Pride goes before ...

And John wrote, "Don’t love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them. Everything that is in the world—the craving for whatever the body feels, the craving for whatever the eyes see and the arrogant pride in one’s possessions—is not of the Father but is of the world."

Oh, pride. Let the count the ways that you bring us down.

C.S. Lewis describes you this way: There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone loathes when he sees it in someone else and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty of themselves. ... The vice I am talking of is Pride of Self-conceit..."

The Bible says of you, "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." And ..."When pride comes, then comes disgrace..."

Can this be any more clear?

If not, I'll add this: Jeremy Camp writes this in song,
"Lay down my pride
my desires my demise
Ready now to see it your way."
Questions?
Thought not.

The question then becomes, if we understand you so much, then why do we struggle with pride so much.

We even commit what Lewis describes as spiritual pride. Oh, don't think we don't. That's the time when our denomination is more correct than others. Or perhaps worse, we in our church are more spiritually correct than those in their church even if we are in the same denomination. Or we in this family are ... surely we get the drift here.

The answer to all this swill is simple: We are nothing, nothing whatsoever, nothing but dirty rags compared to the righteousness of the Lord. Nothing, nothing whatsoever.

Wrap a brain around that and we begin to understand that you are our downfall because we are believing not in a risen Lord who has by his grace and mercy saved us but in ourselves and our capabilities. God fixed us, we figure, so therefore we are fixed and we can pick up the keys and start this vehicle on our own.

And we can not. 

Billy Graham, at a camp meeting in 1949, stood with Howard Skinner -- the camp organist -- and asked for prayer from the pastors who were there. He requested that the pastors pray for him because he was tempted with pride.

BILLY GRAHAM.

"Lay down my pride

my desires my demise

Ready now to see it your way."

Am I.