THE DEVASTATION OF PRIDE!

By John Stallings

God is stern in dealing with the arrogant but to the humble He shows kindness. Proverbs 3:34

Many years ago a young boy was taking piano lessons. His mother wanted to reward him for his hard work so she took him to a concert featuring the great pianist Paderewski. As they started to take their seats the mother saw an old friend & for a moment she left her son to say hello. When she turned back, every mother’s nightmare was realized. Her little boy was gone.

The lights were dimmed just then. The curtains were parted. There to his mother’s horror was her son, sitting at the Steinway grand piano. Somehow the little boy had slipped away & wandered on stage, sat down & begun to play Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Just then the mother noticed a panicked look on her sons face for he looked up & saw the great piano master making his grand entrance. The boy’s expression quickly changed as the master moved to the piano & whispered in his ear; don’t quit! Then leaning over the boy with his left hand Paderewski began filling the bass part. Soon his right arm reached to the other side of the child & he added a running obbligato.

The audience was mesmerized. The little boy was enraptured. The master had chosen cooperation over competition, humanity over performance & instead of embarrassing the little boy & traumatizing him with a memory that would have followed him for life, the two created magic.

Paderewski, legend & world famous master as he was could have thrown a fit. He was no doubt used to having his every whim catered to. The concert was about him & no one else. The piano had to be tuned right & everything in the great Hall had to be to his liking. How tempting it may have been to make this incident all about his talent & his performance.


He could have easily allowed the imposition of that moment to wound his pride & given the boy an incident to try for the rest of his life to live down. But instead he gave him a moment to live up to. It became an occasion to give a child an encouragement to grow, to live & to thrive.

PRIDE, ARROGANCE, VANITY, HAUGHTINESS & FUSSINESS ARE THE STUFF OF TRAGEDY.

They are forms of self-delusion, fig-leaves if you will, that hide our true decaying features. The Bible attacks pride almost from front to back, & especially in the book of Proverbs. If we graze through this book we’ll find plenty to chew on about pride. Pride is mentioned also under names like “stiff-necked” & “Hardness of heart.” Proverbs 16:18 says,--Pride goes before destruction & a haughty spirit before a fall.

In Genesis 11:4, pride is the reason God came down & confounded the languages of the pompous folk who were going to make themselves a name by building a tower to heaven. In Isaiah 14:12-15 pride seems to be the reason Satan fell from heaven. Pride & vanity refuse to see the truth about who we are & they substitute illusion for reality. Pride causes people to look in the mirror & say “How great thou art.” The Bible tells us in Romans 12:3….not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought…1 Peter 5:5 says….God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble….In Luke 14:11 Jesus said,--For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, & whosoever humbleth himself shall be exalted. Vanity is more concerned with appearance while pride is really based on a desire to be God, at least in one’s own circle of influence.

Centuries ago church leaders saw the sins that were most destructive in people’s lives & felt they needed to be warned about these specific sins. So they listed the most destructive ones they saw in a list of seven deadly sins;

1. Pride
2. Envy
3. Anger
4. Sloth
5. Greed
6. Gluttony &
7. Lust




THERE ARE TWO DISTINCT DEFINITIONS & EXPRESSIONS OF PRIDE.

1. ONE PERTAINS TO THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE.

Pride in the pursuit of excellence has nothing to do with sinful pride. Some people get these mixed up & abandon the pursuit of excellence which isn’t what real Bible pride makes reference to. Christians should be committed to the pursuit of excellence everywhere in life. If we don’t strive for the very best then we become mediocre & that’s not pleasing to God.

· A man walked up to me one night after a service & put his hand out to shake mine & as he did he said, “Brother, I’m just one of God’s nobodies.” I could tell by his limp-cold fish hand shake, the look on his face & his unkempt manner that he was very proud of his humility. In my opinion this attitude can be as prideful as someone dressed to the nines. God doesn’t want us to slop around in our appearance & call it humility for it’s not. Pride isn’t sin when it’s the appreciation of excellence. Pride is sin when it’s God-defying & neighbor disdaining.

