Success can go to our heads and we begin believing that we are special and pride slips into our lane like a blinding light. This happened to King Saul when he went from nothing to King of Israel. After a major victory against the Philistines and then the Amalekites we read the following story. 

1 Samuel 15:12–15 (ESV): 12 And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning. And it was told Samuel, “Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal.” 13 And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, 

“Blessed be you to the LORD. I have performed the commandment of the LORD.” 14 And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” 15 Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the LORD your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.” 

Has this happened to you? The victory was so sweet or the reward so great that it needed to be memorialized. Sounds good when someone else is doing it for you because they can see the greatness in you but what about when you see it in yourself and you need to let everyone else know about it. Most likely pride has slipped into your lane and blinded you with your own success. 

Thomas Aquinas said of pride: “Inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin … the root of pride is found to consist in man not being, in some way, subject to God and His rule. “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” 

If we spend our lives looking down on others, we will forget to look up to the one who made us. It is in the looking up that we are able to see the next mountain to climb. King David who came after King Saul and was considered the greatest king of Israel wrote in Psalms 121, “I lift my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.” 

Pastor Aaron