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How can I flaunt myself proudly?

(A Puritan Prayer)

Merciful Father,

Do not let pride swell my heart. My body is made from
the mire beneath my feet, the dust to which I shall return.
In body I am no better than the vilest reptile. Whatever
difference of form and intellect is mine, is a free grant of
Your goodness.

Base as I am as a creature, I am lower as a sinner.
Sin's deformity . . .
  is stamped upon me,
  darkens my brow,
  touches me with corruption.

How can I flaunt myself proudly?

Lowest abasement is my due place, for I am less
than nothing before You. Help me to see myself in
Your sight, then pride must wither, decay, die,
perish!

Humble my heart before You, and replenish it with
Your choicest gifts. Keep me humble, meek, lowly.

Pride, self-conceit, and self-exaltation

(J. C. Philpot, "New Years' Address, 1857")

Pride, self-conceit, and self-exaltation, are both
the chief temptations, and the main besetting sins,
of those who occupy any public position in the church.

Therefore, where these sins are not mortified by the
Spirit, and subdued by His grace; instead of being, as
they should be, the humblest of men; they are, with
rare exceptions, the proudest.

Did we bear in constant remembrance our slips, falls,
and grievous backslidings; and had we, with all this,
a believing sight of the holiness and purity of God,
of the sufferings and sorrows of His dear Son, and
what it cost Him to redeem us from the lowest hell;
we would be, we must be clothed with humility; and
would, under feelings of the deepest self-abasement,
take the lowest place among the family of God, as
the chief of sinners, and less than the least of all
the saints.

This should be the feeling of every child of God.

Until this pride is in some measure crucified,
until we hate it, and hate ourselves for it, the
glory of God will not be our main object.

It will engraft itself upon our holy things!

The following is from Octavius Winslow's sermon,
"Daily Cleansing, or Christ Washing His Disciples Feet"

"...so He got up from the meal, took off his
outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around
His waist. After that, He poured water into
a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet,
drying them with the towel that was wrapped
around Him." John 13:4-5

This lowly act of Christ is intended to
inculcate the precept of humility.

Here was the Infinite Majesty of heaven, the
Maker of all worlds and the Creator of all beings,
stooping to wash the feet of His disciples!

What a needed precept, what a holy lesson this!

The pride of our hearts is the deep
rooted evil of our depraved nature!

It is perpetually cropping up; notwithstanding
all the prunings by which God seeks to keep it
down, and lay it low.

Its forms are many, its name is 'legion.'

There is....
the pride of ancestry,
the pride of rank,
the pride of wealth,
the pride of place,
the pride of intellect, and the worst of all pride,
the pride of 'self righteousness'.

There is nothing too little and trivial
with which pride will not plume itself!

It can find its boast....
in a fine dress,
in a beautiful face,
in a splendid mansion,
in tasteful furniture,
in a rare picture,
in any work of man's device!

No, more, it will engraft itself upon our holy things!
How much sinful, hateful pride of heart is intermixed
with all our service for Christ! We are proud of our
spiritual gifts and graces, proud of our ecclesiastical
place and power, proud of our popularity and usefulness,
we taint and shade and mar all we do for God.

Pride compasses you about as with a chain; and
that chain, unless broken by the power of God,
will bind you down to regions of eternal despair!

If you are to be saved by Christ, the pride of
your heart, rising in rebellion against the doctrine
of a gratuitous salvation, must be brought down,
mortified, and slain root and branch.
Christ, must receive all the honor and glory...
of emancipating you from your sins,
of delivering you from condemnation, and
of bringing you to heaven.

But the grace of Christ is all sufficient, and
the believing soul will be entirely emptied,
root and branch, of this hideous, this God
abhorring sin, when it reaches that bright and
holy world where all bow in the profoundest
humility before the throne of God, and all the
glory of the creature is lost in the splendor
of the Lamb!

The drop of water?

