The other night, I was praying, repenting of sin, and seeking the Lord Jesus Christ for wisdom and understanding. The Lord has highlighted the sin of pride to me this week. I see it in others, and I know that I have it too, so I’m constantly having to fight against it. Honestly, it is part of our sinful human nature. I began to recognize that Pride is the opposite of Love!
Pride can come in many forms…”Proud” of wealth, status, family name, education, career, beauty, or even spiritual/religious pride. Pride is extremely dangerous because it can slip in unawares and it is a sin that spawns many other sins. What may begin as simply feeling good about an accomplishment can quickly turn into pride when we take the glory for ourselves and leave Jesus (God) out of the picture.
Satan was created by God (Jesus Christ/YHW) as an extraordinarily talented and beautiful angel. As one of God’s highest-ranking angels, Satan was originally named Lucifer (light-bearer). At some point, Satan became prideful about all of the blessings that God had bestowed upon him, and so he uttered his desire to exalt himself. He desired to be ABOVE GOD! Satan’s pride was the opposite of love.
We call these the five “I WILL” statements of the enemy found in Isaiah 14: 😈….
Isaiah 14:13: For you (Satan) have said in your heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.”
Satan’s devious offer to Adam and Eve in the Garden echoed his own challenge against God. His pride eternally separated him from God, and he wanted humanity to suffer the same fate.
Genesis 3: Now the serpent (Satan) was more cunning than any animal of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”
4 The serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die! 5 For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil.”
Lies, half-truths, and outright deception was the cloak that Satan wrapped himself in. He used the sin of pride to tempt Eve and draw her into sin. He uses that same sin today to tempt mankind into rebelling against God.
Since the day that mankind “fell” in the Garden of Eden, we have the propensity to be prideful and rebellious against our Creator. It is now part of our fallen human nature. We want to be PROUD of ourselves. We want to “make a NAME for ourselves”. We want to feel like WE are the “star of the show”. We were Created to Love the One that gives us life with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, but instead, our desire is to exalt ourselves and ignore Him. How sad! Pride is the opposite of Love.
The enemy desires to exploit our fallen human nature. If Satan was able to deceive Eve who was in her glorified state, how much easier is it to deceive mankind NOW while in this fallen state?
Proverbs 21:4: Haughty eyes and a proud heart,
The lamp of the wicked, is sin.
Pride is the lamp that guides the way into sin (multiple sins). Just as the Word of God is the lamp that guides the way to righteousness and a relationship with God (Psalm 119:105), pride is the lamp that guides the way into multiple other sins and eternal separation from God. (Proverbs 21:4)
Ezekiel 28 tells us that pride rose up in Satan because of his extreme beauty. He began to feel SUPERIOR to the other angels and eventually began to equate himself with God the Creator. Satan ultimately began to see himself lifted up even higher than God. The idea here is one of lifting oneself up on a pedestal above others. Raising ourselves up over others is the same thing as pushing them down. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, but instead we tend to be prideful rather than loving.
Pride and narcissism are the opposite of Love.
The sad thing is that our modern society holds pride and narcissism as a virtue instead of a sin. 😱
Jesus Christ (God Almighty) is known as the GREAT I AM. 😲
“Narcissism nightmare: how brands can reach the selfie consumer“
“Narcissism appears to be on the rise in modern societies. It is present on all levels, leading some scientific researchers to refer to it as “socially toxic”.
“Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.”
Romans 1:28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things that are not proper,
29 people having been filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, and evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice; they are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unfeeling, and unmerciful;
32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them.
The word for “reprobate” (mind) in Romans 1: 28 is adokimos in the Greek, which means castaway or rejected. This is a person who is not functioning in the way God that originally intended mankind to function, and they do NOT desire to change.
Pride/narcissism is only a single sin and yet this particular sin leads to so many others.
Western and Eastern societies alike value money, expensive acquisitions, and attractive features, and consider them valid indicators of success and happiness.
- Mercy Care, for the UNIVERSE of YOU
- Modelo TV Spot, ‘Mark of a Fighter: Mechanics’ (The Mark Of A Fighter: Lowriders (youtube.com))
- Android commercial “The next big thing is YOU”
- “Beyonce breaks the internet”…Verizon Super Bowl Ad 2024 – Beyoncé – Full Commercial – DAILY COMMERCIALS
- Lingerie-clad Dylan Mulvaney releases ‘Girlhood’ music video mocking Bud Light controversy (msn.com)
Social media has paved the way for the increase in narcissism. There are now paid influencers that operate on social media for the purpose of getting people to purchase what they are promoting. If they have a significant number of “followers”, they attract the attention of companies who desire to use them to reach a larger audience. Many of them are highly paid and receive free merchandise such as makeup, haircare, clothing, tools, plastic surgery, houses, cars, etc., in order to influence people’s behavior. Their whole livelihood revolves around making videos, talking, or writing about themselves and seeking to get us to emulate them.
