 All right. So once again, thank you each one for being here and connecting to the orientation sessions. I hope that it's been a blessing so far and we'll continue to learn the week and eventually as our courses start next Monday. So right now we are going to a couple of very key subjects from this book or the APC publication called as laying the axe to the root. And we are understanding that as believers, we may still carry certain attitudes and the manifestation or the presentation of those attitudes through certain behaviors or actions from our end. So we saw how self can be very self can be a hindrance in us truly serving God in the manner that pleases him. Similarly, this morning we have looked at jealousy, carrying a heart of jealousy that it will not honour God in any way. Right now we are going to look at the subject of pride and how even as believers, sometimes pride, the spirit of pride or there can be pride in our hearts and we may not even have any idea that we are functioning with pride. But when we identify these things, it is helpful for us to deal with them. It is helpful for us to even uproot these attitudes from our hearts. So let's pray and then we will begin. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father we thank you, we praise you and Lord we honour you Lord for the opportunities that you give us to spend time in your word. Lord we thank you that your word is powerful Lord, that it is a double edged sword. As we hear your word, as we think about your word Lord, we know that your word will do a deep work in our hearts Lord. And Father God as we learn about this attitude of pride, we pray God that Lord all the thoughts in our minds, all the standards in our heart Father which does not honour and glorify you that those things may be removed, that those things may be uprooted Father God. Lord we pray for your Holy Spirit Lord to minister to each one of us as we hear Lord what we are going to go through this session. Thank you Lord, thank you once again for this time. We speak a blessing upon each other and Lord we commit this entire session into your hands. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Alright, so coming to pride, we understand that pride is something that either we have functioned in or we have observed in the lives of other people. And it's definitely not nice to experience pride, especially when someone is being very prideful towards in matters and we are observing that. So how do we define pride? Just one moment please. That's better. So how do we define pride? So pride in simple words can be defined as arrogance, it can be defined as being very haughty. These are the words that we use to describe pride or we could even say that it's an attitude where somebody exalts themselves or somebody is the boasting kind. Like they love to boast about themselves. They love to boast about their own skills, their talents, their experiences and their abilities. So pride comes across in this manner and in the word of God we are told that there are some things that believers should not engage in. And in that list is also something known as the pride of life and the Bible says that the pride of life is not from God, that pride of life is of the world. So for us as believers to have these kind of behaviors that describe pride is not godly because the Bible says that these things are of the world. So we will begin to understand what the results of pride are and why we must really not walk in pride. Eventually we will touch on those sections. Now talking a little bit more about pride, when we say jealousy, it's a little bit more easier to identify. Now we can recognize it in ourselves when we are jealous of someone. It's easier to pick it up. But when we say pride it's a little more subtle. Like we ourselves will not realize that we are carrying pride. But as Pastor Jay Kumar was sharing yesterday when we are not well, we may not recognize that and say that I am suffering from this infection or that infection. But when you go to the doctor, they will be able to look at some of the symptoms or the blood reports and then they can predict what the condition could be. Similarly for us to understand that we are carrying pride in our hearts, it's not easy to diagnose. But through certain behaviors, through certain attitudes, we will be able to recognize it. Now the Bible tells us that there are some things that God dislikes is a softer word but the Bible uses the term hates. Now we don't want to be in that category that God hates. We want to be in the category where God loves. So if we are walking in certain attitudes that please God we are happy. But the Bible tells us that in Proverbs 6, 16, 2 verse 19, I'll just read 2 verses there. These 6 things the Lord hates. Yes, 7 are an abomination to Him and it begins with a proud look. This is on page 39 of your printed publications and the students who are online can follow along through your PDFs. You can look at the page number that is given in the PDF. So a proud look is something that God hates. And in the Bible we use a term called abomination. Things that God strongly dislikes is known as an abomination. And we would look at things such as lust or jealousy or even self is somewhat subtle. But things like jealousy and lust, very easily we can say that God hates it. But carrying pride in us is also an abomination but we find it harder to recognize when there is pride in us. But the Bible is very clear that God hates pride and who is that one person who was rejected from heaven because of his pride. Who was