“For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” ~ Luke 14:11

Pride is such a malicious disease.  It eats away at all that is good.  It is like cancer that eats away our souls and interferes with all other functions of our being.  Pride is evil for it blinds one to their need for God.  Pride is what caused the once beautiful angel, Lucifer, to fall from heaven and be damned forever.  Pride is the strength of the flesh and  is opposed to the Spirit.

There are many things that feed our pride giving us a distorted view of ourselves and of reality.  Knowledge is one of those things that feeds the ego.  The feeling of superiority may come when we know something others don’t.  The need to feed our minds with knowledge is not a bad thing in and of itself, but must be watched carefully as knowledge without humility puffs up, and God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.  Anything that makes us feel better than another is pride.

Talent can feed our pride, making us feel as if the skill or talent was our doing, instead of recognizing that we simply received the gift or talent from God.  It’s good to remember that everybody is uniquely gifted by God and perfectly equipped to be awesome at something.

Beauty can be a handicap to our spirituality.  In a culture that emphasizes beauty to the point of obsession, beauty is rewarded like nothing else.  A beautiful person is told they are beautiful so often that beauty can become their identity.  One can begin to rely on the compliments and status to find their happiness and security.  It’s good to remember that anything we find our identity in, that can be taken away, is a false identity.

Success is very difficult to deal with.  People worship successful people.  Success can be such an idol that one would be willing to sacrifice their eternity for.  Success can be a god that drives a person to be a slave to it.  Success breeds pride and feeds ego.  It’s an endless road to nowhere.

There are many more things we could list but ultimately pride is our desire to “exalt” ourselves instead of God.  It is where we want what is rightfully God’s.  The best way to deal with pride is to use whatever we have for God’s glory recognizing that He made us and gave us what we have.  It’s not us, it’s Him.  We didn’t choose our DNA and genetic make up.  We didn’t choose our looks, our talent, our size, our personality, our eye hand coordination, our ability to carry a note, our speed or our strength.  We didn’t choose our biological parents nor the place and time we were born.  It’s all part of our uniqueness that we are to embrace and use for God’s glory.  The real question is “what are we doing with what we have?”

Don’t make it about you, make it about Him.  Realize that with what you are given comes responsibility.  The more we have the more responsibility we have to give God the glory.  What we do with what we have is really a test to see who and what we worship, God or self, humility or pride.  He must increase and we must decrease.  This is the secret of success.  The humble will be lifted up by God, the prideful will be brought low.