2. THE KEY IS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN EXCELLENCE & ARROGANCE.

Pride that brings arrogance is the pride that God despises. If all pride did was make us snooty it wouldn’t be such a problem. But that’s not the real danger pride brings on us.

1. THE FIRST REQUIREMENT OF PRIDE IS BLINDNESS.

Exposure to God will reveal our true fragility & frailty like a well-lit bathroom mirror shows up flaws in our complexion. We can be busy with career & family even church thinking we are being driven by a strong work ethic, moral values or even the Holy Spirit while in reality we may be running from God & ourselves too. Everyone else can see that we are putting on a show but if pride motivates us, we can’t see it. People motivated by pride can witness their children run away, their spouse leave them & watch friends turn away from them yet still refuse to see what’s happening & the part they play. Pride leads us to believe we’re a “cut-above” others. Our pride blinds us to our spiritual need. “When a man thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall.” 1 Cor.10:12


2. EACH TIME PRIDE IS CHALLENGED IT DRIVES HARDER.

The very fact of the challenging of our pride will make us frantic to improve, not ourselves before God, but improve & sustain our illusion of productivity, sanctimoniousness or compassion. It’s said of radicals that when they lose sight of their true goal they redouble their efforts. Pride is like that. Usually when we hear a sermon or read a piece about pride we think of someone we know, but in reality pride is about us.

3. THE BEST PRIDE-DETECTOR IS HOW MUCH WE ARE BOTHERED BY THE PRIDE OF OTHERS.

We might give in & admit at times that we are prideful but tandem with the thought is “other people are much worse.”

4. A STRONG INDICATOR OF PRIDE IS COMPETITIVENESS.

There’s nothing wrong with liking to win but if our happiness is all tied up in defeating others or knowing that our child is the star of the team, we are building a world of illusion. I have known people who have broken the finger of a friend while competing in a board game, so contentious were they when losing face. Sounds crazy doesn’t it?


THERE ARE SEVERAL WEAPONS AGAINST PRIDE & WE SHOULD USE THEM ALL.

1. LET GRATITUDE RULE YOUR HEART.

Read Philippians 2:3-11 often until it gets down into your bones. Imitate it each day. Understand that without God’s grace we’ll never put away our illusions. Ask God to break your pride & vanity using whatever it takes. In the end if we through God’s grace don’t defeat pride we’ll lose everything anyway.

2. THANK EVERYONE EVEN FOR SMALL THINGS.

I don’t feel qualified to use myself as an example here for I have to fight this crazy demon of pride as hard as anyone. One of the reasons I wanted to write this is that it speaks so profoundly to me. May I share a personal testimony?

Some time ago I opened one of my dresser-drawers & saw what I’d seen hundreds of times; I saw my underwear stacked nice & clean waiting for me to reach in & take what I needed. I sat on the bed for a moment thinking that this has been the case all my life. Thanks to a mother & a good wife, I could always count on finding my clothes all clean & fresh, with no fanfare or announcement of any kind. And I could go to the closet & see the same thing; all my clothes hanging in order, needing nothing but maybe a little ironing. For a while I felt terrible that I had let this happen & never said anything about it, at least that I could remember. (You know how hard conviction hits when it comes.) I expressed to Juda how much I appreciated her doing this for me & she looked at me a little non-plussed, a look that says “no big thing.” But to me in that moment it was a big thing & I’ve had a different attitude ever since. I ask God each day to never let me lose that gratitude for “so-called” little things.

3. ASK FORGIVENESS OF GOD FOR THE SIN OF PRIDE.

Go to Him in prayer every few hours & implore Him His mercy. The more this offends you, the more pride you have.

Contrast the story about the little boy & Paderewski at the first of this piece with another true story.