that? Satan, you're right. So Satan, Lucifer, God sent him out of heaven because of his pride. So you see pride is, you know, it keeps us away from God and that's what happened to Lucifer. So there's a big warning to each of us as believers that we must get rid of any hint of pride in our hearts and in our lives. Now James chapter 4 and verse 6, it's a beautiful scripture. If any of you would like to read it, you can. Please feel comfortable if you have the mic with you, read into it. James chapter 4 and verse 6. But he gives more grace. Therefore he says God resists the proud. What gives grace to the humble? Okay, sure. Okay, so here we see that God resists the proud. We've already seen that God hates pride. Adding to that, scriptures tell us God resists the proud which means that you can imagine, you know, there are two teams. Okay, there are two teams. When you play the tug of war, you all may know that there's a rope and then there are two teams. You're pulling that side, this side. What are both the teams doing? They're pulling against each other, isn't it? So that is why you have to put so much of effort to actually pull the rope towards yourself because somebody else is pulling on the other side. So what happens when we carry pride? It's almost like we are pulling against God. Now nobody wants to be on the opposing side of God. We all love that scripture which says God is for us. Okay, God is for us and not against us. We want God to be with us and we want to be on God's team. But what does pride do? It puts us against God because what starts to happen, God begins to resist us. Okay, and that's a very scary thought to have God on the opposite team because he's the Almighty and you don't want to be against God and God pulling against you. But the scriptures are telling us when we carry pride, God resists the proud. But there's another encouraging scripture there which says that he gives grace to the humble. He gives grace to the humble. So what is grace? Grace is defined in many ways in the Word of God. But here the word grace, in fact it says he gives more grace. Grace is the ability to do things for God. So God gives us the ability to serve Him, whether it is like serving in small ways where we may be cleaning, putting up chairs in the church or maybe other ways depending on the skills that God gives us, leading worship, preaching, praying for somebody, counseling, prophesying over their lives. Different ways, God gives the ability. God gives the grace and scriptures are telling more grace. Meaning the more humble we are, God will increase our ability. God will increase our capacity, he will increase our opportunities. So for us to keep growing higher in God we have to go more humble in His presence. But when we become proud what happens? The balance, you know the scales tilt. So we are trying to rise up on our own and God is not going to support that. But when we become humble what happens? God begins to support us and the scripture says he gives more grace. So when he finds humility he will add to our abilities and he will cause us to increase in the things that we want to do for him and for his kingdom. So that is how God works. So we must be really careful about pride in our hearts. You know sometimes we want to do the right things. So let's say we want to worship or we want to preach or we want to pray for somebody. Now just take the example of prayer. We may be praying for someone but what is there in our hearts is more important. You know the why question? What is whatever we are doing? But the why question? Why are we doing that? People may not be able to see why we are doing certain things, isn't it? But in our hearts we know. So when we are praying for someone the reason may be that we want to bless that person or we really want God's power to be released in that person's life. Or we may have certain attitudes in our hearts where we want to show off you know how good our prayer is or you know how great our language is or look at me. I care for people. Others can observe this. So we may have negative ideas as well in our hearts. Now people outside may never know that but God sees the heart. Remember that's what scripture says. Man sees the outward appearance, the face but God sees the heart. And in our hearts even when we do the right things, if we are motivated by the wrong attitudes it is never pleasing to the Lord. So we could be doing ministry, we could be doing God's work but we could be doing it all in pride to compete with others to show that we are great or to show that I've accomplished so much for God's glory. Remember yesterday a pastor had mentioned one question which we have to ask ourselves is in all my dreams who is the hero? Do I want to be seen as oh this person served God so greatly. This person achieved so much for God. I want my photo to be you know posted everywhere. Everyone to know my name. So when we are functioning with that attitude somewhere we are missing the point. The point is not for us to be exalted. The point is to glorify and honor the Lord. Isn't it? So this is how we must understand that pride is something that we should stay away from and it can be really subtle the way it creeps up in our lives. So if we want the divine grace of God in our lives we must become more and more humble. Now when we read about leaders in the Bible we recognize that generally the people who were good leaders were all very humble and you know very meek personalities. For example Moses the Bible talks about Moses and says in the you know book of numbers numbers 12 