Allow me to share something with you, it is my confession. My confession is pride. What makes this all important is how it was revealed to me and what God has taught me. We all know the saying “Pride comes before the fall.” For me it was quite literal.
I was walking up the stairs to my house last year and fell. It wasn’t a big fall, enough to scrape me but not much blood. Certainly no reason for tears, but that was what I found myself doing. I was crying before I made it through the door. I entered to find my mom washing the dishes. She turned and asked me why I was crying and all I could say was, “I fell.” With that she opened her arms, taking in both me and my tears. With her arms around me I cried harder, not really understanding why I was crying.
My body didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t stop the tears. Still wrapped in my mohers arms, my older sister entered and asked the same question, why I was crying. Again, I could only answer with, “I fell.” And it was her answer that undid whatever tears I still held back. “It hurt your pride more, didn’t it?”
With those words my pride was revealed, and I knew it was vast. My pride had long been hidden from me, escaping my acknowledgment, escaping release. My pride had grown to such lengths that the damage to my pride physically hurt worse than my wound.
It is recently that I have been learning how much my pride holds me back, holds me hostage, and completely stops me in my tracks as God’s child. Yes, it is a sin that deparates me from God. But it has been recent that I have learned just how much that is true. Pride is what makes you think you can do something alone. It is what gives you the lie that something is yours alone, that something belongs to you. Pride is what gives me a skewed sense of entitlement.
Pride will stop you from the two greatest commandments of the New Testament: love the Lord your God; love your neighbor as yourself. Pride will stop you from putting others before you, to fully love them you need to view them before yourself. Pride will convince you that you need nothing other than yourself, that you don’t need the love God offers.
In order to accept the love of God and the love of others I must drop my pride. I shed some of it that day, when my fall was revealing the depths of my sin, buried so deep that I had never seen it. But I still carry it, unknowingly, and I now know this because I find myself being stopped.
I stop acting as God’s child because I don’t wish to been seen as a fool. I stop leaning into His love because I have a moment so filled with pride I think that I don’t need the very one who created me. I stop loving His children because I am so filled with pride I think I am the only one who knows anything, I view His children as people who are dumber than me.
And I think I would be lucky to get off like Nebuchadnezzar. A story never told to me was that though Nebuchadnezzar learned of God’s greatness through Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego he never dropped his pride. God gave him a dream in which there was a great tree, filled wih fruits, food surrounding it, shelter and food given to a vast amounts of animals. A holy messenger told him to cut down the tree, trim the limbs, scatter the fruit, but leave the stump bound in iron and bronze. And it would remain as such for 7 years.
Daniel translates the dream as the downfall of Nebuchadnezzar. That Nebuchadnezzar is the tree and he will be cut down. The roots are his kingdom, remaining intact while Nebuchadnezzar lives as a wild animal
. Nebuchadnezzar lost his mind, eating grass, living as an animal for 7 years before the dew of heaven covered him and he acknowledged that God is sovereign over all. Seven years before he was able to drop his pride and love God.
I have known God all of my life. I cannot imaging life without Him. And yet, my pride was hidden someplace for 24 years of my life before I knew it existed. I know I have always loved Him but I also know that I stop myself from realizing His love for me. This pride stands in the way, stopping me. If it only takes 7 more years for those chains to be broken I will be consider myself blessed.