Spurgeon, "GOD'S ESTIMATE OF TIME"

Within the compass of a drop of water we are told that
sometimes a thousand living creatures may be discovered, and
to those little creatures, no doubt, their size is something very
important. There is a creature inside that drop which can only be
seen by the strongest microscope, but it is a hundred times larger
than its neighbor, and it feels, no doubt, that the difference is
amazing and extraordinary. But to you and to I, who cannot even see
the largest of these creatures with the naked eye, the larger
animalcule is as imperceptible as his dwarfish friend-- they both
seem so utterly insignificant that we squander whole millions of
them, and are not very penitent if we destroy them by thousands.

But what would one of those little infusorial animals say if some
prophet of its own kind could tell it that there is a 'giant being'
living that could count the 'whole world of a drop of water' as
nothing, and could take up ten thousand thousand of those drops
and scatter them without exertion of half its power; that this 'giant
being' would not be encumbered if it should carry on the tip of
its finger all the thousands that live in that great world- a drop
of water; that this 'giant being' would have no disturbance of
heart, even if the great king of one of the empires in that drop
should gather all his armies against it and lead them to battle?
Why, then the little creatures would say, "How can this be; we
can hardly grasp the idea?" But when that infusorial philosopher
could have gotten an idea of man, and of the utter insignificance
of its own self, and of its own little narrow world, then it would
have achieved an easy task, compared with that which lies
before us when we attempt to get an idea of God.

We think of the infinite nature of God in being able to marshal
all the stars, and govern all the orbs which bespangle the brow
of night; but I take it to be quite as great a wonder that he
should even know that such insignificant nothings as we humans are
in existence, much more that he should count every hair of our heads,
and not allow one of them to fall to the ground without his
express decree.

The Infinite is as much known in the 'small' as in the 'magnanimous',
and God may be as really discovered by us in the drop of water as in the
rolling orb; but this is wonderful of God-- that he even observes us!

Who made you to differ?

It is grace, free, sovereign grace, which has made you to differ!

Should any here, supposing themselves to be the children of
God, imagine that there is some reason "in them" why they
should have been chosen, let them know, that as yet they are in
the dark, concerning the first principles of grace, and have not
yet learned the gospel.

If ever they had known the gospel, they would, on the other
hand, confess that they were less than the least- the offscouring
of all things- unworthy, ill-deserving, undeserving, and hell-
deserving, and ascribe it all to distinguishing grace, which has
made them to differ; and to discriminating love, which has
chosen them out from the rest of the world.

Great Christian, you would have been a great sinner
if God had not made you to differ!

O! you who are valiant for truth, you would have been
as valiant for the devil if grace had not laid hold of you!

A seat in heaven shall one day be yours; but a chain in hell
would have been yours if grace had not changed you!

You can now sing his love; but a licentious song might have been
on your lips, if grace had not washed you in the blood of Jesus!

You are now sanctified, you are quickened, you are justified;
but what would you have been today if it had not been for the
interposition of the divine hand?

There is not a crime you might not have committed;
there is not a folly into which you might not have run.
Even murder itself you might have committed
if grace had not kept you.

You shall be like the angels; but you would have been like the
devil if you had not been changed by grace!

Therefore, never be proud- all the garments you have
are from above; rags were your only heritage.

Never be proud, though you now have a wide domain of grace;
you had once not a single thing to call yours own, except your
sin and misery.

You are now wrapped up in the golden righteousness of the
Savior, and accepted in the garments of the beloved!
But you would have been buried under the black mountain of
sin, and clothed with the filthy rags of unrighteousness,
if he had not changed you!

And are you proud?

Do you exalt yourself?

O! strange mystery, that you, who have borrowed everything,
should exalt yourself; that you, who have nothing of your own,
but have still to draw upon grace, should be proud- a poor
dependent pensioner upon the bounty of your Savior, and yet
proud; one who has a life which can only live by fresh streams of
life from Jesus, and yet proud!

Go, hang your pride upon the gallows, as high as Haman!
Hang it there to rot, and you stand beneath, and execrate it to all
eternity; for sure of all things most to be cursed and despised is
the pride of a Christian.

He, of all men, has ten thousand times more reason than any
other to be humble, and walk lowly with his God, and kindly and
humbly toward his fellow-creatures.

From Spurgeon's sermon, "The Fruitless Vine"

The Destroyer!

