The Battle Between Pride & Humility
Today I was a beautiful day. It was cool and the sun was shining beautifully. After putting together my talk for the past 2 weeks, I was editing my talk to fit the 15 minute time span I was given. I was happy to bring out the most important things that needed to be spoken on.
I wanted to share my talk with you and I hope you find it very interesting and very informative. Thank you for reading.
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When I was asked to give this talk I said,
“SURE”…no problem.
I do pray that I may give this talk in a humble manner so it may be pleasing unto God.
But after carefully listening to the talk I was assigned to speak on, I realized I was going to be schooled, warned and humbled on the subject.
Today I will be speaking to you concerning:
The Battle Between Pride & Humility
(by President Ezra Taft Benson)
Many of you may remember well the 7 deadly sins:
Out of all the 7 deadly sins I just mentioned… Pride is the worst of all.
Pride is the birth mother of all the other deadly sins.
The dictionary defines Pride as a…"hostile encounter or engagement between opposing forces, a fight between two persons or animals, with conflict or struggle".
Google definition of Pride is…“Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. Pride has been called the sin from which all other sin arise. Pride is also known as Vanity”.
President Benson stated on this talk…
And I quote…“It’s easy to point out pride in others while remaining oblivious to our own blind spots. Everyone is proud, just in different ways. The proud make every man their adversary by pitting their intellects, opinions, works, wealth, talents, or any other worldly measuring device against others, and the proud wish God would agree with them.
Some of us think we deserve:
*More Money
*More Respect and
*More Comfort
Before we judge and condemn other people for their pride, we need to ask,
“How am I blinded?”
Pride is manifest in so many ways, such as faultfinding, gossiping, backbiting, murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude and praise that might lift another, and being unforgiving and jealous. Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. But pride is also manifest in having:
--Contention--Arguments--Fights
--Unrighteous dominance--Generation gap--Divorce--Spouse & child abuse
--Hostile speech--World wide conflict--Riots
--Disturbances--Easily offended--Holding grudges
--Having an unforgiving heart...and Justifying our own injured hearts are all manifestations of pride. Pride rejects God’s wisdom, will, and word because we think we know better.
All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing and that is Enmity!
Enmity is the central feature of pride—enmity toward God and enmity towards our fellowmen.
Enmity means … "hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.”
Our enmity toward God takes on many labels, such as rebellion, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, un-repentant, puffed up, easily offended, and sign seekers. A major portion of this very prevalent sin of pride is enmity toward our fellowmen. We are tempted daily to elevate ourselves above others and diminish them. Fear of men’s judgment manifests itself in competition for men’s approval. The proud love “the praise of men more than the praise of God. Our motives for the things we do are where the sin is manifest. Some prideful people are not so concerned as to whether their wages meet their needs as they are that their wages are more than someone else’s. Their reward is being a cut above the rest.
This is the enmity of pride.
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having “more” of it than the next man. … It is the “comparison” that makes you proud, it is the pleasure of being above the rest. The proud stand more in fear of men’s judgment than of God’s judgment. “What will men think of me?” weighs heavier than “What will God think of me?” These prideful ways allows desires, appetites, and passions to go unbridled. The proud cannot accept the authority of God giving direction to their lives. They pit their perceptions of truth against God’s great knowledge, their abilities versus God’s Priesthood power, their accomplishments against His mighty works…end of quote.
Satan the father of all lies was very prideful when he made his proposal before God to send him to redeem the world. He told Heavenly Father that he would return us all back home to Him but in return he wanted all the glory, honor and praise be given to him instead of giving it to the Father. In short, his prideful desire was to dethrone God, and because of it he was cast out of heaven.
…King Noah was about to free the prophet Abinadi, but an appeal to his pride by his wicked priests sent Abinadi to the flames.
…Herod sorrowed at the request of his wife to behead John the Baptist. But his prideful desire to “look good” to them which sat with him at the table caused him to kill John.
Fighting the war against pride is a never ending battle.
President Benson stated:
And I quote:…“When pride has a hold on our hearts, we lose our independence of the world and deliver our freedoms to the bondage of men’s judgment. The world shouts louder than the whisperings of the Holy Ghost. The reasoning of men overrides the revelations of God, and the proud let go of the iron rod. Pride is a sin that can readily be seen in others but is rarely admitted in ourselves. Most of us consider pride to be a sin of those on the top, such as the rich and the learned, looking down at the rest of us…
Pride can be in a parent, a priesthood leader, a teacher, or ultimately God. A proud person hates the fact that someone is above him. He thinks this lowers his position. The fear of men’s judgment manifests itself in competition for men’s approval.
The proud love “the praise of men more than the praise of God”. Our motives for the things we do are where the sin is manifest. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. “How everything affects “me” is the center of all that matters—self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking. People who depend on the world for approval & judgment are also the proud that do not receive counsel or correction easily; they won’t change their minds to accept truth, because to do so implies they have been wrong and the proud defends everything by justifying and rationalizing their frailties & failures. When we direct our pride towards God, it is in the spirit of “my will and not thine be done.” Our will in competition to God’s will. Pride rejects God’s wisdom, will, and Word because we think we know better. Pride is about “MY” glory, humility is about “God’s” glory.
The antidote to end PRIDE Forever is HUMILITY.
It is meekness, submissiveness. It is the broken heart and contrite spirit.
Humility turns our affections and energies toward God’s glory and others’ good.
We start to ask how we can help by thinking of ways we can serve, how we could bless other people and we eventually start to forget our own needs. Pride leads us to focus on ourselves, while Humility releases us from Satan’s chains and returns us back to God and others.
“Pride is ugly! It is a damning sin in the true sense of that word”.
Pride is the universal sin, the great vice. And I repeat…Pride “IS” the universal sin, the great vice.
Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father…end of quote.
I would like to leave you with these thought if I may…
Pride is all about ME, MYSELF & I.
Pride bends inward, but humility turns outward towards God and others.
And I say these things in Jesus name...Amen.
by Millie Torres
4-27-14
@ Copyrights Reserved
2014
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