- Good morning, Rockpoint.

- [Congregation] Good morning.

- Good to see all of you, yeah, good to see you too. Hey, welcome online, welcome to those of you who are in the warehouse. We're so glad that you're here this morning with us. I invite you to take your Bibles this morning and turning them to Proverbs 16:5, Proverbs 16:5. We're gonna continue our study through the Book of Proverbs, and we're seeing wisdom for life. This morning, we're gonna begin a two-week series and this morning's message is bad news. We're gonna come back next week for the good news, all right? So it's bad news, good news, but what I've learned in life, as I'm sure you have probably since too, is that until you get the bad news, the good news doesn't make sense. And so this morning, we're gonna be kinda looking at the bad news, so it prepares our hearts for the good news that God has for us that we'll be looking at next week. We'll be looking at the topic of pride, and in Proverbs 16:5, we read these words. "Everyone who is arrogant or prideful in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Be assured he will not go on punished." All right? So when I am prideful in heart, I am an abomination, it says, to the Lord. A secondary verse is James 4:6. James kinda makes a commentary on this Proverb when he says this, "But God gives more grace." God's grace is always flowing from His heart to humanity. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." And so these next two weeks, we're gonna be looking at this topic of pride and humility in the context of God's grace. Now, I brought some friends with me this morning. One is the fan and the fan is God's grace, and God's grace is always blowing, and it's in a certain direction, right? So God's, grace is always blowing in a certain direction, and when you are specifically... I brought some other friends with me, my bike here. Any bikers here? Any bicycle riders? All right, cool. Hey, come talk to me sometime because I'd like to tell you or ask you a question. I've experienced four things biking that I think most people have not experienced before. So can you guess what all four of those things are? And let me give an example. A dog ran into me, flipped me over my bike and I had to go to the emergency room. How many of you ever experienced a dog hitting you on your bike, on a trail? Oh, someone has done that, all right. That's not good. All right? So anyway, when I'm on my bike and I experience the wind blowing against me, do I like that or not? Yes or no?

- [Congregation] No.

- No, right? I'd rather climb a hill than go against the wind, right? If you're a biker, you know what I mean. But all you have to do is go in the direction, and since we can't change the direction of the wind, we have to change the direction of our bikes, right? So when I change the direction of my bike, when I go with the wind, the wind propels me, it assists me. We'll look at that next week. This morning, we're looking at when our hearts are inclined this direction towards pride, this grace that is constantly blowing, this giving of God, this assisting, this favor of God is always coming against us or resisting us, and even that sounds like bad news, it's good news, because when I'm headed this direction towards pride, we'll see this morning, it's the way of death. It's the way of destruction. It's not a good thing. So it's a good thing that the Father actually opposes through His grace, opposes me when my heart is bent towards pride. Everybody understand the illustration?

- [Congregation] Yeah.

- All right. So that's the visual that we'll keep referring to this week and next week. I'll put big red on the side here. Let me turn off this fan. Does feel good though. There we go. All right. So this morning, we wanted to just look about this idea of what direction is our heart going? What direction is your heart going? So like my bike illustration, if my bike is facing towards pride, I experience God's grace kind of in a negative way. It resists me. If my heart is leaning towards humility, then I experience God's grace in an assisting way, which we'll talk next week how we do that. So what direction is your heart leaning? And that's really a direct question that I have to ask myself many, many times throughout the day. All right, Proverbs chapter 4:23 says, "Watch over your heart" or "Guard your heart, or "Keep your heart with all diligence for from it, flow the springs of life." The scriptures is really clear that the most important aspect of you and I is what it calls our heart. Our heart, biblically speaking, it's our desires, it's our passions, it's our motivations, it's how we think, it's how we choose, it's how we feel, all of that is summed up in the biblical word of a heart, all right? One of the most important questions that I ask men when I get together in a one-on-one discipleship situation, after we talk about work and being a dad and being a husband and all the other dynamics in our lives, is I ask the guy, how's your heart? How's your heart? How's your heart before the Lord. How's your heart before others? How's your heart? All right? Now, before we look at pride in particular, I wanna just talk about three brief heart truths. The first one is that we're all born with an evil sinful heart. By birth, I'm born with a heart that is bent towards