Spurgeon, "PRIDE THE DESTROYER"

Pride may be set down as 'the sin' of human nature.

If there is a sin that is universal, it is pride.

Where is it not to be found?

Hunt among the highest and loftiest in the world, and you
shall find it there; and then go and search among the
poorest and the most miserable, and you shall find it there.

There may be as much pride inside a beggar's rags
as in a prince's robe; and a harlot may be as proud
as a model of chastity.

Pride is a strange creature; it never objects to its lodgings.

It will live comfortably enough in a palace,
and it will live equally at its ease in a hovel.

Is there any man in whose heart pride does not lurk?

When we fancy that we have escaped from pride,
it is only because we have lost the sense of its
weight through being surrounded with it.

He who lives in pride up to the neck, nay,
he who is over head and heels in pride, is the
most likely to imagine that he is not proud at all.

Even in people who do know the Lord,
see what relics of pride there will often be.

Remember what John Bunyan said on one occasion; after he
had done preaching, a brother came to him, and said,
"You have preached an admirable sermon."
"Ah!" said Bunyan, "you are too late; the devil told
me that before I got down the pulpit stairs."

There was one who used to say that he was not half so
much afraid of his sins, as he was of what he conceived to
be his good works; for his sins had humbled him full often,
but what he thought were his good works had puffed him up,
and done him much more mischief.

I am more afraid of a lofty 'pride of self' than of anything else
under heaven. He that is down need fear no fall, but he that
rises very high in his own esteem, is not far from destruction.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

The great design of God

(Thomas Reade, "The Believer's Path to Glory")

It is one of the Lord's dealings with His
beloved children, to make them feel . . .
  their weakness and His power;
  their pollution and His holiness;
  their nothingness and His all sufficiency.

The more we are brought under the teachings
of the Holy Spirit, the more we shall find the
truth of this remark.

It is the great design of God . . .
  to humble our naturally proud hearts,
  to bring down our naturally self righteous spirit,
  to root out our naturally idolatrous affections.

Pride cannot live beneath the cross!

(by Spurgeon)

Stand at the foot of the cross, and count
the purple drops by which you have been
cleansed; see the thorn-crown; mark His
scourged shoulders, still gushing with
encrimsoned rills; see hands and feet
given up to the rough iron, and His whole
self to mockery and scorn; see the bitterness,
and the pangs, and the throes of inward grief,
showing themselves in His outward frame;
hear the chilling shriek, "My God, my God,
why have You forsaken Me?"

If you do not lie prostrate on the ground
before that cross, you have never seen it.

If you are not humbled in the presence
of Jesus, you do not know Him.

You were so lost that nothing could save you
but the sacrifice of God's only begotten. Think
of that, and as Jesus stooped for you, bow
yourself in lowliness at His feet.

A sense of Christ's amazing love to us has a
greater tendency to humble us than even a
consciousness of our own guilt.

May the Lord bring us in contemplation to
Calvary, then our position will no longer be
that of the pompous man of pride, but we
shall take the humble place of one who loves
much because much has been forgiven him.

Pride cannot live beneath the cross!

Let us sit there and learn our lesson,
and then rise and carry it into practice.

The worst kind of pride

(Newman Hall, "Leaves of Healing
 from the Garden of Grief" 1891)

"But to keep me from getting puffed up, I was given
 a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment
 me and keep me from getting proud." 2 Corinth. 12:7

The thorn in the flesh saved Paul from pride in the spirit.

How exposed are the most useful Christians to this
temptation! To be proud of . . .
  our beauty,
  our strength,
  our riches,
  our station,
  our power,
  our learning and genius
--this is absurd, for what do we have,
which we have not received from God?

But to be proud of . . .
  our piety,
  our spiritual experience,
  our prayerfulness,
  our zeal,
  our usefulness--this is . . .
the worst kind of pride,
most offensive to God,
most injurious to our own soul,
most obstructive to usefulness.

If so, how beneficent the thorn, in whatever
shape, that checks such self-destructive abuse
of heavenly gifts!

"But to keep me from getting puffed up, I was given
 a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment
 me and keep me from getting proud." 2 Corinth. 12:7