3 Steps to Exposing Pride in Our Lives
By Lynette Kittle
“Why do you look at the peck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” – Matthew 7:3
Have you ever noticed how pride is very recognizable in others, yet so very difficult to distinguish in our own lives? Matthew 7:3 explains how easy it is for us to see wrongdoing in others while completely missing it within us. “Why do you look at the peck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
We are pretty good at accurately recognizing pride in others, while being totally oblivious to it in us. Mostly because we see ourselves differently than how we look at others, rationalizing why we do the things we do and validating our own actions.
“Wife Swap” is a television series where for two weeks, two wives switch places in the platonic role of wife and mother at each other’s home. Producers usually choose wives for each episode who are very opposite from each other in their worldviews. It’s a show quick to illustrate the Scriptural truth of clearly seeing what’s wrong with another, while missing the obvious in our self.
It’s pretty amazing in watching the episodes, how accurate the wives are at stepping into the situation and seeing problems in the other woman’s home, all while not recognizing problems and issues in their own homes. Also, how they believe their way of being a wife and mother is the right way and the other woman’s way is wrong.
At the end of the two weeks when the wives meet for the first time to discuss their experiences at each other’s home, it usually doesn’t go very well. While a few wives welcome the visiting wife’s help and changes brought to her home, overall most women become defensively offended by the other’s observances and changes to her household.
With the visiting wives feeling they have the answers to the other family’s issues, their meeting at the end of the show often results in what Matthew 23:12 describes as those who exalt themselves being humbled.
How to Expose Pride in Our Lives
Because pride is so hard for us to recognize in our own lives, how can we go about exposing it? Below are three steps to help start the process.
1. Pursue reading God’s word because when we do, it will expose pride within us. Hebrews 4:12, explains how it works in our lives. “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
2. Ask God to help us in weed out pride in our lives. Often when we are put in a stressful or new type of situation like the wives in “Wife Swap,” hidden issues of our hearts emerge and roar their ugly heads. When they do, we can seek God’s help in ridding ourselves of arrogance. James 4:6, explains how He will give us more grace and show us favor, when we humble ourselves before Him.
3. Consider if actions we see as unacceptable in others are things we rationalize in our own lives. 2 Corinthians 13:5 urges us to examine ourselves and Psalm 139:23 encourages us to ask God to search our hearts. As Lamentations 3:40 urges, “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.”
Lynette Kittle is married with four daughters. She enjoys writing about faith, marriage, parenting, relationships, and life. Her writing has been published by Focus on the Family, Decision, Today’s Christian Woman, iBelieve.com, kirkcameron.com, Ungrind.org, Startmarriageright.com, growthtrac.com, and more. She has an M.A. in Communication from Regent University and serves as an associate producer for Soul Check TV.
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