Happy Friday Readers. In follow up to what I have been learning, I thought this week's post would be great to sample another letter from my upcoming book The Love Well Letters. This book was initially called Letters to Someone.
The book is currently being edited and I am hoping for a fall release. I encourage you to really meditate on this writing with the Holy Spirit and where you have pride interfering with your relationships, to let the Holy Spirit heal your heart so you can enjoy love and connection with those you love the most. I am so thankful to my Pastor, Dr. Kevin Zadai, Jennifer Lynn, and LaRette for pushing me to become the God loving man that i am supposed to be. It hasn't always been easy, but i am learning in true humility and repentance.
Enjoy!
Letter On Pride"
Lately, God has been showing me a great deal on Pride, mainly areas in my own life where I am still struggling with it and I didn’t think I had it, and how this is probably one of the most destructive forces that human beings engage in on the planet, and He doesn’t like it. God has been gentle with me when He has revealed areas of pride in my life, and He has extended grace to me several times in this area.
There are many verses in scripture which speak of pride: One of my favorites in Proverbs 14:3 “In the mouth of the foolish is a rod of pride, but the lips of the wise shall preserve them.” My second favorite verse is from Proverbs 16: 18-19 “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud.”
Proverbs 16:5 states that “Everyone that is proud in heart, is an abomination to the Lord; thought hand in hand, he shall not be unpunished.” At least at my point in learning, there seems to be a Spirit of Pride that is operating in this world that keeps us separate from God and separate from one another, and as I mentioned, this is one of the most destructive forces on the planet today.
I am learning that to give up my self-life is where I want to go. When I attempt to control my own will, thoughts, beliefs, it keeps me trapped in the worlds system. However, when I depend completely on God to take care of my needs and trust in Him 100 percent, my own pride gets out of the way, and I am able to set aside my own agenda so I can listen to what the Holy Spirit wants me to do on a moment to moment basis in order to serve others the way God wants me to do. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have desires, wants, or needs. I take those to God all of the time. It just means I am learning how to lean on God all of the time and to trust His Word and His Ways. This isn’t always an easy task.
I have seen pride be a destructive force in my relationships, both from myself and others. I saw pride become a destructive force on my way toward engagement. I had a sincerity of heart to want to have love and christ centered communication in our relationship. From my vantage point, I saw her past and some of the horrible trauma she had suffered from unloving things and horrible things that no child should ever have to go through. When you don’t heal pain, these issues can tend to come out on others. Reflecting on that relationship, I had tried in multiple ways to communicate. Sometimes, I did communicate in love and truth, because unloving behaviors cause destruction. However, I also learned that I did not keep an emotionally safe place or give my presence to her emotionally. I was too stuck in the mindset of healing and stopping dysfunction, that I was actually making the dysfunction worse by simply not listening to the pain that was coming out. I saw how not offering simple presence to be there with her emotions, that she felt like I was putting her down and telling her that she sucked. In these situations, pride got the best of both of us.
Throughout my healing, God began to show me that even though my heart was in the right place for wanting a Christ-Centered engagement and marriage, I had a pride in me where I just kept pounding away, instead of sometimes just coming to Him to seek answers. I did go into prayer at times, but not as much as I thought I did looking back at my relationship. There were so many times that I was in panic or fear because I did not want the relationship to tank, that my pride took over and I thought that I could handle the situation better than God could. I was getting guidance from the Holy Spirit on spiritual ways to handle the conflict, but when fear dominated the way, the outcome that I wanted toward love would falter. I became very aware that fear and pride is the tactic that the enemy wants to use to divide our relationships with one another. I learned after parting ways that there were so many situations where I could have just listened to her better. I could have built her up in her mind and heart better instead of trying to push for love and connection in that moment. I learned that I could have taken a step back and kept my mouth shut to wait for the right time to have a discussion instead of the heat of the moment. I feel like love would have prevailed. I have learned so much about being a man to protect and cover instead of being in pride.
In your own life, where does the enemy insert pride in your relationship to divide you further from one another. These issue keep us from ultimate connection and love that we desire from the depths of our soul. Both individuals have to be focused on the goal at hand, which is always unity, connection, and love. I know I am committed to that in all of my relationships, but when the enemy gets me into fear and the Spirit of Pride very quickly, destructive results are more apt to happen than unity and love. This is why being in prayer and going to the Holy Spirit is so important. Asking Jesus for Wisdom and perspective on the situation is important. When you get into the Spirit of Pride things can go off the rails rather quickly. You have to check your fear meter, which is critical from what I have learned to stay calm, steady, and centered in Christ’s presence.