- “On a reality TV show, a girl planning her sixteenth birthday party wants a major road blocked off so a marching band can precede her grand entrance on a red carpet.
- A book called “My Beautiful Mommy” explains plastic surgery to young children whose mothers are going under the knife for the trendy “Mommy Makeover.”
- It is now possible to hire fake paparazzi to follow you around snapping your photograph when you go out at night — you can even take home a faux celebrity magazine cover featuring the pictures.”
Me, me, me! America’s ‘Narcissism Epidemic’ (today.com)
Pride and narcissism have become an epidemic in modern society. It crept in quietly, seemingly innocent enough as sharing photos with friends and family on social media, “self-help” books and “self-improvement” ads, but has exploded in recent years into full blown narcissism. Sadly, even children are being programmed by the “god of this world” to be narcissistic. Elevating children and dumbing down parents, particularly fathers, has been very popular in media and is prominent in cartoons, children’s moves and tv programs. We are called to love and honor our parents who gave birth to us and worked hard to care for us but instead, we are ridiculing them and elevating children above them. Pride is the opposite of Love.
The god of this world may PROMOTE PRIDE, but the true CREATOR God says He will EXALT the humble and humble the proud.
Matthew 23:12: Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.
Pride is something that is in our fallen human nature, but it is NOT something to be celebrated. The satanic world is lying to us as they PROMOTE PRIDE as something to be desired. 🏳️🌈When we feel pride well up within us, we should recognize that as a danger signal to PRAY🙏🏻, to seek the Lord Jesus Christ✝️, to REPENT, and to go a different direction! We need to FIGHT against the PRIDE that is within us because it is the opposite of Love!
Romans 12:2: And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
The Bible tells us that pride goes before destruction.
Created originally in the sinless image of God, mankind was not designed to be prideful. God Himself is NOT prideful! Jesus Christ, God wrapped in the likeness of human flesh, COULD have chosen to incarnate on this earth as a Great King. He could have chosen to make a BIG SPLASHY entrance. He COULD have chosen GREAT WEALTH for Himself, or Great BEAUTY, or Great POWER or even RELIGIOUS STATUS. GOD IS LOVE💖. Satan represents pride. 🏳️🌈 Pride is the OPPOSITE of LOVE.
Jesus Christ is LOVE 💖and BEAUTIFULLY HUMBLE, JESUS is the OPPOSITE OF PRIDE!
Isaiah 53:2: For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of dry ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we would look at Him,
Nor an appearance that we would take pleasure in Him.3 He was despised and abandoned by men,
A man of great pain and familiar with sickness;
And like one from whom people hide their faces,
He was despised, and we had no regard for Him.
No, Jesus Christ (God in the likeness of human flesh) was born as a tiny, frail, and helpless human infant. He was born to a young, unmarried virgin woman when the shame of a pregnancy outside of wedlock was punishable by stoning (to death). Jesus was born to a very humble family who had no wealth or status at all. Jesus was NOT even born in a house. He was born in a manger, where the animals stayed and was wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Jesus Christ was raised in the humble village of Galilee, not even in Jerusalem. His earthly father was a carpenter who worked with his hands. During Jesus’ ministry, He walked everywhere, He did not own a horse or camel. Jesus chose His 12 disciples as men of very humble means, mostly fishermen and regular, uneducated people. Jesus even chose a tax-collector as one of His disciples. Tax collectors were despised by the Jewish people. Jesus washed the feet of His disciples and taught them to go and do likewise.
Jesus Christ was extremely compassionate and loved “the least of these”. He spent His healing ministry touching many of the outcasts of society, including lepers, the woman with the issue of blood, and those who were lame, blind, or ill or demon possessed. Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well when Samaritans were despised as idolaters by the Jews. Jesus even healed a Roman Centurian’s servant when the Romans were greatly hated by the Jews. Jesus Christ IS Love which is the Opposite of pride!
On Palm Sunday, which is celebrated today, 3/24/2024, Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on a DONKEY, NOT on a great white horse.
