 So there was these two ducks, and there was these two ducks, and they befriended a frog. And as they befriended the frog, they were always hanging out in this pond. And one day, the pond dried up. And so the ducks didn't want to leave the friend behind. So they came to the frog, and they said, we want to take you with us, so you don't die here. And the frog says, well, how can you take me with you if I can't fly? So they come up with this idea. They said, well, we're going to put a stick between our bits, and you're just going to hang in the middle of the stick with your mouth, and we're just going to take you to another pond. And so as they were flying, a farmer noticed that he says, that's a brilliant idea. I wonder who came up with that. And the frog says, I. And the frog fell. It's interesting that the middle letter of word pride is I. The middle letter of word sin is I. The middle letter of word Lucifer is I. If I is the center of your life, you'll be in sin and pride and following Lucifer. Most people have a trinity in their life. It's me, myself, and I. Pride is one of those things that doesn't just affect our spiritual life. Pride affects every aspect of life. If you're into business or finances, you probably have a come across a author called Jim Collins. He wrote a lot of awesome business books. And one of the books that I highly recommend to every person looking into finances or business is called How Mighty Have Fallen. He takes the largest corporations in America who used to be great, and now they're no longer great. Like Razor, Motorola phone. Most of you don't remember, but when the iPhone came out, Motorola used to be the most famous phone that anybody could have. It was so famous that in Matrix movie about the future only displayed Motorola phone and they said about the iPhone, it's the dumbest idea that ever came on the planet. Nobody even knows what that phone looks like now. Blockbuster, and it goes on to MySpace and so many other things. So this author, what he does is he looks into every company, why they failed, and he found five trends, five rules, five things that every company, great company that failed, that they did. And you will be surprised that the first thing that every company that failed, that used to be great, had, he called it a pride or hubris of success. When a company developed a hubris, a company developed an arrogance with success. They had an entitlement, means they had this thing where we're successful, they lost the hunger to learn because in the beginning every company is hungry to learn, get better, they're like students in that field. And after they get better and they get successful, they become experts and they become scholars and they look down upon other companies and they think they got it. And so this author looked into gigantic, multi-billionaire companies and he said this, the moment a company becomes successful and a hubris settles in, a hubris is a Greek word for when Greeks used to look down upon their gods or when Greeks used to look down upon people and have excessive confidence. When people discount the factor of God, discount the factor of the favor of God, discount the factor of keep learning, keep growing, next thing that happens is this is the first step, they begin to fall. This is a business book, this is not even a Christian book, but Solomon agrees with that that before the fall comes hubris, arrogance, pride. You gotta stay humble to stay hungry. Chanty never say stay humble. Chanty I don't ever say stay hungry. If you wanna be hungry for God, if you wanna be hungry to grow in life, you gotta stay humble, somebody say amen. But not only humility is what helps us to stay hungry, but humility also helps us to stay holy. When you are humble, you will be holy. When you are not humble, you won't have integrity. Most of us remember the athlete, Tiger Woods, who was very famous, probably received the most money as an athlete and I'm gonna read you a quote of what he said after he fell from grace. He said, I knew my actions were wrong when he committed adultery and really just lost a lot of contracts, lost a lot of money. His reputation went down the drain. He said this, I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules do not apply to me. I never thought about who I was hurting. I thought I can get away with whatever I wanted to do. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me, self entitlement. I felt I was entitled thanks to money and fame. I didn't have to go far to find them. I was wrong. I was foolish. I don't get to play by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone applied to me. I brought this shame upon myself. You wanna stay holy? Stay humble. You wanna stay hungry for God? You know why people don't pray? Not because they're busy, because they're proud. All excuses for prayerlessness are just a cover up story for the real reason we don't pray. Proud people can't pray. You can only be as hungry for God as you're humble, meaning you recognize you need God. And sometimes you need God to need God. And the moment you stay humble, you will stay holy. There will be a protection of God, a protection of God around your life in Jesus' name. Humility is not just something that blesses you in business. Humility is not just something that fuels your prayer life. Humility is not just something that protects your integrity. But the Bible says that when we are proud, it's actually not just the feeling of pride. When we feel like, I got it. You know, I went to