Isaiah 23:9-11 - The LORD Almighty has done it to destroy
your pride and show his contempt for all human greatness. Come, Tarshish, sweep over your mother Tyre
like the flooding Nile, for the city is defenseless. The LORD holds out his hand over the seas. He
shakes the kingdoms of the earth. He has spoken out against Phoenicia and depleted its strength."
Isaiah was sent to warn the people of the destruction God
planned for their city. They had let
pride corrupt their compassion and love for others. God was going to shake them
up so badly that they would never regain the strength that pride had allowed
them to build in their hearts.
Pride is a sneaky emotion.
It can be good if kept in check…and only used to help us consider that
God allowed a great moment to occur in our lives. The good pride tells our
heart we have done God’s will…and like the dove that swept out of the sky after
Jesus was baptized…we get to hear God say well done. Sometimes…if we are really
listening…we might even hear him say good job.
And if we really have pride checked into God’s perspective….we can
actually see the good that came about in the ones around us that were touched
when we obeyed God and did what he asked us to do.
Pride can also be a horrible crutch to our walk with
God. I call it false pride. This pride
left unchecked with God’s perspective runs so wild that it clouds our ears….eyes….and
heart from God. We begin to think that
what has been accomplished….good or bad….is all our own doing…and forget to
give God any credit for the good that came about. It puffs us up so badly…builds
a hard shell…a callous around our heart. It dulls our hearing and it blurs our
vision. It eventually leads us into a
world where we leave God behind…never asking him for help…because we think we
have it under control.
I know I have said this before…GOD ONLY LETS PRIDE GO
UNCHECKED FOR SO LONG. Like the city of Tyre in this story….God will do
something to destroy the things we built up without his help…all the things
that we failed to give him the credit for.
Then he will set a time period for us to think…to rehink our support system…to
learn how to depend on him again. And since the average human life expectancy
is less than 70 years…I sure hope that God has adjusted his ‘rethinking’ time
to a shorter length.
I admit that I have struggled with pride all my life. At one point I became a huge hypocrite…and
saw myself as better than some of the other people around me. God took me down
first with a divorce…then with the death of a second husband. The brokenness of
my spirit involved me in a wonderful program called Celebrate Recovery…where I
was privileged to meet some of the people I thought I was better than. God
revealed my hypocrisy through their broken lives. He continues to teach me that I am really
worse than them…because he blessed me with so much that I took for granted.
Father…thank you for the reminder that need to ask you to
help me keep pride checked you’re your perspective. Forgive me once again for
letting it cloud my eyes and prevent me from being a useable vessel in your
kingdom. I thank you for doing what it
took to clear my vision…and wakeup my heart.
Thank you for beginning to open my ears so I can hear you tell me what
to do with the blessings you have showered on me. Do what it takes God to never
let me be controlled by false pride again.
Amen.
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