I had this employee who let her husband get to her with the things he was saying. Now I’m not saying that you don’t love the other person, but when you get to where you have to have their approval, you are codependent upon people, then something is wrong with you, not just the other person. I don’t care what they’re doing, you should be in a place where it’s just like water off a duck’s back. You can get to a place to where God is so real to you that if other people are criticising you, it’s not going to derail you.

What are signs of pride when it comes to dealing with cares and concerns?

You ought to be able to cast your care about it over on the Lord. If you can’t, it’s because you have pride. 

I had one guy walk up to me when I was teaching on this and he said, “I’m listening to you and I understand what you’re saying, but you’re wrong. I’m a very angry person, but I am not a proud person. I have so low self-esteem I just hate myself and nothing has worked right for me. my problem isn’t pride.”

Well, you’ve got to redefine pride, because pride isn’t only arrogance where you’re lifting yourself up and thinking you’re better than everybody else. Pride, in its simplest form, is just self-centredness where you are just focused on yourself. So you can define signs of pride as being totally focused on yourself. You can also uncover a sign of pride where you are being dependent upon yourself to where you don’t cast your care over on the Lord.

The Scripture says that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Then, verses six and seven, which many people forget to connect together with verse five, say, casting all of your care upon Him because He cares for you. That’s not a separate thought.

What are signs of pride in a person regarding their dependency?

One of the ways you can tell whether you are a prideful person is whether or not you are self-dependent. If you have trouble turning things over to the Lord when you know you have problems. You’re the type who stays up all night worrying about how you’re going to fix this. That’s being a prideful person. You may not define it that way, but that’s what it is.

If you’re having trouble with a problem say to God, ‘what are you going to do about this?’ Of course, you should be listening to what He is saying and if He tells you to do something, you’ll do what He tells you. But once you cast it to the Lord it’s not your problem it’s His problem. If you are carrying the weight and worry about things, you are a prideful person. So pride is not just exalting yourself.

People with low self-esteem can have signs of pride

People with low self-esteem are very self-centred people, and I can say that from experience because I was an introvert, I couldn’t look at a person in the face and talk to them. I mean, I was tormented thinking about standing in front of people and speaking. And you know why? It was because I was worried about what’s everybody going to think about me? Am I going to say something stupid? Am I going to do something wrong? And I usually did.

Matter of fact, my wife just bought me a hand towel that says, God, keep your arm on my shoulder and your hand over my mouth. I tend to stick my foot in my mouth fairly often. And so anyway, I was afraid, and it made me introverted. I was constantly aware of what’s everybody going to think of me. I knew what God wanted me to do, but I was struggling to do it. It was so bad that for the first two years that I ministered, every time I got up, I swore I’d never try it again because it was such a bad experience. I said, ‘God, I won’t embarrass You or me again.’

But, it’s like Jeremiah 20 verse 9 says, it was like fire shut up in my bones. I couldn’t forbear, I had to speak. So I tried again but it was a mess every time.

The day I saw a sign of pride in myself

I remember this one Mexican guy walked up after I’d been teaching, and he put his finger at my chest and he says,

You’ve got some good things to say, you could be a blessing if you ever cared more about the people you’re ministering to more than you did about yourself and what they thought of you.

And boy, when he said that, it was like a dagger in my heart but I knew it was true. It helped me to realise what was wrong. It was pride. Being timid is a sign of pride in a person. Timidity and shyness are pride because you’re thinking about yourself. Some of you have had God heal you, and deliver you. You’ve had miracles happen that could bless other people and yet, if I was to ask you to come on the stage and say something, you’d freeze. Why? Not because you doubt God can do it. It’s not because you don’t have a testimony, or because you don’t know the truth, it’s because you’re worried about yourself.

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