God when I had a problem. But now things got solved, things are better. I feel better, you know, my heart has recovered from that breakup. Now I got it. Now I can do what I wanna do. God, thanks, I take over from now. That kind of a feeling of taking over. That kind of a feeling of entitlement. That kind of a feeling where I know now I'm an expert. The scripture says, it's not just a feeling. The Bible says in Proverbs, it's actually a demon. What it says, a hearty spirit comes before the fall. Means heartiness, pride, it's not just a feeling. It's a demon. What a demonic spirit brings feelings within a person which these feelings drive a person to their calamity, destroy their reputation, destroy the fact. I've seen so many guys who, you know, they struggle with drinking. And this is, every person says this, I can quit. I'm not an alcoholic. 3DUIs later. No, I'm not. People who smoke and they say exactly the same thing and they say, I can quit anytime. And it's the lie of the devil. Until you think you can, you will always be in bondage to the demon of hubris. But the moment you come to the realization that Jesus says, you can do nothing without me, is the moment God's blessing begins to come and God begins to help you. God gives grace to the humble and he resists the proud, because somebody say amen. People who are humble will find the help of God. And when you're proud, you just see the curses of God in your life. If you have your Bible, let's go to, I'm gonna read a few verses from Jeremiah chapter 17, verse five. It says, cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord, for he shall be like a shrub in the desert, like a bush in the desert. He shall not see when good comes, but shall inherit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land which is not inhabited. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord. He shall be like a tree. So we see the comparison between the bush and the tree. A tree planted by the waters which spreads out its roots by the river and will not fear when heat comes. But its leaf will be green and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will seas from yielding fruit. For heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it. Bryson, if you can bring me the shrub. A curse of hubris. When we allow overconfidence, when we allow distrust in ourselves, what it does is it activates a curse. And the first thing the Bible says, a person who has a curse on their life of hubris is like a shrub, is like a bush. It's something like this. It might not be exactly the same thing, but looks like this. It's very interesting because this plant does not need water. Write down number one. A curse of hubris activates in the person's life by this, I don't need God. This plant does not need a seed to grow. This plant does not need to be watered, does not need to be taken care of. It does not need a rain. It grows on its own. It needs nothing to grow. People who have an attitude, I need no one. I don't need God. I don't need the church. I don't need mentors in my life. Well, I'm gonna paint you a beautiful picture of your future. Buy yourself. That's how big you get. It's interesting. Everybody goes to a farmer's market to buy this. We burn these things. We buy trees. But Bible says when you recognize your weakness, you actually become strong. When you recognize your poverty before God, you become prosperous. God says when you come before him and you acknowledge that you need him, you seek him, you pray, you fast, you read his word, you read things, you go to seminars, you recognize that you are not an expert, but you're a student. You don't become a shrub. You become a tree that everybody pays to have you. Why? Because a tree is very vulnerable. Tree is very sensitive. A tree doesn't grow on its own. A tree, if it doesn't have a proper nutrients, if it doesn't have a proper water intake, it will die. This, it doesn't need anything to live. Satan cannot bring a curse in your life until he kills your appetite for water. Satan cannot bring a curse on your life until he first steals your hunger for God. When your hunger for God is gone, even if you have money in your pocket, you're already cursed. And no, the curse didn't come because of witchcraft. It comes because the Bible says cursed is the man who trusts in himself. Cursed is the man who eventually begins to trust in other people, blame other people for his problems, blame other people for his failures, just like a girl wakes up in the morning and blames a mirror for her bad looks, foolish. But that's exactly what happens when we become people who allow that curse to come into our life, the curse of pride. The second aspect that this curse activates in the person's life we see in Jeremiah 17 is the Bible says the heart departs from God. I call it heart tricks. When you are not hungry for God, when you feel like you don't need God, you don't have a reason to pray, fast, seek his face, you feel like maybe everything is fine in your life to do that. And only problems cause you to seek God. Unknowingly, we are attracting curse by that kind of attitude in our life. What happens second is that our heart, it begins to not rebel against God, it begins to get distant from God. Our heart begins to draw further from God. And this is the interesting part. The further your heart gets away from God, the closer your heart becomes to God. Since we don't have a God, our heart becomes the God. And then the verse eight, nine says this, the heart is deceitful above