Men's Breakfast

Men’s breakfast March 26, 2022.

Devotional Topic: Pride

As I was preparing for this devotional I was also finishing a book I am reading in one of my courses. Pride was a driving point that was spoken about, especially when it came to men. I think if we are all honest with ourselves each and every one of us from time to time have to really put our pride in check. Maybe for some our pride is the very thing keeping us from asking God for help, and when we do that our Christian life ends up not standing a chance. So this devotional is meant to encourage us to break that pride cycle in our life and get into the habit of asking God for help.

Proverbs 16:18-19 says “Pride comes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall. Better to be lowly of spirit with the humble than to divide plunder with the proud.”

Too Proud To Ask For Help

There is a film from the early 2000’s called Cinderella Man, it is about struggling prizefighter James J. Braddock, played by Russell Crowe, who has to make a hard choice. It’s the heart of the Great Depression. He can’t find work, the eletricity has been turned off in their cramped apartment, and his wife and three children are going hungry. Reluctantly, Braddock goes to the government relief office. A clerk hands him money to pay the bills and buy food. But why share this story as an illustration? Well as Christian men we too can be like that: too proud to ask for help. Except it’s not the relief office we’re afraid to go to, it’s God.

Somehwere along the wawy, we go the idea that it’s wrong to ask for help, that it’s something real men don’t do. Growing up I remember going to my Great Grandfathers house and often times John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies were playing, where tough guys made thier own way. They didn’t need anybody’s help, and even if John Wayne did have to bring in his buddies, they were a bunch of hard, macho types who volunteered for the fight. He never had to humiliate himself and ask them.

You Won’t Stand a Chance

But you can’t live the Christian life that way. It’s impossible. You can’t go at it alone and resist tempation and make wise decisions and get back up when you get knocked down. If you don’t ask God for help, you just don’t stand a chance.

Pride is a funny thing. Psalm 10:4 tells us “In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.” The psalmist recognized this shortcoming in men thousands of years ago. It hasn’t gotten any better since.

Often I have heard Women joke that men will drive around lost for an hour rather than stop and ask for directions. We’re that way in the rest of our life as well. God, the source of all wisdom is eager to give us the direction we need, yet we’ll take one dead end after another rather than ask him for help.

Jesus however, demonstrated something different for us. He constatnly sought his Father’s leading in prayer.

You see Christ’s character was flawless, free from the pride we display. Rather than trying to make it on his own, he depended heavily on God the Father and the Holy Spirit. If our pride weren’t bad enough, we men are also often slo learners. We refuse God’s help, mess things up, then a year or five maybe even 10+ years later we do the same thing. It’s hard for us to overcome our need for Independence.

How to Break the Cycle

So how do we break this cycle of Pride? How do we get into the habit of asking God for help, not just in big things but every single day.

First, we remember what Christ has already done for us. He saved us from our sin, something none of could ever do on our own. Jesus Christ became the pure, spotless sacrifice we could never be, the only offering that would satisfy God’s perfect justice. His willigness to die in our place proves his immense love. That kind of love will deny us no good thing.

Second, we reflect our need for help. Every Christian man has enough failures in his past to remind him that going at it alone simply hasn’t worked. We shouldn’t be embarrassed by our failures; we should only be embarrassed when we were to arrogant to accept God’s help. But it’s never too late to remedy that.

Thrid, we should learn from other Christan men who have humbled themselves and daily relied on God for help. We can see the victories in their life. We can marvel at their maturity, their calmness, thier faith in a trustworthy God. Most important we can remember that those same admirable qualities can become our too.

There’s hope for every one of us. We can live the life we’ve always dreamed of. Pride is a sin we can overcome, and we start overcoming that by asking God for help.

Let’s pray.