The overlooked sin is pride. It’s a silent killer of relationships and it’s important that we all think honestly about ourselves as we talk about this as it can have permanent, negative ramifications to your legacy. If parents are prideful then the kids will be prideful.

Pride and selfishness are at the root of almost every other sin

If we are dealing with our kid’s sin and teaching them how to have a humble heart. We must take the rose-colored glasses off, and be able to see the sin in our ourselves.

Are you prideful?

• If you can’t remember the last time you were wrong, you might be prideful
• If you haven’t taken honest responsibility for relational conflict, you might be prideful.
• If someone gives you a critique and you can’t hear it, you might be prideful

If we are Christians, God wants His church to be blemish free. He says to be holy because I’m holy

Our kids won’t take us seriously if we don’t live what we are teaching them. Do we want to be the humble people that God is talking about, or do we want them to suffer shame?

The difference between confidence and pride

It takes real confidence to have humility, because you have to be so secure in who you are, to allow somebody to expose weakness in you.

We want our kids to be confident Christian kids in an uncertain world, but not prideful.

Confidence is a self-assuredness that you can do things because of real skills and talents. More important it’s the confidence in the power of God through you. Confidence because of faith in God, God through me, vs me through me.

It’s okay to be confident in our abilities, God gave them to us.

Definition of Pride: A inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity importance or superiority in mind or conduct.

It’s the loftiness, haughty eyes, better than others. Sometimes a person that puts others down to puff themselves up.

Usually when someone puffs themselves up is because they are insecure.

Being prideful is reinforced in the world because it actually works in the marketplace. It can feed the wrong behavior at times.

Why does God hate pride?

• It removes the need for God because it’s based on self-reliance, not asking for help.
• Independence isn’t biblical, he wants us to be part of the body of Christ and carry each other’s burdens.
• If your kids never see you asking for help or helping others, they aren’t going to learn it
• Kids always know what’s going on, we must be transparent, include them in the process of seeing God come through when things are tough.

God didn’t design marriage only to be happy all the time, although He wants us to be happy.

“Marriage is to make you holy not just happy”. -Gary Thomas

Is Pride Hurting Your Marriage?

Here’s a courageous marriage challenge, if you haven’t admitted to being wrong or said you were sorry to your spouse lately, go do it!

Being vulnerable actually makes your marriage go deeper. If you are in a marriage fight, think about what you’re actually fighting about. Is it just to be right?  How foolish is that?

If a spouse is constantly falling on the sword, always being wrong, you are emboldening pride in your spouse making them think they are right all the time.

If only one person understands where they went wrong every time in conflict you are tempting your spouse to become really prideful. They may think way more highly of themselves than you over-time.

Why would a person have an affair? They think they are better than their partner because of pride.

You must deal with your pride, or you won’t grow and you will leave a legacy of pride through your kids.

Pride is the enemy of relationships

It hurts relationships moving people away from you. People keep a distance from people who always think they are right.

The prideful person may become lonely, lacking real authentic relationships.

You are the leaders of your kids and they will either become prideful or broken if you lead from a prideful spirit.

Get to the root of the sin in your kids, versus generalities so they can recognize their sin and repent, reconcile, and overcome continuing in it

How To Handle Pride In Your Kids

• Kids not sharing is selfishness, but, if they think they deserve it more than the other person, it’s actually pride.
• Forcing other kids to do what they want to do is pride.
• Having a temper tantrum because they are struggling to be obedient because they want their will more than moms will is pride.
• You have to use biblical vocabulary with your kids. Here’s an example; “Listen, all sin separates us from God and comes between you and your siblings. It makes it hard to be in good friendship.” “You have to be responsible for admitting that sin and asking for forgiveness” 
• It offers the other person the opportunity to make a choice; are they going to be forgiving or not.

When you are leading people, you will develop trigger words and phrases that create the right culture. When you use biblical words while they are young, those same words will have a big impact when they are older. It’s easier for them to be receiving of your words when they are teenagers.

It’s easier for them to have compassion with others when they know they struggle with the same things.

Biblical parenting is refining, it grows you as you teach your kids about their sin, it should make you introspective about yourself. We should ask yourself if they are getting it from you.  

Let’s not forget to give God the Glory!

Two Roads

If you are prideful as a parent, there are two roads your kids may go down; they will become broken from a lack of relationship with you and lack confidence in themselves. The second path is a culture of pride, that they become so prideful they don’t need you, friends or a church to dig in with because they can do it on their own.

A Leadership Challenge

Think about leaders you respect in your past. Think about the moments where you gained the most respect for them and they have the biggest impact on you. I bet they were the moments they were transparent sharing what they learned from their own mistakes or the moments they apologized to you.

Scripture In This Episode

Proverbs 11:2 “When pride comes, then comes shame; But with the humble is wisdom.”

Proverbs 8:13 “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverse mouth I hate.”

James 4:6 “But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”

Proverbs 16:18-19 “Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, Than to divide the spoil with the proud.”

Proverbs 26:12 “Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.”

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.”

2 Corinthians 10:17 “But “he who glories, let him glory in the Lord.”

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