all things. What begins to happen is a person's heart. The word deceitful there is actually word Jacob. Where the heart, like Jacob tricked Esau, begins to trick the very people who trust in it. Heart, when you are losing hunger and passion for God, seeking the dependence upon God, this is what happens, your heart begins to drift away from God and you begin to, since there's no connection to the Lord, you only have a connection to yourself, so your connection is to yourself and you follow what the culture says, follow your heart. And as you follow your heart, your heart plays tricks. Your heart is like Jacob. It treats you good and then it lies to you. It sets you up for a failure. It breaks you like Esau was crying because Jacob tricked him and that's exactly what happens with the heart. It will always trick the Esau in you. It will trick you when it comes to choosing a relationship. It will lead you, everything will seem so good and then your heart broken, you're bitter, you're broken, why? Because the very heart that is broken, it was very hard, you trusted in and it deceived you. You never see in the Bible where God says trust in your heart, it always says trust in the Lord. Trust in the heart is only in our culture because our culture doesn't have a God to trust in. We have someone to trust with our heart too. It's our God. Don't ever follow your heart if your heart is not following God. Being tricked, being lied to is such a horrible feeling. Two weeks ago when my phone broke, a lady put up a phone for sale in Wapato. I'm sorry, a topanish, casino topanish, a red jeta. Stay away from anybody selling a phone, a red jeta by a casino in Topanish. $250, iPhone 6S, brand new. It works, has an Android system on the iPhone when you get that, amazing. I know how to jail break phones and I know what unlocked phone is. I've done it before so no big problem. I went in and typical these phones cost $700, $650. And to get a phone and it has a case that is 64 gigabytes, I got it for $250, Joe for one hour, phone worked, I made a call, so I checked the right things and until I get home. And I decided to delete this phone so I can restore it to original position and my iTunes wouldn't detect this phone. I started to Google, started to look around and I had other people take a look at it and they said, you got Jacob. Then I wrote to her, but see Jacob disappears after Jacob dumps you, because exactly what Jacob did with Issa when he tricked him, he left. It's only $200 mistake and I won't make that mistake again but my heart has done more tricking to me than that lady. How many in here who've been tricked? Not by the devil, by the person living there. But what happens? How did that happen? When you don't have a relationship with God, you will only have a relationship with your heart and it will trick you. The heart is a Jacob, means it tricks you. Maybe your heart is like that today. You made poor decisions in relationships. You made poor decisions with your car, with your education, with people, with friends, with your family. Every Jacob can also have an encounter with God. When you meet God and God takes the Jacob out of you and puts an Israel inside of you and God takes the broken compass and he puts and makes your heart a channel of his grace and of his power, can somebody say amen? And that is the power and the grace of our God. The curse of hubris, the curse of that pride is it takes our heart away from God. But the blessing of God is when God begins to transform our heart, but it only happens when we recognize our heart cannot be trusted. Our heart must do the trusting in God. Can somebody say amen? At point three is when we are cursed of hubris, makes us not see the good. The Bible says that the shrub, the bush, doesn't see when good comes. That means this curse operates in such a way when we miss good opportunities. It talks about the tree, that the tree will not see when heat comes. But the bush won't see when the good comes. See at first, we are the ones drifting away from God, making bad decisions. But the third point is when actually good things don't come your way. Not only you're making bad decisions, but now good stuff doesn't even know your address. You begin to miss good opportunities. You look at the same thing as the other person looks and they see like the two spies in the promised land. They saw promise of God and 10 spies saw the opposition of the devil. That's the only thing they saw and they never entered that. You don't see opportunities, you see opposition. You don't see blessings, you only see challenges and because of that, you opt out. Number four, what triggers the curse is the fact that we inhabit drought. We inhabit drought. We live in a drought. The interesting part is the scripture says the tree also lives in the drought. The only difference with the tree is the tree is green and fruitful in the drought and the bush is a bush in a drought. When we are dependent on God, it does not mean everything around us will change. You can still be in the economy that is in recession, but you will not be in recession. You can be in a place where everyone has a flu but the Bible says it will not come near thy dwelling. You can be like Noah, a flood wiped out the whole world but it elevated Noah's Ark. You can be like three Hebrew boys. The fire kindled seven times. It kills the strongest men of Babylon but it only burns the ropes of God's men and it elevated them and promoted them. You and I are called to live with passion for God. You and