and verse 3 I'll just quickly read that says now the man Moses was very humble more than all men who were on the face of the earth. So Moses led thousands of people a very successful and a very powerful leader in a crisis situation and season he led thousands of people to safety and you know help them to kind of let them when they sustain themselves in the wilderness and all that but what does the Bible say about him? He was very humble okay he was a very meek person so one of the requirements for leadership is humility. The more humble we are the stronger example we can be for the Lord. So these are things that you know we can learn early in our journey with God and it will really be a blessing to us as well as to others. Now let's see what are the manifestations of pride. So I told us it is somewhat difficult to identify pride you know from the outside but through certain behaviors it's possible to recognize it. So what are these manifestations or how does it make itself known pride? So the first way is being stubborn okay or being obstinate that's another word so be stubborn. So a stubborn attitude reveals pride. Now yes the Bible talks about a godly stubbornness like yesterday in the afternoon session we were talking about some of God's generals and we talked about you know Amy Semple McPherson and we said how she went through like she faced the loss of her husband and after that through disappointment it would have been easy for her to give up on life and not to serve God but we saw how she did not want to give up ministry so she did her best she even took her children when she went out for evangelism and you know praying for people and things like that so you can recognize a sort of a godly stubbornness where she did not let go of the right thing so there is a godly stubbornness which is okay right if you remember Samuel's mother Hannah she was praying in the temple and the priest looked at her and said what is wrong with you you know this looks like a drunk woman like go back and so she was not receiving the acceptance of her of the people at that time and yet she continued in prayer so there is a godly stubbornness which is good and right but we're talking about an ungodly stubbornness where we are not willing to listen where we are not willing to consider the correction or the opinions of other people so this is something that God is not happy about okay so stubbornness so if there is stubbornness in our attitude then we really have to check and see what's happening you know why am I stubborn stubborn in certain aspects why is it that I cannot let go or listen to people or accept correction and we may we should ask God to help us deal with that stubbornness so when this king known as Nebuchadnezzar he was so stubborn God had to bring him down so he was given power and position but we read about him in the book of Daniel that God because of his pride God had to really strip him of that authority and power which was given to him so stubbornness is not a good attitude now how can stubbornness manifest in our relationships in certain ways like let's say we have friends or we have family aware people tell us hey this this is my idea okay I have a suggestion why can't we do things like this but stubbornness will show up in a way where we say okay you don't have to say anything I already know okay this is what we are going to do and this is what we will do so you're stubborn not ready to listen to something different or something new a suggestion maybe even between husbands and wives maybe the husband has some good ideas but the wife is unwilling to listen no everything has to be done the way I want it to be done or vice versa the wife has ideas and the husband is not listening so this is the way in which stubbornness can reveal itself and it's dangerous because sometimes we may miss out on the early corrections that are required in our walk with the Lord and these early corrections could help us develop ourselves better as we journey further with God so stubbornness is something that we must look for and and see whether we are behaving in this manner second thing is please feel free to ask questions if at all you have any whether questions are from our online students or they are from here in-person students feel free to ask questions next is arrogance okay arrogance is you could sort of look at another word that goes with it which is overconfidence overconfidence so overconfidence is when we grade ourselves as qualified when others are still saying that hey you need to wait you need to train or you need some more time but overconfidence says I already know I'll do it I'm good enough I can handle it I will do it you know it's like a young person who is now moving into adulthood but just because they're moving into adulthood doesn't mean that you know they will be qualified for different things like maybe their parents still think that they should not have a mobile phone yet or their parents still think that okay you wait we will get you a bike after another year or maybe the government has certain rules and says you can only get a driving license at the age of whatever 18 or something like that but overconfidence will be such that it will go against all these reasonable requirements and the young person may say something like I know I can drive I will drive I don't care about the government's license or I know I need a mobile phone I will go with it I don't care about what my parents are saying right so just an example for us to understand where we are overconfident and we are not ready