Oh, How Prideful I Have Been!

Have you ever felt slighted or felt that you were treated unfairly? Have you ever thought about a conversation you had that made you angry and you find yourself rehearsing it in your mind with a new ending of what you "should" have said instead? (In order to "get back" at the person who upset you?) Have you ever decided that you would stand your ground just so you could prove that you were right and the other person was wrong? (Even after you realized that the other person could quite possible be correct?) I've done all of these things in the past few weeks! It wasn't until this week, though, that I'm beginning to realize that God is trying to show me something!

God has been dealing with me concerning pride. I have never thought of myself as being prideful, but over the past couple of weeks God has shown me just how prideful I really am! This is a difficult post for me, because I'm still "stuck" right in the middle of this. There have been several situations in my life that I have been dealing with, off and on, and they all come down to one horrible word - PRIDE!

Prov. 16:5 states, "Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord; Assuredly, he will not be unpunished" (NASB). There are countless other verses about pride in the bible, but it all comes down to one thing. God hates pride! One example of pride is when we think we know better than God does, so we take situations into our own hands and leave God out. He wants to show us our prideful ways so that we can change them and become more like Him. I've been noticing that my pride tends to rear it's ugly head when I feel insignificant. There is nothing I can do to change these situations that have come up, but I can change my reaction to them. Now that I've stopped blaming everyone else and have started to look at myself, I see just how prideful I've been. God wants me to find my significance in Him, not in other people or situations. God accepts me no matter what anyone else thinks about me. God knows my heart, even when someone else is always critical of me. God is proud of me even when no one else acknowledges me.

I've been really starting to pray about this and ask God to help me in this area, because I know that these same type of situations will always be coming up in my life. Nothing is going to change that. I still have a lot of clutter in my heart over this, but God is slowly but surely cleaning me out! This is a painful process, but it's wonderful to think that along the way, I'll be becoming more and more like Him! Thank you, Jesus!