Ultimately, Jesus Christ allowed Himself to be mocked and scorned by the PRIDEFUL Jewish religious elite and then killed by Roman crucifixion, which was a brutal capital punishment reserved for convicted criminals.
Jesus Christ, (god in the flesh) the ONLY One who has the RIGHT to be LIFTED WAY UP above ALL humanity, came to this earth as the humblest of us all.
Why did Jesus choose to come to earth in this manner?
Jesus was teaching us about THE LOVE and CHARACTER of GOD. 💖
Romans 5:8: But God demonstrates His Love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ✝️
In the wee hours of the night, the Lord Jesus Christ through His Holy Spirit explained to me (without words) the sin of pride, and how to view it so that we can overcome it. Holy Spirit showed me that Pride is the OPPOSITE OF LOVE. As believers in Jesus Christ, we are called to LOVE like Jesus did! Holy Spirit empowers believers to overcome pride and human nature, but we have to do our part. We have to commit to walking by the Spirit and not by the Flesh. 🕊️
God (YHWH/JESUS CHRIST/HOLY SPIRIT) IS LOVE, the OPPOSITE OF PRIDE. 💖
1 John 4:7 Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
It’s really very simple. Our first task is to LOVE the Lord God with ALL our heart, mind, soul and strength. To overcome pride, we MUST FIRST understand that ON OUR OWN, we can accomplish NOTHING of significance.
John 15:5: I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
The Holy Spirit🕊️ showed me that everything I have tried to do through my own wisdom, willpower or strength (not by the power of the Holy Spirit), has either failed miserably, or caused pain, heartache, or sorrow. Even if my intentions were good, whatever I touch MYSELF without God’s help or involvement turns to dust (figuratively). If I try to accomplish something of my own flesh, the results will NOT be GOOD. And what’s more, I then get FRUSTRATED, UPSET, and feel discouraged or overwhelmed, causing me to RECOGNIZE THAT…..
“I CANNOT do this on my own!!”
HOWEVER, when I pray🙏🏻, involve Jesus and His Holy Spirit, seek His council, His Wisdom, His truth, His help, and then TRUST HIM with the results…well, then we have a whole different “ballgame”
Philippians 4:13: I can do all things through Him (CHRIST) who strengthens me.
It is quite HUMBLING to recognize that we cannot do life on our own…at least not ABUNDANT or MEANINGFUL life. But we should take comfort that we were not created to do life on our own. We were created to NEED GOD. It is humbling to RECOGNIZE that we NEED GOD! We were created to partner WITH GOD to take care of this earth and His Creation. God entrusted us with this important task, but we were NEVER MEANT to do it on our own. We are MEANT to PARTNER WITH GOD.
Our dependance on God is NOT a weakness. It is a STRENGTH.
When Jesus Christ came to this earth, He showed us what this dependance looks like. This is how WE are supposed to live our lives – completely dependent on Jesus and God the Father. We should be seeking to obey God. We should be looking to God for answers. We should be looking to God for direction. We should be looking to God for wisdom, for strength, and purpose. And we should be TRUSTING God with the results. This is HUMILTY, this is DEPENDANCE, this is LOVE.
Love 💖🕊️is the opposite of pride. 🏳️🌈
Where do we find all of this? PRAYING AND SEEKING GOD IN HIS WORD – THE BIBLE.
John 5:19: Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in the same way.
Philippians 2:8: And being found in appearance as a man, He (Jesus) humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. ✝️
To bear fruit and to be pleasing to the Lord, we must get to a place of OBEDIENCE and TOTAL DEPENDANCE on GOD.
The second aspect of humility has to do with the second commandment, Love your neighbor as yourself”.
When we RAISE ourselves up above others in PRIDE…we are essentially pushing them down. We are declaring that WE are BETTER than they are. Again, pride can come in many flavors, but at the end of it all, we are saying we are SUPERIOR to others, and that means that “they” are INFERIOR.
We cannot “love our neighbor as ourselves” if we raise ourselves up above them. God COMMANDS us to Love the Lord God with ALL of our heart, soul, and strength, and Love our neighbor as ourselves. It takes God in us (Holy Spirit) to love like that. It takes humility to love like that.
Philippians 2:3: Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility consider one another as more important than yourselves;
I don’t know about you, but Philippians 2:3 is a VERY convicting verse. As believers in Jesus Christ, we are to consider other people as more important than ourselves! This is totally contrary to OUR HUMAN NATURE and to the wisdom of the world. It is also a lot easier said than done.