to listen to what others or elders or people who are mature in the Lord have to say so overconfidence is another manner in which we will see pride manifesting itself now we can look at another manifestation which is rebellion okay rebellion so what is rebellion? Rebellion is also all these words are somewhat connected so you might find that there is a seeming overlap however there are differences so rebellion is when one is going against what has been expected of them or rebellion is also when someone is obeying partially like in the case of Saul so there was a time when God told Saul gave him instructions and said you know in 1 Samuel chapter 15 you go and you destroy the Amalekites and you make sure that everything is destroyed okay but what did Saul do? he did not listen to God's full instruction he went he won over the Amalekites but there were some things that he did not destroy he just brought it back with himself and when he was asked why did you do this Saul you know why didn't you completely obey what I told you to do he gave an excuse he said to God God I thought I will offer this as you know like a sacrifice or an offering to you the answer sounds very godly but God knows our hearts God knew that he had actually disobeyed he obeyed 90% 10% he didn't obey but in the sight of God that was rebellion partial obedience sometimes is also rebellion against God and we know what happened in the case of Saul it was God's heart to choose Saul it was God's heart to appoint him as a king it was God's heart to entrust his people to Saul but what was the problem with Saul an attitude of rebellion just doing his own thing God is saying something but he's not willing to listen it's as if he was saying I know better yeah God is saying but I know better I'll do whatever I want to do and this went on and on and on and on God gave him a lot of grace a lot of time finally he said I'm so sad about Saul I will have to bring in somebody else and so God had to pick a David and position him so you see rebellion is when we are disobedient to what God wants us to do so it may be partial obedience which we are giving unto the Lord but again that's not good enough when God says something he expects us to be fully obedient to what he's asking us to do right so who is the other person whom we can classify under the category of rebellion in the Bible anyone else who comes to your mind rebellious very rebellious Lucifer Lucifer sister Saul Saul we spoke about him who else Lucifer anyone else Lucifer please be loud Lucifer okay very good yeah so we already mentioned Lucifer right pride and then also rebellion against God he instigated other angels also to go against God so we know the we know what happened Lucifer with his fallen angels were thrown from heaven so rebellion God hates pride God hates rebellion right so these are things that we would need to be careful about now talking about rebellion I think in the context especially the context of parents and children at a certain age usually there's a lot of rebellion now maybe because the kids think that we already know parents are so old-fashioned they don't even know technology they don't know how to use WhatsApp and they are telling me you know what to do what not to do but the Bible says obey your parents in the Lord they may be old-fashioned they may be you know a foreign technology may be foreign to them but still the Bible teaches us that God has placed godly authority in our lives whether they are parents or you know spiritual leadership there is accountability that we have in those relationships and we must be mindful of it okay so rebellion is something that we must be away from now let me quickly look at the chat here there seem to be some questions and the church pastor have pride and he thinks that he knows everything how to deal with that okay so I would say you could pray for your pastor if you sense you know something like this however the Bible says that when there is an accusation against a leader it is not unless there are like at least two people or more then it should not be entertained okay so I would just say you pray and if there are more people who have a similar similar observation then it has to be addressed in the right way because the scriptures teach us that people who are in leadership are chosen by God and they are honored so the way we address matters with them has to be done in the right way so the best thing to do is to keep it in prayer if many others have a similar observation then you may need to approach another leader who can take the matter in a in a nice way in a polite way to the church pastor okay so that that is how we would need to approach this matter now the other question Daniel is asking is if we are stubborn for something which is correct the reason for being stubborn is only for the reason that wrong things don't take place is it correct so Daniel I am just trying to understand because you're probably talking about a specific situation and what I would say is that you know we can be stubborn in prayer but in our behavior with people in our relationships it's not good to display that stubbornness okay so keep that stubbornness in prayer maybe something is going on which you're not happy about you keep doing the right thing and you pray and trust God to bring a change in that situation just because you're stubborn for the right thing it does not justify bad behavior from our end so that's what I would say I hope you agree with me and we'll quickly take Deepa's question yes sister Deepa please go ahead unmute and