00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on Episode 5 87 of the inspired Stewardship podcast. I'm Wayne Titus, author of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Financial Well Being. I encourage you to be inspired to become a better steward through financial wisdom by listening to this the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mater. No, The truth is that just by being a Caucasian male, there certain privileges that come to me that don't come to other people whether you're a person of color, your woman or your another group that can be identified and held down,
00:00:49 I have privilege because of just how I was born. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship. Podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired sturgeon podcast. Learn to invest in herself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world in todays spiritually foundation episode about developing your influence. I talk with you about James Chapter four,
00:01:31 Verse six. How pride is the basis of most Sin and why humility and pride actually work if you think about it. So James, Chapter four, Verse six says.
00:01:47 But he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
00:01:55 You know, that's one of many passages that talk about how pride is the downfall for most of us,
00:02:02 how pride is the thing that sets us up, to be separated from a healthy relationship with God and with others.
00:02:12 And pride is one of those things that it's really kind of an insidious emotion, because the truth is,
00:02:20 we feel pride and pride at first glance is not necessarily a bad thing. If you think about it in terms of you did something that was good and then you feel proud of yourself.
00:02:32 Well, you did something that was good. So how can the pride be bad? And yet Pride is talked about in the Bible in a different way.
00:02:43 I'm reminded of the quote by C. S. Lewis. That pride is not thinking less of yourself,
00:02:51 but thinking of yourself less. You know James and Peter and many other passage to talk about how God opposes the proud.
00:03:04 It's pride is something that brings us down because it separates us from the having a relationship with God, where we look at God as our provider,
00:03:16 where we look to God as our savior. And instead we began to look to ourselves. Pride is about self obsession.
00:03:28 It's a preoccupation with ourselves. It's a lie about reality. It's saying that the world revolves around us.
00:03:39 One of the the joke things that we say in our family at times is whenever somebody does something that's particularly selfish is we say it's caused by brain damage because there's a hole in the top of your head where the center of the axis of the earth runs through it in the earth revolves around you.
00:03:58 And the truth is, we've all done that from time to time. Sometimes we do it and we actually recognize it,
00:04:04 and other times we do it and we don't. The most hidden secret sin is the sin of pride.
00:04:11 We think about something that we did, and we say, You know, if I hadn't done that,
00:04:16 this would not have worked well for us. I saved this situation. But the truth is that those words that you spoke didn't come just from you.
00:04:28 They came from the blessings and from the spirit that God has poured out upon you. You can even feel pride about the awareness of the fact that you're aware that you feel pride.
00:04:41 It's really funny. But pride sneaks in all the time. You know, how do you defeat pride?
00:04:51 How do you step back from it? How do you really think about it? And it gets back to that quote by C.
00:05:00 S. Lewis. It's not thinking less of yourself, but it's thinking of yourself less. It's It's not stepping out and promoting yourself for exalting yourself or holding yourself up in a really big way.
00:05:16 Instead, it's not about what you think it's about, how much you think of yourself. Are you turning your attention first toe?
00:05:28 Other people? Are you turning your attention first to the relationship that you have with God? Or are you turning your thoughts first to yourself?
00:05:40 It's about where your first thoughts go. If your first thoughts go to God in the relationship with God,
00:05:48 and then you begin to focus on your attention, toe others, and only third do you think about yourself.
00:05:54 It tends to help you defeat pride. It's only through recognizing the graces and the gifts that have been poured out upon you that you can begin to defeat pride.
00:06:12 And it's because you don't defeat pride. Instead, you build up that relationship with God and out of that relationship,
00:06:21 pride begins to decrease. It's about sacrificing yourself and your own needs for others, not because you feel like you have to,
00:06:32 but because it just comes naturally. That's why humility works to break pride down and again. It's not about tearing yourself down.
00:06:45 It's also not about false humility. No false humility is when someone pays you a compliment. And instead of saying thank you,
00:06:52 you say, Oh, no, no, it was really nothing. You try to deflect it or push it away because you want to say that that's an example of not being proud.
00:07:01 But the funny thing is that that actually is a form of pride, because what you're really hoping for is the person will insist and say no.
00:07:08 No, really, this was This was key. This was fantastic. You kind of begging for more compliments instead,
00:07:17 if we recognize that humility is accepting that you're good at things, but also accepting that being good at things is not based on you or definitely not on you alone.
00:07:33 You know, the truth is that just by being a Caucasian male, there certain privileges that come to me that don't come to other people,
00:07:44 whether you're a person of color, your woman or your another group that can be identified and held down.
00:07:54 I have privilege because of just how I was born. And if I'm not aware of that, if I don't recognize that,
00:08:01 and I don't recognize the fact that that that's something that I couldn't control, that something that didn't come about through anything I did or didn't do This is often how these things work.
00:08:15 You know, Grace of God is not something that we deserve. It's not something that we earned, but it's something that we get.
00:08:23 And humility is not about tearing yourself down. But it is recognizing the fact that no matter what you've done,
00:08:32 you did not do it alone. There were other people that helped you. There were blessings from God that helped you.
00:08:38 There was the word of the spirit that helped you. All of these things work together to get you where you are today.
00:08:47 But often we become blind to that. And out of that blindness, pride comes. And as pride comes,
00:08:53 it separates us from good relationship with God and with others. And we struggle to find humility again. So I'll remind you,
00:09:04 humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship Podcast.
00:09:23 As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen. But act on what you've heard and find a way toe live your calling.
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00:10:04 your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact world