"PRIDE"

Good day to each of you and welcome back to another devotion. If you have been reading these writings online or as a printout, you may have noticed a bit of a theme. We come to the final of what are referred to as 'THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS'. What I hope you notice with today's is how all of these seem to have one main thread that holds them together, that being this last one, which is PRIDE! Whether anger, lust, gluttony, sloth, greed or envy, each of them has one thing in common, that being 'SELF'. They are all about 'ME' and how to gratify 'MY' needs or desires in 'MY' life. None of these are of any concern for my fellow man and what he or she truly needs to live as God designed. This is all centered around pride for self and and the satisfaction 'I' want for the moment or a lifetime.

Pride in the dictionary has at least the following meaning; "a high or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc." Pride is not considered negative until it crosses the line of arrogance, but for this study we will limit ourselves to the sin referred to in God's Word.

In Christianity, Pride (also referred to as Vanity or arrogance) is the "essentially competitive and excessive belief in one's own abilities that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God, or the worth which God sees in others"; for example:

"In his Pride the wicked does not seek Him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God" (Psalm 10:4). Pride is many times the downfall or the reason for the sins of mankind. Any time we take our eyes off the Lord and HIS WILL as written in HIS WORD, we become the center of all our universe and God is no longer the reason we live. This is wrong on many levels. 1 John 2:16 states, "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world" (RSV).

It is not God's Will for us to serve self and let others go by the wayside. We are to rather imitate Christ as the scriptures say, "It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:26-28 RSV). We either serve God and His Will or we serve self by our own standards.

God bless until our next time.......