When pride walks on the platform, God walks off. Under major conviction from the Holy Spirit in 1995, in the early morning on a night when I could not sleep, God revealed this truth to me. It was not a truth about someone else, but a truth about me. During those early hours, God began a work within me that He is still doing in and through me daily.
Every pastor I know, but mostly this pastor, needs to continually learn the powerful truth from 1 Corinthians 15:31, “I die every day!” May the Lord teach us this truth.
Where We Are
The spiritual vital signs in this nation, in our churches and in our individual lives display our desperate need for a word from God that hits us between the eyes, takes the wind out of our self-importance, reminds us that we are not God and brings us to our knees. Unless we humble ourselves with fasting and prayer, we will not know real joy, we will not know God’s best for our lives, and we will never experience the great awakening we need personally and nationally.
We need to stop long enough to evaluate where we are. Would anyone question that we live under ominous clouds of spiritual darkness? Unless we bow humbly before our God, that cloud will become even thicker, and the church will find itself increasingly immobilized, unable to support itself because of its own dead weight. The answer to our spiritual crisis will not be found in the ballot box, but in the prayer closet. It will come through a fresh touch from the Lord, who wants to speak to us, move us and manifest His mighty presence. Moving the furniture in our churches, denominations or our own lives will not be enough. The answer to our spiritual crisis will come when we put off our mindsets of self-worship, territorialism, and the spirit of arrogance and pride, and put on the sackcloth of prayer, fasting, humiliation and repentance before God.
What We See When Pride Is Displayed
Those of us who think for even a moment that we are righteous are not righteous at all. When this happens, we are afflicted with a terminal disease called spiritual pride, the most deadly manifestation of our sinful nature. We often see pride display itself in one of two forms.
