Love is not proud

Continuing on with the attributes of Love we come to the statement that Love is not proud. Our past two posts were Love does not envy and Love does not boast. If one is not envious and one does not boast one is not proud. I think about the word proud and I think of the fact that I am proud of my children and I am especially proud of my grandchildren. It feels good to have someone close to you say "I am proud of you". I think the key here is that we are proud of others and not of self.

The other word that comes to my mind when I think of pride is humility. The greatest achievement I grasp for is to be humble. I am not doing well here. I like many can get all puffed up about my accomplishments. Whereas God would have us to be humble not self seeking nor arrogant and especially not prideful. I mentioned in an earlier post that Moses was called the humblest man who ever lived. What a statement for one who led the Children of Israel to the promised land. Yet Moses was humbled by the days in the desert, the bickering followers and the insurmountable challenges. He learned that God was truly in control of his every movement and his every moment. Then I think of Christ who could sat in the heavenlies with the Father and left this position to come to earth. He lived as we live and took upon His shoulders the sins of the world and died that we might live. He was a humble servant and died a submissive death that we might have life.

Proverbs 16 says that pride comes before the fall. God says in His Word that He hates pride. It is all about realizing the God is the one who is in control and humbling ourselves and allowing Him to live and work through us. In my work it is easy for me to say "I did this or I accomplished this" when in fact many others were a part of anything we do. Pride is thinking I am great, I am brilliant...etc. and not acknowledging that God gives me the talents and the gifts to accomplish whatever I am able to do. Eugene Petersen's Message Bible says it well in Proverbs 16:18 "It is better to live humbly among the poor than to live it up among the rich and famous".

I close with a final thought. If I am proud I do not make room for bringing glory to God. I am so full of myself that God cannot live through me and be glorified in me. I pray that God will show me how to be a humble man (this may hurt some). I pray that I would live for others and never think too highly of myself. I urge you to check out something I found on You Tube. Go to You Tube and in the search box type in "Validation". It is a long video (16 minutes) but it will show you how important it is to think of others and help them to have a better day. I practiced this at Subway today. Only one employee was on duty and she not only prepped and prepared my sandwich but she also took the money, etc. She was very busy trying to keep up. I told her how impressed I was with her efficiency and I saw a wide smile come to her face. A little thing but amazing results. Our reaction in this situation is to lose patience with what we deem as slow service. But with a little thought you can humble yourself and make the other person feel good about themselves and what they are doing.