I am still learning about this subject, and I feel the Lord has much to reveal to me. I would say that that insight I would have to offer on ending this destructive force would be to start with developing what I call the Servant’s Heart. I think where we are as a society is very telling. 2 Timothy 3:2 states that “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” So, what is a servants heart. My definition of a servant’s heart is someone who is focused on loving their brother or sister as Christ loves them. It is about getting pride out of the way. It is a sincere effort day by day, minute to minute effort to act, think, and breath love, to get your ego and pride out of the way. It means to say you are sorry when you’re wrong. It is not to make excuses for poor choices for your unloving behavior. It is to want to serve those in your life that you love from an authentic place because it brings joy and you know you are caring because this is how God’s created you to be. There is a space that comes deep from within that makes you feel that you are truly giving to those that you love and making someone’s day better.
It is about creating win/wins in each relationship and growing stronger in relationships, instead of someone feeling like they are always losing and walking away feeling beaten down. This will require tough discussions. This will require truth telling and this is where so many people run from their problems and unruly behaviors that destroy themselves, their lives, and their relationships. This is where fear and pride must unravel. We must learn to take on the servant’s heart and become master’s at letting the Holy Spirit prune our wounds and our pride. I believe we are in the end times where people are more focused on self-serving than service to self.
That is why I do feel it is important to care for yourself. This can be done on a spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical level. When you are doing this, then you are able to serve others. However, this is done so you are able to care and serve others, not so you can be a self-serving person to yourself.
I think the biggest area that God has shown me with pride in my life is that I often think that I need to play the Holy Spirit to others. Arrogant right? Sometimes I can get so excited and inspired of what God may show me about someone. Their purpose, their destiny. However, that person may not be ready to hear or they simply may not want to be helped because they are not ready for it at the current time.to help others who don’t want help.
I want to believe the best in the person, I keep pushing and wanting to stay to help them. This has blown up in my face and has created heart ache. God has patiently shown and lovingly shown to me that this is a pattern that has needed to be broken from some of my family systems growing up. God has shown me that it is important to be in a community of like minded individuals who have the same ideals and mindset. This isn’t being judgmental or wanting to cast stones, but not everyone we meet on our path will be open to hearing what the Holy Spirit wants to use to say through us. I share this because this has been a difficult thing for me to learn. I want the best for people. I don’t want to see other’s suffer. I want to see people become their best selves. But I have also had new revelation that sometimes the best you can do is pass the message along and let the person stew in the mud until they are ready to have God get them out and they themselves pull themselves out of the mud. This is hard when you love and care about someone. I believe that the more you develop your Identity in Christ and talk to God about your concerns and trust in Him 100 percent, the easier it is to give up your pride and let those you love grow in their own time. This takes practice and is something I learn on a daily basis. The best thing you can do is to continue to give up your pride, heal your divided heart, and walk daily in your journey with Christ. Probably the best insight I have had is when you have shared a message that has truly come from the Holy Spirit and the person isn’t able to receive, is to go to prayer and to pray for the person to be shown every truth that is holding them back in life and for messengers of truth to be sent their way.
Here are some questions to help you identify less and less with the thought system of Pride:
What type’s of trauma’s did you have growing up with your family that may keep in you locked in being defensive with other’s and taking out your pain and past out on other’s that keep you reacting in a cycle of pride?
What would your life look like if you could communicate your needs to those you care about and want a deep connection and intimacy with through love and what the Holy Spirit was instructing you to do?
What would happen if you started to react in pride and fear and if you took the time to step back, enter into prayer and see which direction the Holy Spirit wanted you to take with those you loved? If you took this route, do you think that major conflicts could be resolved? Do you think that decisions that needed to made in your life rather would be Christ Centered rather than being in pride?
What is one thing that you can put into practice this week that will help you begin to work on your issues of pride?
In summation, take pride seriously, it causes so much destruction to ourselves and those we love and things we do in our lives. It doesn’t have to be this way. With the help of the Trinity, our lives, work, relationships, and world can be transformed. I leave you with the following scriptures to meditate on. It is from Psalms 10:4 that states “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God; God is not in all his thoughts.” James 4:6-10 “but he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble…Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up.” James 4:7 “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
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