Pride is being Self-Protective of their Time, Rights, and their Reputation:

I started doing a Bible Study Devotional in the mornings called, “Seeking Him,” by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Tim Grissom.  It has been a very good yet simple Devotional that reminds us the ways we need to seek Jesus.  The second week was about humility and how important it is for our relationship with Christ.  Pride is considered by many Christian scholars to be the worst sin.  This is because pride is a sin that often leads to other sins because when we are prideful, we are more willing to do the things that make us happy, even if they are also sinful.  When a person is prideful, they depend more on themselves as opposed to looking to Christ.  

One of the studies gave us a list of prideful traits and then the other side shares humility traits.  The person doing the devotional was supposed to be led by the Spirit to mark the items of what qualities we have that are prideful and then qualities we have that are humble.  This was very wide-awakening for me.  I was looking through the prideful comments and they are important to highlight. One of the qualities considered to be very prideful is being self-protective of time, rights, and reputation.  I believe there are good pieces in some of this. However, these traits also do highlight areas where we as people or as believers are not dependent on God.  

I do believe it is important in part to be self-protective of our time.  We need to make sure we are setting aside time to do our Bible study.  We need to set aside time to worship God in the way we most commonly do.  Then there is being self-protective of our time of going to church.  We also need to, of course, make sure we are protective of the time we need to be at work, or any other dedications we have made, whether we are a parent or a volunteer for an organization.  However, sometimes we can be too protective of our time. We can start to be very cautious of doing anything we don’t want to, even if this could be something very important for the community or the people around us, even if it is to show care to those around us and shine the light on Christ. 

I personally struggle with this one a lot.  I really am protective of my time.  I have to be better about using my time wisely and for the glory of God.  I need to be better about praying to Christ about how I am using my time.  I want to make sure I am taking care of my well-being, and I want to make sure I am doing the volunteering and helping with the church and ministries I am supposed to.  

Then the second one is to be self-protective of our rights. There are many rights we as people, and especially speaking for myself, as American believe we must have.  Some of these are very good such as the right to have education and to speak our opinions as well as to protest if we so desire.  We also have the right to make our own money and to have our own job and career we so choose for the most part, granted we can make it work financially.  We have also the very big right to be a Christian and to believe however we choose.  This means a lot to us, having these rights and making our own decisions.  

It is important to remember God promised his followers we would have trouble and we would be persecuted.  Some of this persecution may include losing some of our rights.  Many Christian followers have been put to jail in other countries simply because of their love of Jesus and their refusal to follow any other religion or god or to leave their faith in Jesus.  This is to many people a loss of rights, but these followers have stayed humble and know they are doing what they need to do for Christ.  

Lastly, the third one is to be self-protective of our reputation.  Reputation is something very important for a lot of us.  I know I personally really care about my reputation.  I want people to know me for certain qualities such as being a hard and good worker, being kind, one who typically follows all the rules, is a strong Christian, etc.  To some extent, I do believe it is important to care about our reputation because we need to make sure we are showcasing Christ to all people.  For example, we need to make sure we are showcasing kindness and goodness and the love of the Lord.  However, I often believe we as people can become far too obsessed with what we look like to others in the sense that we want to be loved by all people.  Sometimes we may want our reputation to showcase more of our greatness as opposed to being a light to Christ.

I do believe we need to be aware of our time, our rights, and our reputation.  However, I believe more strongly that we need to let God handle these three areas.  He should be the one in control of these situations.  He should be the one in control of how others see us and how ourselves is taken into account.  One verse to keep in reminder and the one I am going to end on is 1 John 2:16 which says, “For all that is in the world-the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life-is not from the Father but is from the world.”