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When pride comes, then comes dishonor, but with the humble is wisdom.
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It also says in Proverbs, that wonderful book of wisdom, that there are six things that God hates, seven that are an abomination and the very first of those is pride. {Pro.6:16-19} The apostle Paul wrote, speaking of the perilous last days, and provides a laundry list of the evil that will exist in the midst of the ‘church’ in that time. The first sin he mentions, and I believe that it is the primary one which opens the gates to all the others, is pride—lovers of self. {2Tim.3:1-4}

My dear friend and older brother in the Lord, Arthur Burt who has now gone on to glory, spoke powerfully and often of ‘that damnable’ pride and I think that it is quite possible that we hear far too little of that message today. One of the single most important things that I learned on the day I encountered Jesus and got saved sitting in my kitchen was, He is Lord and I am not! And still today, decades later, I recognize that I still have further to go, more need to die to myself.

To drive that point home to me Alice and I were with Arthur and the whole group at his conference in Penmaenmawr in North Wales in late 2013. She and I had just returned to the U.K. from a time of teaching and preaching in a number of places in Kenya, East Africa. While I was there a large group of pastors I was ministering to gave me a surprise birthday party as I just turned seventy years old. It was an unexpected blessing.

Then, back in Wales a week or two later the topic of conversation turned to God creating the whole universe and world in just seven days. It struck me that there I was after seventy years and I obviously was not yet all that I needed to be. I asked the Lord why if He could build everything out of nothing in seven days why wasn’t I finished yet? He spoke to me in that still small voice that I know so well and said, “You are not nothing yet!”

If you happen to think that you have reached that point where you know it all or have it all you might want to consider the fact that Jesus Himself said, ‘I can of My own self do nothing’ {Jn.5:30} and He did not say anything that He had not heard from the Father. {Jn.12:49} So, as Paul wrote in closing his letter to the believers in Philippi, “Now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” {Php.4:20}

In all things you do, remember that Jesus said, “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” {Mat.5:16} At home, at work, or at play let there be more of Him and less of you. And while we are at it we should remember the man who had been lame all his life and was healed by Peter in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene who then went walking, and leaping and praising the Lord. {Acts 3:1-8} All of us who have been saved by the shed blood of Jesus, the gift of the Father to us, have had a much greater miracle than ‘new legs’—we have received new life! We should be walking and leaping and praising the Lord!

“I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2)

THE PERFECT PRAYER IS “YES LORD”