I was lying in bed last night thinking back on several conversations I had over the weekend with several different people. All the different scenarios or problems that these few people brought to the conversation were based on one much bigger issue...pride. Immediately 1 Timothy 6:10 popped into my head - "For the love of money is the root of all evil..." and I thought to myself "pride has to be a very close second!".
So for the sake of getting my point across I'll use this analogy. Imagine a big evil tree. At the root of that tree is the love of money, or more specifically, all things coveted over God. Then imagine all sorts of branches on that tree, all different sizes and shapes. Now imagine the largest branch on the tree. That branch is the strongest branch and it stands out from all the other branches. That branch is pride. That is the branch that we all hang ourselves from. I know, I know...that's a dark analogy, but it's the truth. It's that serious. We hang ourselves from that branch and then proceed to wonder, day after day, why we cannot breathe.
Pride is a poison that will negatively effect every single aspect of your life. Christian or not, you cannot live a peaceful life with pride eating at your heart and soul. The problem is, these days most of us are taught that pride is a virtue. Well, if you enjoy carrying around a proverbial world on your shoulders then you go ahead and hold tight to that "virtue".
I'm no expert but experience is the best teacher (for me anyway). I've made a lot of bad decisions in my life, but one single time that I decided to look outside of myself and my feelings and do it God's way, if you will, I found out that the world does not revolve around me. I realized that people aren't out to get me. People generally don't do things to hurt me, they do things for themselves and sometimes I happen to be in the way. Now, granted, we should always consider others when making decisions that might affect them. But the truth is, every single person in this world is after happiness. Some people are so desperate for that happiness that they don't consider others. That's not something we should be mad about but rather something we should feel sad about. I'm not talking about feeling sorry for someone or in our anger being facetious with a "you poor pathetic thing" type of attitude. I'm talking about really trying to empathize with them. This is very likely the reason for the "drama" in your life. This is why you end up hating people, why you always feel hurt, why you are terrified to trust anyone, why you might act pretty "ugly" when people hurt you. It's a huge miscommunication, a massive lack of understanding. Pride keeps us angry which, in turn, completely blinds us.
There are so many other ways that pride can affect us. Pride keeps us from seeing the big picture in every aspect of our lives because all we can see is ourselves. Another thing about pride is that once you learn how to let go of it you're going to find that a lot of other people need to do the same. So why should you bother letting down that guard that has kept you from being walked all over or hurt all this time? Because if you are able to look at the big picture you'll see that the pain you've been holding on to has a huge affect on your life and you are the only one responsible for it continuing to hurt you. You'll learn that pride is the opposite of protection for the heart.
The key to your happiness lies not only in receiving the love of God, but also in sharing the love of God by caring about others. Pride takes you completely out of the game. You have no shot at happiness and peacefulness in your life if you can't let go of your pride. Take time to understand others feelings and motives. People will still hurt you, but it will be a much different experience. It won't be the kind of crushing, life-altering, end of the world experience that you're used to. You'll start feeling worse for them than you do yourself. Try to put yourself in their shoes and stop seeing everything as a personal attack. We cannot control what happens to us, we can only control how we react to it. We cannot make decisions for others, we can only make decisions for ourselves. I can't even begin to explain the freedom that comes when you decide to look at the big picture. And when you start to feel like "no one else cares, so why should I?" (because it can be exhausting), remember that you lead by example. I should mention that none of this is as easy to put into practice as it was for me to write. Still, you're either leading by a good example or a bad example but you are always one or the other. Someone is always learning something from you, so make it something worth learning. Cut yourself down from that branch and breathe.
Each day decide to trust God instead of yourself.
But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: Who delivered us from so great a death….-2 Corinthians 1:9,10
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