Getting Ego Out of the Way
Written by Ed Allen
Saturday, 23 January 1999 19:00
1 Cor. 13:4 "(Love) does not boast, it is not proud."
A sightseeing bus was making the rounds through Washington, D. C. The patriotic driver, also a Washington native, was pointing out spots of interest. As they passed the Pentagon building, he mentioned that it cost taxpayers millions of dollars and that it took a year and a half to build. While everyone was looking at it with amazement, a little old woman piped up:
"In Peoria we could have built the same building for less, and it would have been completed even sooner than that!"
The next sight on the tour was the Justice Department building. Once again the bus driver said that it cost so many millions to build and took almost two years to complete.
The woman repeated: "In Peoria we would have done it for less money, and it would have been finished much sooner."
Throughout the tour, sight after sight produced the same exchange.
On its final stage, the tour came to the Washington Monument, and the driver just passed slowly by without saying a word.
The old woman was curious. "Hey" she shouted to the driver, "what?s that tall white building back there?"
The driver looked out the window, waited a minute and then said, "You got me, lady. It wasn?t there yesterday."
According to the Bible, this woman from Peoria was not only incredibly annoying, she was also unloving. Because "Love does not boast, it is not proud."
WHAT IS PRIDE
1. What is pride?
- Synonyms - conceit, self-admiration, narcissism, egotism
- Wrong subject - "I" is the subject of pride. If the universe was a sentence, I would be the subject. If pride were painting a picture, it would be framed around itself.
- Wrong evaluation - Getting estimates on basement ? Pride?s estimate is falsely inflated or deflated.
- Boasting is pride?s advertising agent.
- To boast is to brag, to flaunt, to be full of bravado or pretention.
- Simple egotism - results from an overly inflated ego.
- False humility - results from a low self-esteem.
- Anger - Anger is often a manifestation of pride. "I don?t deserve this or that."
- Religious pride - "I simply can?t understand your lack of holiness." "Why don?t these people pray like I do." "My church is better than your church." "Have you read the so and so book, or heard the so and so teacher. I certainly have and it really blessed me." This particular form of pride received Jesus? harshest criticism.
2. What is boasting?
3. Forms of pride: pride takes many forms
Most of us are obsessed with how we look to other people. It is our goal to have people see us as smarter or more capable, or more beautiful or having more style or more spiritual, or more successful than most. Our culture has even produced a whole industry that has devoted itself to bragging. Advertising teaches us to flaunt, brag and boast through symbols. Designer clothes that we wear, the kinds of cars we drive, the names we drop, the vacation spots we choose, the clubs we join. All of these things are a campaign to improve our image.
Where has all of this emphasis on self promotion got us? Fragmented relationships. You cannot promote yourself and develop relationships at the same time.
Did you know that in metropolitan areas of America throughout the ?80s, the marriage and family counseling industry grew four times faster than the population. Relationships are fragmenting at an alarming rate. But it seems that our natural response is to rely on our pride. Pride protects, promotes, hides, spins, whitewashes and justifies ? all in the service of itself. The Bible says in I Corinthians 13:4 "Love does not boast. It is not proud". When I'm being prideful I'm being unloving.
Proud here means to be puffed up. I always think of the puffer fish when I read this verse. In order to protect itself, it blows itself up and makes itself look larger than it really is. Pride inflates me beyond my means.
HOW DOES PRIDE DAMAGE RELATIONSHIPS
1. Pride produces blindness.
- Matthew 7:3-5 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother?s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ?Let me take the speck out of your eye,? when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother?s eye."
- They say love is blind. I suspect that?s not true. I suspect that love sees just fine, but pride is blind.
- Can?t see ourselves for what we are. Can?t see others for what they are. Can?t see God for what He is.
- You can't get close to prideful people. They build walls around themselves. A lady I talked to said, "I've been married to my husband over 20 years. I still don't know him. He loves me and I love him. We have fun together. But he won't let me inside. I don't know anything, really, about how he feels and thinks."
2. Pride prevents intimacy.
- 1 John 1:7-8 "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with each other? But if we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves."
- John uses the term light here to represent being in a right relationship with God and being in His will. If we are in him ? we have fellowship with one another.
- What benefit is there to knowing God? If we have right relationship with God our ability to have right relationship with others is enhanced.
- In contrast ? But if we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and that damages our ability to be in right relationship with others.
- Galatians 5:26 "Let us not become conceited provoking and envying each other."
- This is pride?s goal ? to be the envy of others. But love does not envy, so we are provoking others to be unloving.
3. Pride provokes envy
WHAT IS THE ANTIDOTE TO EGOTISM?