When I was contemplating pride vs humility, I really saw the pride in my own life. Let’s face it, one can even become proud of being humble haha! So how do we achieve humility? We won’t ever be able to do this perfectly, but it should be constantly on our hearts. The interesting thing is that recognizing our own pride is actually an act of humility in itself.
Total dependance on God for EVERYTHING we say, do and believe is our first act of humility.
In addition to our obedience to and dependance on God, a major key to helping us be more humble is to focus LESS on ‘SELF’ and MORE on ‘OTHERS’. Because this flies against our human nature and against modern societal values, this will be a choice that we need to make every day. We need to CHOOSE to put others first, to consider them as greater than ourselves and to put their needs, wants, and desires above our own. Humility is something to pray over and spend time reflecting on every day.
Holy Spirit put an image in my mind of mountains and valleys. If we think of mountains and valleys as PEOPLE, we can almost imagine that the valleys have a hard time SEEING GOD when the MOUNTAINS are “in the way”. By lowering our own little mountain, this automatically LIFTS up the valleys around us. This puts all of God’s people on a level playing field, which is where God wants us to be when He returns to this earth.
Isaiah 40:3: The voice of one calling out,
“Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness;
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.4 Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;And let the uneven ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
5 Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
Isaiah 40:3-5 are some of my favorite verses. WE are the voices crying out in the wilderness! Prepare the way for the Lord!
Let every valley be lifted up! Those who are downtrodden, are weighed down with the guilt of their own sin and shame, be LIFTED UP because their Savior Jesus Christ has made them righteous! He WASHED AWAY all of our sin and shame with His Blood on the Cross ✝️and clothed us in His perfect Robes of Righteousness! God has come to comfort and LIFT up the lowly! A humble and contrite heart God will NOT despise! Let us praise the Name of Jesus Christ FOREVER and stand before the Lord dressed in white, as though we had NEVER sinned!
Let every mountain be made low! Those who have exalted themselves because of their own “works”, “favor”, “beauty”, “riches” will be humbled before the Grandeur and the Glory of the Lord! Those who were once elated with themselves and their own “righteousness” will be humbled, their pride and haughtiness brought down. Let us ALL recognize our own PRIDE NOW and humble ourselves to LOVE like JESUS DOES!
We need to REPENT of our pride and SELF-reliance and seek to place the needs of OTHERS ABOVE OUR OWN. Interestingly, whenever I take the focus off of ME and put it onto JESUS CHRIST or OTHERS, I feel a whole lot happier anyway!
Jesus Loves ALL of His children EQUALLY. Our race, ethnicity, or nation does not matter. It does not matter if we are rich or poor, handsome or homely, small or great, old or young, weak or strong. God shows favor, He does NOT choose favorites. To Jesus, each person is unique and greatly loved. In this world, if everyone is “special”, then no one is. But it is NOT like that in God’s economy. This is because LOVE, TRUE LOVE is the OPPOSITE OF PRIDE!
In God’s economy, EVERYONE TRULY IS SPECIAL!
Let us be the voice crying out in the wilderness! The Lord Jesus Christ is returning to a LEVEL PLAIN, a broad VALLEY. The rugged spots will be smoothed out.
The best thing of all is that we will ALL see it TOGETHER!
Job 33:15: In a dream, in a vision of the night,
When deep sleep falls upon men,😴
While slumbering on their beds,
16 Then He (YHWH/GOD) opens the ears of men,
And seals their instruction.
Dream from 4/2/2024😴…
4/3/2024. I would like to add a dream 😴that the Lord gave me on April 2, 2024. 💦💦💦 After prayer and a confirmation from a trusted Christian friend, I believe this dream has to do with the verses above (Isaiah 40:3-5).
In the dream I was looking at the top of a mountain. Water was trickling down the mountain. It seemed to be raining. The rains got heavier and heavier. Then the whole top of the mountain broke off and came sliding down, like a landslide, but it was water. 💦💦💦
Now, there was a wall of water flooding down heading right for us. At that time, I was walking along a sidewalk with someone. We stepped out of the way and were unharmed. But the flood came rushing down the mountain right past us. It was powerful.
It reminded me of a dam breaking. But I didn’t see a proper dam. I saw a mountain with dirt and water. The water came flooding down the mountain. The entire top section of the mountain broke off. The suddenness of it made me think of the wall of water that comes flooding down when a dam breaks.
Prepare the way for the Lord!! Let every mountain be made low and every valley be LIFTED UP!
Dear Jesus, let the flood of the latter-day rains begin! 💦 Let all flesh see it together!