In 1971, I was called to pastor First Assembly of God in Montgomery Alabama. One of my best evangelist friends was at that time breaking onto the world scene & was drawing great crowds everywhere he went. Because I loved & looked up to him so much (& still pray for him every day,) he will be nameless in this piece but many of my friends who read this will know his identity. Not only was he a great preacher, he was also a much loved piano-man/singer. No one could touch him in those years. We were blessed to be able to see a new one thousand seat building constructed under our ministry while in Montgomery & my dream was to have my evangelist friend come & dedicate the new sanctuary for us. After a little arm-twisting he agreed to come but his schedule would only allow him to be with us on a Tuesday night. That was more than O.K with us & our lovely congregation. We advertised so well that the church was overflowing by 6:00 in the evening on the night of the service & the doors had to be closed. My evangelist friend & his entourage arrived fairly early & he walked onto the platform around 7:00, thirty minutes before service time to try out the piano. We had a big new Yamaha piano & I had the best piano tuner in town, a precious spirit- filled man, working on it practically all day the day before the service was to be held on Tuesday. No piano on earth could have been more ready.

Sitting in the audience that night as my friend had his run-through on the piano, were my parents. Mom had reached the stage in her life where she said about what she was thinking & as she watched my evangelist friend, (a man by the way that she had known for years & had cooked many a home-cooked meal for) run his fingers over the ivories, she saw the awful look on his face that told her as well as the rest of the captive audience, that he wasn’t at all happy with the piano. My friend signaled his assistant who was playing the organ that they were finished. He got up in a huff, looked at the beautiful piano as if it was a piece of trash & declared so all could hear him, “Well, I wont be playing that hunk- of junk.”

My mom who was sitting about three rows back, got up (keep in mind now, this was before the service started & in front of over one thousand shocked onlookers) & called the preacher by name & said, “Bro. ------, I knew you when you played the piano when your pants were three inches too short & you wore white work socks, but brother when you played the power of God fell & people were moved & people were saved. Now get back to that piano & play & act like a man instead of a spoiled brat.”

I was somewhere on the property & word reached me that my friend had “tried the piano & it was found wanting.” He had quickly ducked into my office & when I walked in I saw three “unhappy-campers” led by my evangelist friend sitting around on my office furniture swollen up like “bull-frogs in a rain storm.” I plopped down on a chair & looked at my preacher friend whom I’d called in to do something that to me was a perhaps, once in a lifetime experience, & asked him what he thought about everything. Here was his answer; “Pal, I can’t go out there & play that piano, it’s not up to my standards & you can do whatever you want to do, I won’t be out there.”

Can you imagine what that would do to a 34 year old pastor in his first church who’d been blessed by God to build a new building, had it filled to capacity with not only my church folk but hundreds of potential members for our church? I had promoted this evening on my two daily radio programs for months &, well it had to be one of the biggest things that had ever happened to me. Now I had my evangelist friend sitting in my office & he’d already gone out before the captive audience & shown a haughty attitude in front of them & let them know in no uncertain terms that our brand new piano was beneath his dignity & he wasn’t going to touch it. What to do? This situation had the potential to boomerang all over the world if it got out. As far as I could see the only thing that could save it was God working through me with grace & wisdom I didn’t have.

Propelled by God- anointed instinct, I got up & headed toward the auditorium filled with over a thousand happy, eager people who had come to worship & enjoy God. My heart felt as if it were hanging on the outside of my body as I walked onto the platform & greeted the folk, told them we were glad they came & great things were in store for them. I’d never heard of a “panic attack” but looking back I was on the verge of having either that or a running-fit. In the back of my mind I asked God if I’d come all this way to be humiliated in front of my people & the city I’d spent years trying to reach? Keep in mind now that my “world acclaimed” evangelist friend was back in my office sulking & had vowed not to come into the service. God lifted me up on His wings & let me proceed by faith into an opening of choruses everyone knew & we moved on as if everything was normal. If I had done what my friend had told me to do I would have had to tell the people there would be no service, let our church choir sing & preach myself. What a bummer that would have been.

