Keep me from the sins of pride; don’t let them rule me. Then I can be pure and innocent of the greatest of sins.

Psalm 19:13 (NCV)

For the past few weeks, I’ve been studying the book of Amos with the ladies in my small group. As we near the halfway point in the study, I can’t help but notice what a big role pride plays in the dire message that God gives Amos to tell the Israelites.

Day after day Amos spoke God’s truth and His warning to His chosen people and day after day, they ignored Amos or worse, mocked and threatened him. Siblings, I have to tell you, I can’t speak for the Israelites in the crowd all those centuries ago, but this Sister has certainly been convicted by Amos’ warnings and I’m definitely more aware now of the condemnation that Jesus Christ has saved us from through His birth, death, and resurrection.

I keep wondering why the Israelites of old didn’t feel convicted enough (or maybe at all) to turn their lives back to God, to stop oppressing the poor and building fortunes on the backs of the unfortunate.

And all of this talk of conviction and condemnation and pride has me thinking about us, God’s children in the modern age…

You see, despite what Biblical history tells us happens to those who do not repent, we often fight conviction because we are too proud to admit that we are wrong and God is right. Somehow we think we have a better way than God, that His instructions on certain matters are good for other people maybe but not for us.

Then, when it comes to condemnation – the very thing that Jesus died to save us from – we sometimes allow ourselves to suffer under the enemy’s condemnation, to wallow in shame, because we are too proud to run to our Heavenly Father or too proud to share our burdens with our Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

Somehow we have taught ourselves to believe that God likes it better when we help ourselves and getting help would only hurt our witness/testimony, but in reality we’re just too proud to ask for help, too proud of our reputation to risk tarnishing it with our need.

Oh friends, pride is so ingrained in our society that we’ve come to call it independence. We’re so pleased with ourselves when we can do something alone that we overextend and try to do things alone that God clearly intends us to do with His guidance and the support of others. We’ve embraced “independence” so hard that we proudly refuse to admit it or to get help when we are mistaken or even when we are flat out wrong.

We struggle proudly thinking it somehow makes us a better person when God has a struggle-free solution in His open hands and all the directions for living a better life too.

I’ve read that many theologians claim that pride is the worst sin of them all because it openly declares that our way is better than God’s way. I’m not sure that God ranks sin per say. From what I’ve read in His Word all sin is offensive to Him, and He forgives it all the same; all we have to do is ask.

That said, in my own experience, times when I have openly sinned by deciding my way was better or that the Bible’s teachings don’t apply to me, those were the times when I was most convicted and those are the times that the enemy brings up again and again years later to torment and condemn me.

I don’t know if God counts prideful disobedience as worse than ignorant disobedience or not, but I do know that when it comes to freedom robbers, prideful disobedience binds us up tighter than anything else I’ve experienced. King David must have had this same experience because in Psalm 19:13, he asked God to keep him safe from prideful sin so that he could be pure and innocent of great sin.

If you don’t know Christ today, don’t let pride keep you from experiencing the greatest level of freedom you can ever know. Today is the perfect day to thank God for His Son Jesus Christ and put your faith in Him instead of in your own ways. Today is the perfect day to be set free!

Brothers and Sisters, Christ set us free so that we could be free indeed. Let us not bind ourselves up again with willful disobedience, with our own prideful thinking. Today is the perfect day to ask God to break the chains of pride that bind you. Today is the perfect day to experience once again what it feels like to be truly free in Christ!