2

Question 1 -What does this verse say?

I want to break these two thoughts up.

Pride = Disgrace….Humility = Wisdom

First, I think I need to really understand what pride is.

The dictionary didn’t provide the best definition…it provided the “proper” definition…but I’m looking for something a little deeper today.

So I googled:  “What is pride?”

Here’s a list of words and phrases that came back:

“ego”

“cocky”

“deadliest sin”

“the center of the world, universe or cosmos”

“Deserve to have everybody, the world and God, give you what you desire in life. If you don’t get it, then it is everybody else’s fault for not giving it to you.”

Um…yes. Those are the kind of definitions I was looking for. [smile]

Now what is humility?

I liked this definition that I found on this site:

“It is the opposite of aggressiveness, arrogance, boastfulness, and vanity. Rather than, “Me first,” humility allows us to say, “No, you first, my friend.” Humility is the quality that lets us go more than halfway to meet the needs and demands of others.”

Question 2 -What does this verse mean?

I think now that I laid pride and humility in this way I can understand what this verse means. If pride brings things like: aggressive behavior, selfishness and vanity its very easy to see how that can quickly turn into a moments of disgrace in our lives.

But if humility brings wisdom, then true wisdom goes much further than just some good advice. I have been guilty to think that people who always knew the right thing to say were wise –but I’m seeing that wisdom is really living out humility.

Question 3 -What does this verse mean to me?

This verse speaks so much truth into my life today. If I really want to live a life free from pride then I am going to have to live out humility in every area of my life.

But humility doesn’t mean that I am a door-mat or that I have to be that golden retriever-type person [always coming back].

Someone told me a while ago that there will be seasons in ministry of “paying your dues”. Basically they were saying that I was going to have to humble myself in areas of service until God moved me to the next place.

And while I understand what that means, I’m not sure we should ever think there will not be seasons of “paying our dues”.

If our purpose is to live out the servant-hood of Christ then there will never be a day of not paying out dues. If we get to the place where we think we have paid enough dues then we might as well step aside from ministry.

Being stretched, un-comfortable and doing things we don’t love are apart of the plan God has for us.