What happened next was almost unbelievable. After we had sung a few songs I started talking, totally speaking faith about the evangelist as if he would be out soon. I know for sure that on some occasions “if you open your mouth God will fill it.” What I said next came straight from my heart. I said, “You know, most of us have five or six preachers we feel are the greatest preachers in the world. I sometimes ask other preacher friends who they consider to be the handful of the best of the best of preachers. Almost every time when the short list of preachers is enumerated our guest preacher will be on that list. Not only is he one of the best preachers in the world but he sells more albums than all the rest of the gospel singers put together.” While I was introducing my friend by faith, unbeknownst to me, he had been hearing this introduction through speakers in my office, had a change of heart & had slipped onto the platform along with his two long-faced assistants & was sitting on the back rows of the platform. I continued by saying, “I know our brother will be out in just a moment”& he said in a rather gruff loud voice, “Bro. ------is already here.” Almost without anything further I introduced my friend & he came to the platform & for 45 minutes he sang his heart out. Then he preached for almost an hour & gave a very productive alter call & the service was closed with great victory. To his credit when he got over his mulley-grubbing, he did a great job. Thank God the people never knew or even suspected what had happened behind the scenes that evening.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusion but looking back after thirty-six years, I know in my heart the brother wouldn’t have come onto that platform unless he’d been given that glowing introduction. My introduction came from an honest heart, for I was saying what I felt at the moment but I have no doubt the big build-up & appeal to his pride was the thing that motivated my evangelist friend & saved the evening. I’ve always made it a point by the grace of God to forgive on the spot & have sought to never let my negative emotions about people go beyond shock & disappointment. Consequently, I’ve never had hard feelings where this brother is concerned.


I’m saddened to say that within a few years of that night my friend fell into the most grievous of sin & was scandalized the world over. His name has since become synonymous with seedy sexual sin & has become the butt of jokes that break the heart of God. Once in a while I’ll hear someone speak my friends name & replay the sins he was caught up in. When that happens, I say in my heart, no-no-no-, lust wasn’t his real problem. The sexual sins he committed were indeed ugly, but in my opinion his real problem was the thing that reared its ugly head almost fifteen years earlier & that was vanity, haughtiness & pride.

Peter said, --Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God…..1 Peter 5:6. In Matthew 21:44 Jesus said ,---Its better for the man to fall on the rock than for the rock to fall on the man, for if the rock falls on the man it will grind him to powder.—Another way of saying its better to humble ourselves than to wait for God to humble us.

The following poem by John Newton illustrates our dilemma;

Once upon a time a paper kite
Mounted to a wondrous height,
Where giddy with its elevation,
It thus expressed self-admiration;
“See how the crowds of gazing people
Admire my flight above the steeple,
How they would wonder if they knew
All that a kite like me can do!
And pierce the clouds beyond their sight;
But Ah! Like a poor prisoner bound,
My string confines me to the ground!

I’d brave the eagle’s towering wing,
Might I but fly without the string.”
It tugged & pulled while thus it spoke,
To snap the string-at last it broke.

Deprived at once of all its stay,
In vain it tried to soar away;
Unable its own weight to bear,
It fluttered downward through the air,
Unable its own course to guide,
Ah! Foolish kite, thou hast no wing;
How could you fly without a wing?

My heart cried out, “O Lord, I see
How much this kite resembles me!
Forgetful that by Thee I stand,
Impatient of thy ruling hand,
How oft I’ve wished to break the lines,
Thy wisdom for my lot assigns!
How oft indulge the fain desire,
For something more or something higher!
But for thy grace & love divine,
A fall this dreadful would have been mine.”


PRIDE GOETH BEFORE DISTRUCTION & A HAUGHTY SPIRIT BEFORE A FALL. Proverbs 16:18-----Jas