1. ACCEPT MY HUMANITY
- Admit I'm not perfect. We all have faults and foibles. We make blunders and mistakes. The Bible says it like this "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."
- 3 aspects of this:
- temporality (transitory) and fragility (frailty)
- Dependence
"God knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. As for humanity, their days are like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place is remembered no more." Psalm 103:14-16
Average person lives 25,560 days.
- "But you are a shield around me, O Lord; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head. To the Lord I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me." Psalm 3:3-5
- Romans 12:3 "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with he measure of faith God has given you." Circle "sober judgment". God says I want you to have a realistic appraisal of your own life -- a sober judgment.
- What does that mean -- to see yourself as God sees you, the good, the bad, the ugly? All of us are a bundle of both strengths and weaknesses. A definition of humility is being realistic about your strengths and honest about your weaknesses
- God understands who we are and accepts us. We should no less accept ourselves. It is ironic that pride spends so much time trying to impress when authenticity is what impresses people. Not boasting. Boasting doesn't impress anybody. But there is a winsomeness about someone who is transparent and open and genuine. That kind of authenticity is extremely attractive.
- This means that I have nothing if it weren't for God. I'd have absolutely nothing. Everything I have -- my life, job, career, family -- it all belongs to God. I Corinthians 4:7 "What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?"
- Someone who says "I'm a self made man" usually worships their maker. You're not a self made person. Everything you have is a gift from God. "I earned that money!" Who do you think gave you your mind? Who gave you your hands? Who gave you your intelligence? Who gave you your life? You would have nothing if it weren't for God. Did you choose where you were born? Did you choose your parents? Did you choose your natural gifts and abilities? Did you choose to be born in America? God allowed these. Everything you have you owe to God. God deals you the cards. How you play them is up to you. Everything you own you owe to God. James 1 says everything is a gift, "Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father." That's a good humility reminder. It's not all me. It's what God is doing in and through me.
- Ironic: One would think that the remedy for pride and boasting would be to have one?s ego supported. To be told that you are great, the best ever ? that should satisfy pride. But we know from experience that this is not the case. Pride ? in all its forms -- is not just a deficiency of praise, it is an essential emptiness that cannot be filled except by God.
- A drum makes noise because it's empty on the inside. If you filled one up, it makes very little noise. So egotism indicates emptiness on the inside. A vain person is empty at the core of their life. They feel the need to make a lot of noise and boast and brag. They're empty on the inside. The greater the void the greater the boast.
- Paul gives us the alternative in Ephesians 3:18-19 "And I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and land and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge ? that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
- The most amazing truth in the world to me is the fact that God knows every single detail of my life -- every motive, every thought I've ever thought, every action, things I'm ashamed of, every single thing about my life and yet He still loves me unconditionally. He will never love me any less than He does today and He will never love me any more. He couldn't. That is good news. That God will never love you any less than He does right at this moment. No matter what you do. And He'll never love you any more. Because it's unconditional. When you feel loved, when you experience God's love, you're set free from self promotion, from the need to feel like I've got to validate my worth by other people.
- How come I can't love my husband/wife the way I ought to? How can I love my husband/wife the way I know I need to? How come I can't love my kids, or relatives, or parents or friends the way I need to? It may be because you don't feel loved yourself. It may be because you are so busy posturing yourself all the time trying to win the love and affirmation of other people you don't have any love to give away. There's this big emptiness inside and there's only one person who can fill it -- Jesus Christ, the Love of God. (Both those who have never experienced it and those who have.) He's got enough to fill your emptiness and mine and everybody else's too. When you let God fill you with love, it overflows and you've got enough to share with other people. You can learn to really love because you get off the ego trip which is a dead end.
2. RECOGNIZE GOD'S GRACE
3. EXPERIENCE GOD'S UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
The Bible tells us that pride causes trouble. It causes nothing but trouble. Pride turns angels into devils. Lucifer got kicked out of heaven because of pride, that's how serious it is. The most serious form of pride is spiritual pride. It's the pride that says "I don't need God in my life. I can make it on my own. I don't need to ask forgiveness. I can handle my own life, call my own shots. I am my own God." Refusing to think that God needs to be God in my life and I don't need to depend on Him and ask forgiveness, trying to be my own god -- that is the worst kind of pride. That kind of pride will keep you out of heaven. God is standing here saying, "I love you, I love you... unconditionally" and you're saying "Forget You, God! I'll handle it myself." He made you, He loves you, He has a plan for your life. I encourage you to do the smartest thing you've ever done and make the decision to stop living by ego and begin living for the Lord. Watch the joy and peace and meaning in your life fill and the love overflow. All of a sudden, you got love you never thought you had as you day by day tap into the source.
Prayer: