SEPTEMBER 29: “HAUGHTINESS & PRIDE”

Two dangerous habits promoted from the pit of hell are Pride and haughtiness, that is minding high things and being wise in one’s eyes. It is a sin against one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity – the intellect. It drives a wedge between fellowship.

Being “wise in your own conceits” means being proud of your own wisdom and knowledge. This is usually in two forms; being proud of what you know or being proud of your wisdom. Both are wrong because we know little and make many mistakes and more so – whatever wisdom or knowledge we have is a gift from God. Pride is opposite to Christ’s character who is meek and humble. With deliberate submission to the will of God and the enabling full indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the negative influence of Haughtiness and pride being a foundational problem can be broken so that this negative spirit would not place barriers to intimacy within the Christian community.

The more difficult aspect of promoting intimacy is “Condescending” to those who are of low estate within the community especially for gifted brethren. You must understand that by our individuality, we are created with specificity and differences. Whereas environment and background affect our upbringing and whom we have become, it is incumbent on us in our confession to have the form of Christ not necessarily to be a carbon copy of each other. Harmonizing with others just as music requires adjusting and tuning to form harmony, each one needs to adjust his or her pitch not to perfectly match the other, but to be compatible and perfectly match the other, creating pleasantness when put together. We as members of a Christian community cannot be exactly alike in every behaviour and opinion, but we must adjust to each other in a way that produces pleasantness and order.

To achieve this, you will be required to make choices that will allow us all to get along together and to deliberately seek harmony which requires humility for each child of God. All, with understanding in the community must not be arrogant or “Stuck-up” and must not to think of themselves as being too good to relate with, or hang-out socially with others and not allowing any social assumptions to keep one at a distance. Being of the same mind promotes the bond of peace and breaks barriers.

PRAYER: My Lord and helper, I bow to your Spirt and request that you remove any other spirit that is not yours from my life. I rebuke the spirit of haughtiness and Pride and request the infilling of the spirit of Humility. Help me to recognise that I am not any better than any of your creation, Amen.