The Path Away from Pride

Matthew 18:3,4 Then Jesus said, “The truth is, you must change your thinking and become like little children. If you don’t do this, you will never enter God’s kingdom. The greatest person in God’s kingdom is the one who makes himself humble like this child.

Pride isn’t just ugly – that’s something we see every time we run into a prideful person. Pride is more importantly downright dangerous because it separates us from God.

And yes, that’s a pretty strong statement – that pride separates us from God. One of my favourite teachers, John Piper, puts it like this:

Pride is the abandonment of childlike dependence on God in favour of God-like dependence on self.

It’s this notion that it’s all about me, what I think, what I’m capable of, what I can achieve, the accolades that I can receive. Yep, it’s ugly and yes, it clearly gets right up God’s nose.

Proverbs 16:5 The LORD hates those who are proud. You can be sure he will punish them all.

Yikes! But blessedly the Lord has also given us a way back:

Matthew 18:3,4 Then Jesus said, “The truth is, you must change your thinking and become like little children. If you don’t do this, you will never enter God’s kingdom. The greatest person in God’s kingdom is the one who makes himself humble like this child.

Speaking as someone who came to Jesus carrying around an ego the size of a small planet, I remember reading this and thinking to myself, what a load of rubbish! But the more the Lord has, by His grace, spoken to me through His Word and changed my mind, the more freedom, the more joy, the more peace I’ve experienced.

Because pride is a tyrant that rules our lives with an iron rod. Coming to God, admitting our pride with, as AW Tozer puts it, the guileless candour of childhood, is the path back into His Kingdom.

The greatest person in God’s kingdom is the one who makes himself humble like a child

That’s His Word. Fresh … for you … today.

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