pride, anti-God, worship of self, right? I'm in control. I'm the top dog. We're all born that way. Jeremiah 17:9 says "The heart is deceitful and desperately sick. Who can understand it?" Jesus said in Matthew 15, Matthew chapter 15:19, he says, "Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder and adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness and slander." So out of my heart come these things, these negative things. Now, because of that, biblically, theologically, we state that this way, we are born sinners, dead to God because we're apart from Christ. We have no life in ourselves, we are dead to God. We are disconnected from Him because of sin in our life, all right? And from that position of being separated from God, there are these negative heart issues that we all deal with on a daily basis, right? Because of the fall, because of being born disconnected from God. And we live in a world and a culture that is disconnected from the life of God. Things such as like these impurity, jealousy, bitterness, anger, impatience, injustice, fear, unfaithfulness, laziness, controlling, prejudice, greed, anxiety, idolatry, all of those negative heart issues that the scriptures and the Book of Proverbs speak about come from the fountainhead or the source of pride. All right? And so pride is a real thing. It's a thing that we deal with every day that usually, we're not aware of. It's like the air we breathe. I deal with it every day, but I'm usually not aware of it unless someone lets a stinker or something like that, right, then you are aware of it. That's how pride is. We're not aware of it unless something hits us in a way that we become aware of it. So a second hard truth is that Christians receive a new heart. If you're here this morning and you have put your faith in Jesus Christ as the only payment for all of your sins, that he died for you and he rose again from you for you. He has given you a new heart. Ezekiel 36, we read these words. Prophetically speaking, "I will give you a new heart, this new covenant. I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove a heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and I will cause you to walk in my ways." God says when you come to faith in Christ, He gives you a new heart, and because you have a new heart, now you are a Saint who still sins, but you have a perfect identity being in Christ. You are alive, you are forgiven, you are accepted. Ephesians 1:4 says, "You are holy and beloved and beyond reproach. You are blameless in Christ." In Christ, we have all these things. We have this new identity, this new heart, this new life. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says this, "Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he's a new creature, the old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come." Galatians 2:20, the apostle Paul says, "I've been crucified with Christ. When I came to put my faith in Christ, I died with Christ, I was crucified with him and Christ now lives in me, in my new heart." Jesus lives in my new heart in this life that I now live and the body, I live by faith, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. So much so, Romans 7:22, the apostle Paul says, "I joyfully concur with the law of God in my inner man, in my new heart." All right? Born sinner, come to faith in Christ, we become a saint, but there's some bad news. The third heart truth is critical, that often, we miss as Christians, but I have this complete inability apart from the Holy Spirit, because every day, I'm choosing, every day, I'm making choices. I choose how to live as a Christian. Now, non-Christians really basically have one choice, and that's the way of sin. Christians have a choice, have a legitimate choice. We either can choose to trust in ourselves, what I would call the unholy self, or I can trust in the Holy Spirit, I can trust in Jesus Christ, the way of humility. And when I trust in the way of humility, when I trust in Christ, when I trust in the Holy Spirit to live in and through me, then I see the humility of Christ bearing its fruit in my life. He, the Lord Jesus through the Holy Spirit alone can combat pride. This unholy self that is still a part of my life. And if you wanna go deeper into this, I encourage the Galatians 3, 4 and 5 or Romans 6, 7 and 8, all right? Some of you like to dig in a little deeper, just go in and read Paul's words in Galatians 3-5, or Romans 6, 7 and 8. 'Cause in Galatians 3:3, Paul says "You began by the Spirit, are you gonna be perfected by the flesh, by self-reliance? No, you began by the Holy Spirit. Don't go back and live in self-dependence and self-reliance." Galatians 5:16, he says, "But I say walk by the Spirit, live in dependence upon the Spirit, the way of humility, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh or pride or the power of sin that's still dwells within you." So your greatest nemesis, I have a hard time saying that word. Yeah, that's thing, all right? Your greatest enemy is who? Is what? Is our unholy self, that's right. It's pride. It's self-reliance, it's self-worship. All right. So four simple thoughts about pride, number one, pride is the exaltation of self over God. That's what pride is. At its core, it's the exaltation of self over pride. Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, we see the words prophetically spoken about Lucifer, who became Satan, and you read those two sections of scripture, Lucifer became Satan because he exalted himself over God. He himself wanted to be God, that's the essence and the core of pride, this "I want to replace God as the very most important person in the sovereign and control person in the universe namely me, not Him." A way that makes sense for me is I call it self-fullness. When I'm full of myself, self-reliance, self-dependency, self-sufficiency, selfishness, when the world is about me, me, me, right? That's pride in my heart. The second truth is about pride is that it's a universal struggle, we all deal with it. Some of us are more aware of it than others, right? Romans 3:23, "For all of sinned and fallen short of God's perfect standard." He alone is perfect, none of us are, but in our pride, we strive and try to be perfect, right? At least in our own minds. Romans chapter 7:13-25, the apostle Paul goes into great depth explaining how we all struggle, Christians and non-Christians. Non-Christians for sure, but even Christians struggle still with pride. We do the things that we don't wanna do, and we don't do the things that we want to do. Why? Because of pride, of self-reliance of self-dependency. Thirdly, pride is complicated and nuanced. Now, you're gonna say, "Well, what do you mean by that?" What I mean by that is this. Our world today says what? "Trust yourself, be self-confident, self-reliant. You're the God of the world, right? Make things happen." That is the constant thronging message of our culture, right? "Trust your self." I mean, basically it's pride. It is the one of the most core, satanic messages that our world has for us, and we face that every day, and we lean into that almost like it was self-esteem. "I need self-esteem." That is a satanic message. A biblical message, now, I believe in confidence, I believe that we should have esteem, but it's Christ-confidence, it's Christ-esteem. I am of great value because of Christ values me, all right? Not because of who I am or what I do, because his choice to me values me. I have Christ-esteem. I have Christ-confidence. So we are to be a confident people, all right? We are to also be stating encouraging words to others. So there's two times in the Bible, only two. I looked at all the words of pride in the whole scriptures, only two times is it spoken of in a positive way. All the other times, it's a negative thing. Negative things. It leads to destruction, it leads to ruin, all these things, negative, God's hates it, He's against it. Two times it's positive, the first one is in second Corinthians 7:4 where the apostle Paul says, "I am proud of you, Corinthians." And what he meant there is that "It's good, I honor you, God is doing a good thing in your life." So parents, grandparents, it's good to say to your kids and your grandkids, "I am proud of you, Sam, or I am proud of you, Susie." And hopefully, you do it in such a way that you're communicating honor to them in a way that helps even their heart, not to become prideful in themselves, but "I'm really proud of you, Sam in the way God is working in you, or God has inclined your heart to do this or that, that He helps you." You see what I'm saying? And so it is good. Sometimes as Christians, we go to one extreme, we go like, "You don't ever congratulate. Don't ever tell someone you're proud of them 'cause it'll build pride in their hearts." That is a bad message. It's kinda one that I've fell into early in my Christian life, in my early parenting. Not a good thing. So as a parent, as a grandparent, we need to speak words of, "I'm proud of you, I'm honoring.", as a way of love. The second time it's used in Galatians 6:4, and this is a little tricky. Galatians 6:4, the apostle Paul says that we can have pride in what God is doing in our lives. as we compare ourselves to Jesus, not to one another. That's the context. They we're inclined to compare themselves to others, it like, "Well, I'm better than you." That I'm... No, no, no, compare yourself to Jesus, and if in that relationship, you'll have a sense of confidence and thankfulness and appreciation to God for what he is doing through Jesus, through His Spirit in your life, that is a good thing. Does that make sense? So again, I can be confident, I can be appreciative, I can be thankful for what God is doing. Number four, pride is often hidden. It's often hidden. I don't see it. There's different flavors of pride, we're gonna look at three primarily. Galatians 5:26, 5:26. Remember, I told you Galatians 3, 4 and 5, Romans 6, 7, and 8, those are the two main sections of scripture that really delve deeply into this concept of pride and humility, issues of our heart as Christ's followers. In Galatians 5:26, apostle Paul says, "The three main flavors are pride is number one, let us not become conceited." So the first flavor or pride is conceit or hubris, as we'll see in a moment. Second of all, don't be provoking one another. That's the idea of competitive with one another. Don't be competitive. Don't be comparing. Don't be trying to beat others who are equal with you. That's the idea of independence, all right? And we'll see that in a moment. Thirdly, don't be envying one another. Envying one another is like that idea of looking up. So three