The Pride of Your Heart

Obadiah 1:3 - "The pride of your heart has deceived you".

Wow, I was reading this chapter this morning and this line stuck out to me so clearly.

Let that sink in for just a moment. Read it again....the pride of your heart.... meaning our hearts want something that isn't necessarily the same as what God wants, and even more worrying it has deceived you. Let's lay some context to the scripture, Obadiah is a messenger of God and is talking to the people - perhaps the exiles of southern Judah. Obadiah is proclaiming God's judgement. Edom is a figure of all those who stands against God.

The message here is clear, Obadiah is delivering the message of God to the people of Edom and advising that God is going to make them a small nation, because the pride of their hearts has deceived them.

So what does this actually mean?

The pride of their hearts is the internal spiritual condition of each person. In this case their spiritual condition has been consumed by self importance, self sufficiency and self superiority. This leads to disobedience, rebellion and there being no need for God in their lives.

This reminded me of someone else we all know. Lucifer and his fall. He wanted to be worshiped, pride came up in him, he chose to do things without God and was ultimately kicked out of heaven because pride was in his heart.

This means that there is no need for God in their lives, God is not as important, they don't need to trn to God for anything, they just sit and do their own thing. Their superiority is for themselves, they regard themselves higher than anyone else and that means it is not for God but for themselves.

This too can happen to us, those who do not put God first, those who choose not to believe there is a God or in Jesus Christ, it looks like no prayer time, no talking to God, no listening, no worship, no including God in your day, no thinking about God and his sacrifice, not turning to him in situations. Turning to other people, google, chatgbt or other AI tools, not focusing on him but people, gossip, circumstances. It could also be when you are fearful or scared you go to others for protection instead of the Lord or even isolating yourself and not even acknowledging he is there.

If your heart is prideful you have the opportunity today to change it. When God gave me this word it hit me so deep in my heart. There are areas of all our lives where we don't put God first but he loves us so much even knowing what we did or will do that he gave his life so we could have relationship with God fully.

So all you have to do is confess with your mouth and REPENT. This means change your ways, change your thinking, turn away from the old life and turn to Jesus. Break every yoke of bondage, every area that has not been placed for God break it now and stay in Gods word.

Read your bible, repent when you mess up, put Him first in all that you do. Because every day you wake up you get another change. Jesus is coming back soon, we do not know when but He tells us to stay with oil in our lamps and to keep our eyes on Him.

God Bless you all.