1. Ask God to illuminate your heart so you can begin to see the fruits of pride in your life. Ask friends to point out the fruits of pride in your life realizing your heart is exceedingly deceitful. Be self-suspicious. 2. Ask God to convict you point by point (Psalm 139:23-24) and trust that He will. You don’t want or need general condemnation, only specific, godly conviction. 3. Confess your pride to God point by point and ask for His forgiveness. Just as importantly, ask Him to cleanse you of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). 4. Don’t ask God to humble you – the Scripture says to humble yourself (1 Peter 5:6). Humility isn’t an emotion; it’s a decision of the will to think and act differently. 5. Confess your sins of pride to those you have affected and to your friends. They can help to hold you accountable and bring the on-going encouragement and correction you will need. 6. Ask God to give you a holy hatred for pride and its fruits in your life. Be continually on the alert. Don’t allow pride to grow in your heart. 7. Ask God to give you a love for anonymity. Encourage and serve others each and every day. Associate with the lowly. 8. Think much about God and little about yourself. Regularly study the goodness and greatness of God. 9. Live to promote the reputation of God and not your own. Be impressed with God – don’t be impressed with yourself. Find your satisfaction in Him and not in your vain accomplishments. 10. Remember your war against pride is life-long. It is not a battle won in a day. But as you faithfully put pride to death and put on humility, you will experience greater freedom and more importantly greater conformity to image and likeness of Christ. In so doing, God will be glorified in your life!
The place where God has supremely destroyed all human arrogance and pretension is the cross.
Proud people have a feeling – conscious or subconscious – that “this ministry is privileged to have me and my gifts.” They focus on what they can do for God. Broken people have a heart attitude that says, “I don’t deserve to have any part in this ministry”; they know that they have nothing to offer God except the life of Jesus flowing through their broken lives.
Brokenness, The Heart God Revives, Moody Publishers, 2002, p. 91.
They that know God will be humble, and they that know themselves, cannot be proud.
Only a Christian of strong grace can bear the strong wine of commendation without the spiritual intoxication.
A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 225.
In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud, you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
The focus of health in the soul is humility, while the root of inward corruption is pride. In the spiritual life, nothing stands still. If we are not constantly growing downward into humility, we shall be steadily swelling up and running to seed under the influence of pride.
Rediscovering Holiness. Christianity Today, v. 36, n. 13.
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“All things are possible with God!” – in front the words give hope, and behind they give humility. They are the antidote to despair and pride.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 199, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org. Get this book!
Just as pride is the root of every evil, humility is the root of every virtue.
The Exemplary Husband, Focus Publishing, 2000, p. 185. Get this book!
Poverty and affliction take away the fuel that feeds pride.
A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 16.
To help prevent spiritual pride, let us remember, that we did not chose Christ, but were chosen by Him. We have nothing but what has been given to us. The free grace of God has alone made the difference between us and others; and, if God was to leave us to the deceitfulness of our own hearts for even one moment, we would become weak and wicked, like other men. We should further consider, that being proud of grace, is the quickest way to diminish it.
Sermon, Satan’s Schemes, 2 Corinthians 2:11.