flavors of pride are simple like this, people, we all have the tendency for all three, but I think there's a primary one in each of our hearts, and I'll share with you in a moment which my primary one is, but these three areas, we all have. The first one says, I'm looking down my nose at everybody else. I'm conceited. I'm arrogant, right? I'm hubris. I'm better than everyone. The second one, independence. You're combating, you're provoking one another. Third one, you're looking up at others saying, "Oh, they're so much better than me. I wish I could be like them." There's envy and jealousy, right? Which are forms of pride. Deceptively so, but they are no less evil than hubris, or this independence. All right, so let's just quickly look at these three things. Pride of hubris, pride of arrogance, excessive pride, self-sufficiency, Nebuchadnezzar is a great example. Daniel chapter 4:30, he's walking around in his kingdom saying, "Man, look at all the cool things I did. I'm the top dog, I know every..." Right? And God says, "Wrong.", and God brings His grace, brings discipline in his life and he becomes like a cow, all right? Becomes stupid like a cow for a whole year. Read this story, it's an amazing story. I mean, it's like the top leader of the world, all of a sudden starts acting like a cow for a whole year. That would be pretty crazy. Well, that's what happened to Nebuchadnezzar, all right? And so some of the flavors of this pride of hubris is it's arrogance, "I'm the best and always right." Or unteachable, and that's "My idea's better than yours." Or opinionated, "I don't mean to interrupt, but let me interrupt you anyway, 'cause my idea is better." Sometimes we become argumentative, "It's my way or not at all." Or "Serve me, life is about me." So these are just different ways that this pride of hubris, this arrogance, excessive pride manifests itself. Immensely check if any of those five statements are kinda true of you, all right? All right. The second flavor is the pride of independence. And I'll do the same with these five. The pride of independence, that's that competitiveness, that's that we're combative with one another, It's controlling. Pharaoh is a good biblical example in Exodus 5:2, Pharaoh, after being told by Moses, "Now, let my people go." He says, "I don't know who this, the Lord is. Why would I wanna follow this thing, this person, this God called the Lord? I'm not gonna let the people go. I don't know the Lord." That's the pride of independence, right? Being in control. And again, we all have elements of this in our hearts, and it manifest itself in statements like these. Controlling, "I'm in charge, I'm not gonna follow anyone." Or self-reliance, "I don't need anything from anyone." Right? Or self-centered, "Everything is about me, it's not you." Or critical, "Why did you do it that way?" So when I'm critical, I'm exhibiting this pride of independence. Or competitiveness, "I will win at all costs. I'm gonna beat your behind." Right? Now, it's okay to be competitive, but when you take it to an excessive form, it's a form of this pride of independence. Which one of those are maybe true in your life? Then lastly, the one that's most hidden is the pride of insecurity, false humility, false humility of this pride of insecurity. King Saul, in 1 Samuel 15:17, Samuel says of Saul, "You are in your own eyes." And that was the fall, that was the pride of Saul. He was small in his own eyes. He was insecure. So he says in 1 Samuel, 15:24, "I listened to the voice of the people because I feared them more than I feared God. That's why disobeyed." So this pride of insecurity, of being small in our own eyes can lead to some really deadly and destructive things, especially in relationships. So some of the ways that it manifests itself as insecurity, this excessive of need for praise or credit from others, our envy and comparing where we are always wanting what other people have, we're envious of them, we're jealous of them. We're guarded, we can't be transparent. If I share with you who I really am or what I'm really like, then you may not like me. So it's self-protective, we're guarded. Highly sensitive, easily offended, negative intent. So sometimes, when someone does something and you project to them the reason why they did it was da da da da da, in a negative direction. When I do that, if you do that, that's just the pride of insecurity. My heart is doing that. It's probably one of the most deadly things in my relationship with my wife. I'm so inclined at times to project negative intent to things that she does, that I don't understand, or it's comes a different way based on the expectation that I had at the moment. Or lastly, self-loathing or self-pity, self-condemnation. So that's the pride of insecurity. Can anybody identify with any of those? Do you see yourself in some of those? All right, well, the consequences of pride are real. First of all, towards God, it robs and angers God, when I live in pride, when I live, relying upon myself, worshiping myself, "Everyone who has prideful and arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Be assured, he will not go unpunished." So my pride does anger God. It grieves him, it saddens him. Second of all, my pride concerning my heart, what it does to my heart, it hardens my heart. It hardens my heart against