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Jul 17

Help for Diagnosing Personal Pride

2015 | by Trent Hunter | Category: Sermon Follow-Up

God hates pride. Pride in the heart of any person insists, however subtly, that God should scoot over so we can take a seat as king. Whether by ignoring him or outright rejecting his rule, we are all born our own bosses.

In Isaiah 13:11, God writes this about Babylon: “I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.” In last Sunday’s sermon, “The God of the World and History,” we pondered the danger of pride together. Babylon, in Scripture, is famous for her pride and symbolic of the pride at the heart of every human.

To help you examine your own life for pride, Desiring God recently published a helpful piece, “Seven Subtle Symptoms of Pride.” Here’s how it starts:

Pride will kill you. Forever. Pride is the sin most likely to keep you from crying out for a Savior. Those who think they are well will not look for a doctor.

As seriously dangerous as pride is, it’s equally hard to spot. When it comes to diagnosing our hearts, those of us who have the disease of pride have a challenging time identifying our sickness. Pride infects our eyesight, causing us to view ourselves through a lens that colors and distorts reality. Pride will paint even our ugliness in sin as beautiful and commendable.

We can’t conclude that we don’t struggle with pride because we don’t see pride in our hearts. The comfortable moments when I pat myself on the back for how well I am doing are the moments that should alarm me the most. I need to reach for the glasses of Christ-like humility, remembering that nothing good dwells in my flesh, and search my heart for secret pride and its symptoms.

In his essay on undetected pride, Jonathan Edwards points out seven sneaky symptoms of the infection of pride.

Then, with Jonathan Edwards as a guide, the piece unpacks seven symptoms: fault-finding, a harsh spirit, superficiality, defensiveness, presumption before God, desperation for attention, and neglecting others.

We all need to hear this. Click here for the full article.