ask please yeah I want to also contribute that Geyazi also rebel against his master sorry to interrupt brother success we didn't hear you completely okay you can go first and then Deepa can ask a question please go ahead okay I want to in this scenario Geyazi rebel against his master sorry is he Geyazi Geyazi Geyazi is it Geyazi rebel against his master rebel against the master I got who yeah there is Geyazi Geyazi Geyazi yes yeah thank you somebody typed it in the chat Geyazi I hear you better now Geyazi I would say so yeah because he did not even check with his master and he went to collect you know money but God knows all things right so in the spirit his master was able to look into this matter and he rebuked him so I would say yes that is rebellion all right okay yeah thank you thank you brother success the sister Deepa did you want to ask something okay we will take up a question later but if a church pastor is disrespectful towards others and curses is a person will it harm the person being cursed okay so see the Bible says that a curse without a cause will not alight which simply means that when there is a curse right which is spoken on anyone if they have not done anything wrong it won't affect them okay so I would just say that for this question that was asked okay let's proceed I'll cover more ground and then in the end we can take up some more questions so we've understood now we've said that when we are proud then we may behave stubbornly we may behave with arrogance or overconfidence or we may behave in rebellion so now there are a few more attitudes which will reveal pride in our hearts what are those attitudes being scornful us being scornful is to you know have like negative opinions about people about things where we are just grumbling putting people down and we are saying oh what is it what big preaching they did what big worship reading they did you know it's nothing I can do better so in this way we we are kind of speaking against people speaking law of people making derogatory remarks about people this also is it stems from pride because we think we are better we think we know better right we think we deserve better so others we can put them very easily but this kind of a scornful behavior is also coming from pride and God does not like those who are scorners those who are another word which is used as scoffers so we must stay away from this alright now the next way that pride will manifest itself is self-righteousness or hypocrisy so what is this a classic example of self-righteousness any any thoughts self-righteous people in the Bible who would you think of immediately Pharisees we would say don't behave like a Pharisee why because Pharisees what do they do again they think that they are great you know they are very learned all the others are so ill-informed they they are not educated in the things of God so the Bible talks so much about the Pharisees and their hypocrisy so again in our attitudes when we are with people we may think that my Bible knowledge is better than this person's Bible knowledge or my church is better than that person's church or you know my anointing is greater than that person's anointing or my calling is bigger than that person's calling so what's happening there is this whole attitude where we are judging that I am the best everybody else yeah they're there but you know I'm the best so and that comes out when we pray when we remember the prayers that we see of that Jesus rebuked a Lord I'm giving you so much but this person is only giving you little money these were the kind of things that the Pharisees said then they just made their ego feel better so an attitude like a Pharisee is also something that can manifest when we carry pride in our hearts and the Pharisees were also known for hypocrisy hypocrisy is when they are telling others don't do this don't do that but they themselves are doing it okay so in the matters of worship they were instructing everyone this is how you should worship God this is the right way to worship God but they themselves would go and you know have some some sinful things going on and come back as if nothing happened so the standards were varying for them and the other people whom they were expecting so Jesus rebuked them and he rebuked them for their hypocrisy so hypocrisy is again where we we want others to live by certain things which we will not follow okay so that again is not nice and God does not want us to behave that way so before we judge others we must really ask ourselves the question am I am I doing the right thing you know I am judging somebody else but am I right in the sight of the Lord so when we think this way we can avoid being a hypocrite or being carrying or demonstrating the attitude of a Pharisee so these are all ways in which a pride will manifest itself now the next manner is being contentious or being quarrelsome or being argumentative everything that is said there's an argument never the the thoughts are never easily received right where we are always challenging how can you say that there's a better way of doing it so when we are looking for improvement we understand but if there's always a quarrel about everything then there's a problem okay so we can check ourselves am I quarrelsome am I you know contending with everyone that I meet so that is happening a lot I really have to check why why is this happening you know how am I what is my own self-image how am I looking at people so these are questions that we could ask then do more ways in which it manifests one is prejudice prejudice