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Frank Viola | Beyond Evangelical

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On Spiritual Pride

This blog post has been revised and turned into a chapter in The Rethinking Series.

The series includes each book in PDF, Kindle, and Nook formats.

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Category: Spirituality

About Frank Viola

Frank Viola is a best-selling author, blogger, speaker, and consultant to authors and writers. His mission is to help serious followers of Jesus know their Lord more deeply so they can experience real transformation and make a lasting impact. To learn more about Frank and his work, go to 20 Years of Projects. To invite Frank to speak at your event, go to his Speaking Page. Due to a new problem with persistent spam that we haven’t figured out how to control, comments are closed for the present time. To contact Frank, use the “Contact” page in the top menu.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Angela

    June 13, 2012 at 12:02 PM

    A timely warning. Especially for those of us who already know we have issues with pride. Antidote — more time with the Lord, and deep consideration of truths like what Rita expressed — we are all brothers.

  2. Rita Gatti

    June 13, 2012 at 11:09 AM

    Regarding this dispensable/indispensable thing…I think the greatest revelation for me in quite a number of years has been…through reading Pagan Christianity I might add…the huge and marvelous reality that in the utmost simplicity…we are all priests and kings in this Kingdom of God. For me that leveled the playing field entirely. Done deal. Never again to be intimidated by title or position, never again to address a child in a gathering without acknowledging that they are also a vessel and a channel for the Holy Spirit…that anyone can have the needed word for a situation regardless of training or experience. That everyone carries the responsibility for being available to the Lord on behalf of others. It is such a relief and such a hedge against spiritual pride.

  3. Tim Chisolm

    June 12, 2012 at 4:25 PM

    The Lord just recently showed me that spiritual pride, or pride in general, was one of the main reasons we as Christians tend to judge others. Maybe I should be speaking for myself here, but we, as the ‘body of Christ’, tend to like having our egos stroked for what we do or not do. He gave me the analogy that as the body we can’t judge the another part of it for not doing what we think that it should be doing. ie, the hand can’t judge the eye for not looking what the hand is doing because the eye might be directed by the head to look in another direction all while the hand is doing what it was told to do by the very same head. I thank the Lord for you Frank for allowing me to see the picture of the local church as the body of Christ even though I had read the same scriptures you used to illustrate that point and never clearly saw the picture you were describing.

  4. mark

    June 12, 2012 at 2:16 PM

    This reminds me that I need to stay connected to the Source of all that is good – Christ Himself. There is a noticable difference when something comes out from our own efforts versus Christ inspiring us to express Him.

  5. Samantha S

    June 12, 2012 at 1:51 PM

    Frank thank you for the post. Sometimes it literally takes the hard truth to make people listen. I consistently struggle with praising God for the great gifts He gave me. Just because I do not see Him doesn’t mean He isn’t there, working through me.

    Thank you for the reminder.

  6. Nancy

    June 12, 2012 at 12:18 PM

    Frank, I almost missed your article this morning. June 12 falls below June 11 on the front page.

    Have a good day!

    • Frank Viola

      June 12, 2012 at 12:34 PM

      Subscribe to the post so you don’t miss anything. The posts may be rearranged on the front page from time to time. https://www.frankviola.org/subscribe

  7. Sally Roach

    June 12, 2012 at 11:40 AM

    I commented to a woman in a music ministry about how nice her voice was. She waxed on and on about how God had blessed her, blah, blah, blah. Instead of glorigying the giver of gifts it came across as very arrogant. I thought about it and what I was doing was giving her a simple gift of a compliment. All I needed back was a simple thank you. But, at least she did have something to be prideful about. I feel pride creeping into my thoughts for absolutely no good reason. I measure myself to others or deem myself better. I will probably be fighting this thorn all my life.

    • Frank Viola

      June 12, 2012 at 12:34 PM

      Thank you for your comment. 🙂

  8. Kat Huff

    June 12, 2012 at 10:15 AM

    Frank, I agree with you, absolutely. The first thing that entered my thoughts is that pride is pride, called spiritual or other. Pride is always the root of human problems. It is the bitter waters of resentment, self-focus, and the old adamic nature. You put it mildly in my opinion, though I am most likely not as familiar with the media as you. Perhaps it could be that anyone who is prideful knows not the greatness of Christ. A mere glimpse of the infinite vastness of His divine fullness should wipe pride right off the table instantly, I would think. We have nothing and can do nothing, but it only in Christ and by Christ and through Christ that we have what is in Him, and we can do nothing without Him. Nothing means exactly that, nothing. Also we can know nothing, less Father reveals Christ to us and in us. Pride is a symptom of not knowing or not seeing the greatness of Christ. In other words, it is a symptom of not knowing the Person Jesus Christ. Oh, about that thorn, yes, that thorn is there for those who Father uses in a way that is in the public eye. The thorn is there but as it is written, His grace is sufficient. And are we not humbled by the tremendous magnitude of His grace?

  9. Stefan

    June 12, 2012 at 9:34 AM

    it’s good to be reminded from time to time to humble ourselves and seek rather God’s blessing than man’s applause, welcome, and appreciation. Thanks for the reminder…

    Concerning the “dispensable” or “indispensable”, I think that each member of the Body of Christ is INDISPENSABLE. In the sense of the message of this article, you could say that the Lord can safely put you aside and His work will go on, but you cannot say that you’re expendable, unnecessary, unessential, unimportant, or estraneous (see the synonyms to “dispensable”). Am I right?

    • Frank Viola

      June 12, 2012 at 9:40 AM

      In the specific context of which I’m writing, we are dispensable — meaning replaceable. God doesn’t need any individual — no matter how gifted they are — to do His work. Paul said so much in 1 Cor. 9:27. If we don’t understand this, pride can easily lodge into our hearts. The meglamaniacs and egomanicas I’ve known (Christians with lots of influence) wrongly thought they were indispensable to God. They didn’t understand that they were but one paintbrush among many.

  10. Ben

    June 12, 2012 at 9:15 AM

    Great analogy, Frank – the paintbrush and the Painter. (P.S. – Was just wondering whether you meant ‘dispensable’ in point 3 rather than ‘indispensable’?).

    Keep them coming brother.

    • Frank Viola

      June 12, 2012 at 9:20 AM

      Typo. Fixed. Thanks to Rita also who spotted that one.

  11. Grayson Pope

    June 12, 2012 at 9:13 AM

    It’s so easy to feel like we hold the power to creating good art. The feeling increases with our skills. But art, in this case, is no different than money. It belongs to God. We simply give back to acknowledge that He is God.

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Frank Viola

Frank is a bestselling author, speaker, podcaster, and blogger. He helps serious followers of Jesus know their Lord more deeply so they can experience real transformation and make a lasting impact. His blog – frankviola.org – is regularly ranked in the top 5 of all Christian blogs on the Web and his podcast – Christ is All – has ranked #1 in Canada and #2 in the USA on Apple Podcasts. He and his conversation partners also host The Insurgence Podcast. Frank’s books have sold over 600,000 copies and they’ve been translated into many languages.

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