grace. This grace is always blowing and the more and more I go toward pride, I'm experiencing the resistance of God's grace against me, and that blowing of the wind kinda like dries out heart. It hardens my heart against Him. Great example, this is in Luke 18:23, where the rich young ruler has this wonderful offer from Jesus. "Just leave your stuff and follow me, and I'll give you the life forevermore." And the guy goes, "No, I love my stuff more than the idea of forgiveness and following you, Jesus." His heart was hardened because of his pride in his possessions and pride in his power and pride in his position. He couldn't those things go to follow Jesus. Pride hardens our hearts, hardens my heart. Thirdly, concerning Satan. It aligns me with Satan's purposes. When I live for pride, depending upon myself, self-sufficiently, I am aligning my heart with Satan's purposes, and that is that of destruction and death and ruin and division, and being far away from the living God, separating myself from His life. "Your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." And so when I live with a prideful heart, not aware of it, not repenting of it, I'm actually aligning myself with Satan. Fourthly, relationships. It destroys relationships. Every relationship that's destroyed is destroyed ultimately because of pride in the people's hearts that it's brought destruction. "What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and you do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel." The whole point of James here is to tell us that it's this pride, this self-reliance that causes destruction and death in our relationships with one another. My pride does. "No you're the problem." Well, maybe you did something that was a little bit of a problem, but ultimately, if there's a negative effect in our relationship, it's my heart's response to your thing, whatever your thing is, that's gonna bring this destructiveness to our relationship. You can do the worst thing against me, and if my heart is humble and if Jesus is controlling my life and my heart and the Holy Spirit, I could respond to that terrible thing that you did to me in such a way that wouldn't bring at least a degree of destructiveness. Now, it still might bring a disconnect, but it wouldn't be a destructiveness, right? Pride destroys relationship. Lastly, and probably most important to me is pride, it causes me to not be human in the way God wants to be me to be human, all right? What I mean by that is this, God wants us to be human. The glory of humanity is this, that we'd be just empty vessels for God's life to fill and to satisfy us with the love of Christ, with the life of Christ in such a way that it overflows out of our lives and spills out in gracious kindness and goodness to those around us. That is the glory of being a human being. Pride just runs that. Selfishness, self-centeredness, self-reliance runs that. 'Cause I'm so busy filling my life with myself, there is no room for God to fill me up with His life and His purposes and His kindness. You get the point? So pride, it really mars, it kinda blinds us to our true humanity, the glory of our humanity. It makes us be self-focused, self-centered, we're looking back at ourselves instead of looking at the glory of the Lord, Jesus. All right. Isaiah 57:15, I love this. "For thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, God Almighty." He says, "I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of contrite and lowly of spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite." So God is exalted, and you would think that He would dwell with people who are also exalted, that's not what it says. Though He's exalted, He dwells with those who are humble, who are lowly, who are contrite, broken, humble of spirit, who are empty vessels for His glory, His life in Christ, through His spirit to fill us. That is the glory of humanity. Well, like I said, when I'm busy filling up myself, there is no room for that. So what does God want from us? Remember I said, the point of this morning's message was bad news, right? The point of this morning, that I sensed from the Spirit of God in my heart these last weeks in preparation was that we would all become more aware of the issue of pride in our own hearts, in my heart and in your heart. That I'd be aware of that, because like I said, until I'm aware of the bad news of the dynamic of pride in my life, I will, I am really not ready for the message of humility, the good news of humility. I am not ready for it. You will hear what I say next week in a way that it will not impact you unless you come to grips with the reality of your own pride in your own heart. Does that make sense? Until I see the destructive cancer for , it was this viral thing in his lungs, right? And until they could see what it was, there was no cure for that. There were all these symptoms that he was sick, he was not breathing well, he's not doing well, right? And so he had become aware that there's a problem in his life for the solution to come. This is the same thing with pride. Pride is a problem that I have, and part of my story is that I did not have assurance of my salvation 30 some almost 41 years ago, until I verbally said, I have an issue with pride. I was a college student and I confessed to my roommate and my fiance at the