Obadiah 3-4 – The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’ 4 Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down,” declares the Lord.
Pride is our enemy. It steals the ability to love as God loves. In the measure that pride is in us we are selfish. Selfishness is the lack of ability to love others more than, or even equal to, how much one loves self. Pride nibbles and bites away at empathy and compassion, it has little use for them, unless to be used to prosper self. Pride considers empathy and compassion competing characteristics for what is best for self.
Mixed into the composition of pride is theft and lust. The proud think themselves entitled. What others have, if desired, the proud deem that they should have and more of it. Or at least should control it. Those filled with pride think that they should not be denied anything valuable, desirable and beautiful. If one has a beautiful partner, than the proud have a right to steal. The prideful steal beauty and innocence and it does not matter that beauty is hurt, they want and so think they should have. Pride convinces that what one wants one should have and it cares not for who is hurt in the fulfilling of the drive to obtain.
Pride is the soil of hate. Pride brings unhealthy competition and desires to rule and to raise oneself above others. Pride pushes out love. Pride demands for self the possession of what is conceived as the best, the highest, the most valuable, and the loveliest. Pride also demands that those close to itself also have the same, only in lesser measure. And not for the sake of loving another, but because it is part of being surrounded by the best. Ultimately pride consumes the best and cares not for the benefit of others, its chief concern is for itself.
Pride brings delusion. Pride brings a wrong perception of one’s abilities. Instead of being thankful for how God has gifted the prideful consider that they are great because they are great and not because they were given all that is a gifting. The prideful think they cannot fall, until they do. (Proverbs 16:18) The prideful think themselves superior to others. They think themselves of highest value and believing that justifies the hoarding of blessings meant to be distributed for another, or all.
Pride imposes on others in order to gratify oneself. Pride cannot fully love anyone.
Vulnerability is upon all who are prideful. They think that no-one could harm them because they are superior. The proud, in their pride are all infected with the thought they have no weaknesses. Since pride blinds the proud to truth, they cannot honestly self-assess. A man who will not ready for the battle because he thinks himself superior is ready to be overrun. A prideful man cannot conceive that even a fool, in his foolishness, can conceive of a way that the prideful man could not. Pride deceives and makes one vulnerable.
Pride refuses good counsel. It thinks that one is independent. The proud fall hard. (Ezekiel 33:28)
The proud look down from their throne and think their kingdom impregnable. Falling from a high place can be deadly, and so can a fall from a small height. (Proverbs 16:5)
Pride steals gratitude to God from the heart. Pride believes that one has because one has blessed oneself. Pride need not be thankful to God because the proud share glory with no-one. The proud one is not grateful because that person believes it deserves.
Pride thoroughly corrupts. It is a rust that eats away the strongest steel and causes the foundation to fail so that the building falls to waste and rubble. Pride eats away and destroys all that it supports.
Pride is the absence of humility. No man is proud who dwells in the shadow of the Lord. He who dwells with the Lord is thankful and humble. Job 42:5–6 “My ears had heard of you but my now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” Comparing oneself to other people gives rise to pride. Comparing oneself to God is humbling. And being humble is pleasing with the Lord and those who please the Lord He will bless (James 4:6) Dwell with God, compare oneself only with God and pride will not be a problem and blessings from God will flow.
Psalm 150:6 – Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!
Micah 7:7 – But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will Hear me.
Micah 6:8 – He has shown you, Oh man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
Numbers 6:24-26 The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you; 26 The Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.