I are called to live with a zeal for God and we are called to live in such a life where we will be green, where we will be prosperous, where we will be blessed, where we will be successful but it does not happen if we choose to allow the curse to operate. In Proverbs 13 verse 22, it says the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. The wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous, meaning it doesn't only mean that there's these rich people, they got my money and the Robin Hood style, you go in and start attacking all the rich people because they got your money according to the Bible. But that's not always what it means. What I want you to see prophetically is that God is saying is the wicked is the devil and he's taking the resources. He's taking the good. He's taking the passion. He's taking the person's heart being committed to God. He's taking their prosperity, their freshness, their greenness, he's taking all of that and stores it in his own storage. And so what we must do is what Jesus says in Mark chapter three verse 27, he says if you want to plunder the wicked man's house, you gotta go bind the wicked man and then you go in and you will plunder whatever he has stolen. So what I'm telling you today is this, is that pride which pushes people away from God is not just their human tendencies. It is demonic and the devil uses that to steal their passion, to steal their marriage, to steal their finances, to steal their college, to steal their business and what we must do is not just plead with God. God give me passion back. What we must do is we must come against the enemy, bind the devil. And take everything back which he has stolen. Take back our passion. God doesn't have your passion in heaven. He never took it from you. God doesn't have your prosperity in heaven. He never stole it from you. It's the devil, it's the curse, it's the enemy and we have to come against him in Jesus mighty name because somebody say amen. The curse over people's life is like a glass. When you are in the glass, you can see through the glass. The only problem is you can't go through the glass, right? It'll show a little clip of practically how that happens. You can see the blessing. And the moment you run to it, you hit the block. So you can see the glass and you can't go there. Those of you who are listening, what we're watching is we're watching a failed YouTube video where people are hitting the glass. You see the glass and this baby is gonna have such a wonderful experience. And so is this wonderful young man. Let's give them a round of applause for giving you something to laugh about. Have you ever felt like that? You saw a great life. You're running, running. It's called the wars. It's called break up. It's called the business failure. It's called bankruptcy. It's when you have something. You know it's there. It's confident because your friends are there. You're like, I got it. And you're running, running, running. And what happens next is when you get about five of these, next time you're like, I'm not running anywhere. I'm staying where I'm at. I know my life sucks, but it's better than hitting my head against something. And that's exactly how many people live. But you know what this glass is? The Bible calls it a curse. When a person sees a blessing, but they can't seize a blessing. And a life after many attempts turns to this. And we just thank God that we're not worse than other people. Useless. We don't need God now, but nobody wants us either. Because we cannot contribute to anything and anyone. And today is the day where God, what God wants you to do is God wants us to break the glass. Get your passion back. Get your prayer back. Get your desire for God back. Get your vision back. Don't live out of the memories of the past. Live out of the dreams and the vision for the future. Don't have the best days. Oh, when I was 16, man, we were on fire for God. What happened now? Get that back. The devil took it. God doesn't keep your 16 over there. The devil took it. And what he did is he put a glass between you and your spiritual life. And today that glass has to shatter and you have to walk through and not just see, but seize your future. Can somebody say, man, we are coming to a church every morning. We will see hundreds of people here at morning prayer. Why? Because we're gonna break the glass. We're gonna break the curse of hubris. It's gonna be popular. It's gonna be awesome to see God every single morning. We are gonna be a generation where every single week we're gonna see hundreds, not tens, but hundreds of people getting saved. Why? Because we're gonna make it normal to bring people to Jesus Christ. We are gonna break the glass where the largest stadiums are only picked with people fighting with the ball or wrestling instead of people seeking God. We're gonna break the glass because somebody say, man, we're gonna see on Wednesday night, you services full of young people, campuses in Chihuahua, in Kenwick High School, in regional high school with 300, 400 teenagers who be gathering together, not to smoke pot, not to sell dope, but to sell hope and to raise the name of Jesus Christ. We're gonna break the glass. There's a little video of a guy who actually broke the glass. Take a look at it, just a few seconds. This brother, passion, he hurt himself, played again, but he got through it. And that's what I want you to do today. Maybe not with your head, but with the word of God. With the hammer of God's word. Can somebody say amen?