time, my wife now, Pam, we have to call off this wedding because I'm a proud man, and because of that I'm not sure I'm a Christian. That was huge. For me to admit that to my wife to be, who I wanted to marry, who I loved with all my heart, for the rest of my life and said, we can't get married. "I know you're a Christian." I'm not sure I am. And I knew for some reason, the Spirit of God made clear to me it was because of my pride. Until I confessed to her and to my roommate, Ralph, I am a proud man, and then his words to me through the Spirit of God was "Jesus died for pride." That was the best news I heard. Jesus paid for pride. He paid the sin, a penalty for my pride. It broke my heart. And since then, from the last 40 years, there's been similar breaking moments in my life where God has just broken my heart over my issue of pride that keeps resisting God's grace, that keeps blowing into my life, that wants to assist me towards this pathway of Jesus, of humility, and I keep resisting and when I lean in self-reliance and self-dependence and self-worship and just from this place of insecurity and I need this affirmation and it just blinds to me, it hardens my hearts to what God has and wants to do in and through me. So agree with Jesus that pride is a thing. Second of all, if you do that, be aware of the flavor of pride in your life, okay? If mine is insecurity, I have little issues of hubris, yes, of arrogance and a little bit of independence, yes, but by far, the craziest stumbling block in my heart is insecurity. The pride of insecurity, this false humility. What's your flavor? Are you aware of it? Has the Spirit of God revealed that to you? Until He does, the message of humility, of grace towards humility will not make sense. It will not land rightly in your heart. Thirdly, if you are aware of it, confess to Jesus you can't change it. You can't change it. In yourself, you have no ability to change it. And the harder you try to fight pride in your own strength and your own power, the more proudful you become. The harder you try to correct it yourself, the worse it gets. To me, it's like the picture of having muddy hands. You've seen little kids have muddy hands, they try to clean them? It just gets muddier, right? You need something outside of mud to clean muddy hands. That's the grace of God, that's the person of Jesus and the person of the Holy Spirit, which we'll talk about next week. Fourthly, I have to choose to do war against my pride. Again, we'll talk about next week how to do that. Romans 8:13 will be one of our key passages, "Kill sin by the power of the Holy Spirit." It's a command. You're commanded, I'm commanded to do war against pride. Now, I can't do it in my own strength and my own power, there are strategies and ways that God will do it by His grace, through His Son, by the power Holy Spirit that will develop true biblical humanity in my life. But I had to choose to do war against my pride. Lastly, expect Jesus to use grace to win this battle. Expect him to do that. Trust him to do that. So Father, we just wanna thank you this morning. The wonderful, good news of the bad news that you clearly revealed to us in scripture through the Book of Proverbs, through its entire pages, that my pride is my worst enemy against You. My pride is what keeps me from walking in intimacy with You. Is there someone here this morning who it's their pride that's keeping them from putting their trust in Jesus as their personal savior? And so right now, Father, I pray for those individuals who don't know you yet, Lord Jesus, who have not put their trust in you and you alone as the only penalty full payment for their sin, that You would speak to them, even as you spoke to me many years ago, that it was my pride that kept me from trusting in you, Jesus alone as the only hope of eternal salvation, that all my good works, going to church, being baptized, all the good things that I did to try to earn and merit your favor were meaningless in your eyes. Father, I pray for that individual this morning, either online or in the warehouse or here in this room, that you would draw his or her heart to the Lord Jesus, that they would trust him and him alone and receive life and forgiveness through faith in him. And Father, for those of us who have trusted Christ, we still have an enemy within the camp in our own hearts. Our new hearts still has this power of sin, this thing called living according to the flesh, this thing called pride, this bent towards self-reliance and self-dependence and self-worship that resists Your grace, that keeps us from not being changed and empowered and transformed by your grace to become more like Your Son, Jesus, who is the most delightful and humble and gentle and compassionate person in the universe. And so Father, I pray for just a deep conviction in our hearts, that we would leave this place saying "Yes, Lord Jesus, pride is an issue in my life. Speak to me about it. Reveal to me the flavors of pride in my own heart, that I'm not even aware of, the ways that I do resist your grace, I resist your truth, that keep me from trusting and surrenderily depending on you." Jesus, our desire in doing this is so that we would experience you in life in a greater and greater way for your glory, for the benefit of the people around us, we ask these things. Amen.