means partiality being biased where we may support a certain class of people for example if I'm very rich then I only support the rich people and I don't support those who are poor or if I come from you know a certain background in a community only support those people I don't support the other people what's happening I'm creating a bias I'm creating disunity among people that is prejudice causing biases which is also a manifestation of pride and the next is being high-minded or exclusive where we again think that we are very great okay so not everybody can understand us not everybody can talk to us so we behave very exclusive like I'm something special I'm superior okay so we carry that attitude but others are also not able to really interact with us or approach us easily so on and so forth so we can check these attitudes and pray and repent before God and say God heal my heart I don't know why this is happening but I repent and cleanse me from this acute of pride so what will pride do the Bible says many things already we saw God will resist us if we carry pride but the Bible also says that shame is shame will follow pride destruction will follow pride in our lives pride can lead to self-deception and that is very dangerous you know what is self-deception self-deception is when we have deceived ourselves everybody else can see the problem that I have except me because I have convinced myself that there is no problem everyone's trying to help everyone's trying to counsel everyone's trying to tell hey you need to change this you need to let go of this but I have convinced myself I have no problem I'm not going to listen to anybody and self-deception is also the problem of Satan he has deceived himself remember the Bible talks about Lucifer going into self-deception right he thought he can become greater than God he can sit on God's throne right so he came up with all these thoughts which are wrong and he was just not willing to listen so self-deception will follow pride we have to be careful about all this so I'm just gonna you know summarize what we need to do instead of pride we need to be humble we have to walk with a humble spirit and understand that humility or meekness is the real strength what is the real strength humility is the real strength which we can carry always maintain servant heart meaning we want to serve what is the kind of leadership Jesus promoted or taught about servant leadership if you want to be first you should be last so humility servant heart servant leadership humble yourself have the right estimation about yourself we're not saying that we must put ourselves down but we are saying have a proper judgment of ourselves maybe in certain things we are good we do have experience but we should recognize that that could be people who have better experience than us more knowledge than us and in the same way you look at somebody maybe they don't have that experience but with the humble spirit you can guide them and lead them instead of saying you don't know I know you help them right you help them to become better then humility is to depend on the Lord always depend on the Lord and walk in submission and repentance so I'll just say one last thing and close because our time is up I remember I went for a seminar and in that seminar professionals had come and each one was sharing their story about how God has helped them in their career how they have become excellent in their work so one of the people he was in a top IT position and you know he was leading many people and he shared his testimony he said something that I can never forget he said that when I first started working I was so scared because I didn't know the tasks and I would always pray I would go back home and I would ask my wife to pray and you know we would pray together every day so like that day by day I improved God bless the work of my hands and I improved but now that he is in a really high position he told all of us he said look no matter how high you go your dependence on God should also keep increasing so now that I know many tasks very well and I'm recognized for the work that I do you will not believe it I pray more now I don't feel like hey I already know it I've done it thousand times I don't think like that I think God I need you again I'm depending on you more please bless me more if you don't help me I can't do it so I still maintain that attitude before God and I thought that was so amazing right submission unto God self dependence on the Lord and that is the right way of walking in humility and weakness when we are always depending on God whether we are starting some place or we've already reached the pinnacle of where God wants us to be so I'm just going to close with a word of prayer and then we can go ahead take a break there's an online question I'll just answer it in the chat let's pray together heavenly Father we thank you for this time and Lord we thank you for a reminder Lord that we need to depend on you that Father God you resist the proud but you give grace Lord to the humble and this morning we just open up our hearts to you Lord like David prayed we say God you see our hearts Lord check us through and through if there's any unrighteous way in our so God Father God we repent of it Lord remove it from our hearts and establish our so God in the path of righteousness we commit ourselves into your hands in Jesus name we pray amen amen thank you everyone please go ahead for your break after 10 minutes we'll have the next session I'll just answer the question here on the chat thank you