Pride precedes a disaster, and an arrogant attitude precedes a fall.
Proverbs 16:18
When you fall, look back and see what’s behind you. What was your stumbling block? Where did you trip? Most of the time it’s in the area of pride. When pride pops up it makes your pathway uneven and treacherous. Pride promises a lot to the person who feels it. It promises protection and success, and even salvation. It says that the thing you want for yourself is exactly what you need. Pride talks about your brains or your brawn, and it tells you that you are the most important person in your life. Pride focuses on the weaknesses of other people, on their bad parts instead of their good. But God has no patience for pride, and when it’s in your life, he promises trouble. Pride comes before the fall because pride removes God as Lord and all hope for success. Pride is worship of self, but humility is worship removed from self and turned toward God. Humility is rewarded, but pride brings destruction (see Prov. 18:12).
When you look at your past and see where you have fallen, can you spot the pride that came before the fall? Can you see where your own sense of self—either your fear for yourself or thinking too highly of yourself—brought you low? Self-loathing is also a sign of pride. It’s a pride that demands perfection, as if you were on par with Jesus himself, and so it hates the human part of you that is so weak. Be careful that you don’t make being good more important than loving God. When you make loving him number one, there is nothing you do that he won’t forgive, nowhere you have fallen that he can’t lift you up from if you will just take his outstretched hand. Don’t be so proud that you reject his gift. Don’t be so disgusted with yourself that you obsess about you instead of about him. But let go of self altogether and serve the one who can save you. Then you will be free from pride and learn the value of true humility.