The Fastest Way to Ruin Your Christian Testimony

Proverbs 4:7

“Wisdom is the principle thing; therefore, get wisdom. In all your getting, get understanding.”

During my last year of college, I’ve struggled constantly with pride. I should say I am struggling because I’m still in my last year of college. This fall, I asked God to remove my pride, and our conversation went something like this:

Dear God, I know I’m proud. I want you to make me humble because it would be really embarrassing to brag about something only to be wrong or make a mistake. Amen.

It was a little longer than that, I think, but that was the just of it.

A month later, I got convicted with how my prayer was dripping with pride. My premise was that I didn’t want to have pride because I was too proud to be wrong and get embarrassed in front of everyone. With that thought in mind, I amended my prayer:

Dear God, my prayer about pride was really proud. You’re showing me that this is a real problem in my life, even in areas in which I don’t even recognize it. In any way possible, please make me humble…

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back.

I guess we’ve all heard the “Christian Horror Stories”. You know, the ones about Christians who prayed for humility and found themselves mortified in front of the universe, wishing they could disintegrate into the surrounding oxygen, promising never to fall prey to pride again because of an embarrassing situation in which they were wrong. Somewhere in the middle, I think, they all say, “And it was funny because I was just praying that God would grant me humility.” They tell other Christians this story as a testimony of God working in their lives.

Let me be clear. I’m not saying those stories are bad things. These thoughts were just on the first train that blew into my mind following my prayer.

Throughout the next months, all the little red flags went up. I viciously avoided bragging, interrupting people mid-compliment to plaster someone else with the credit and over zealously ignoring any part I’d played in anything good. Basically, I was missing the point.

Under further conviction, and in a desperate attempt to curb my pride, I started a study on wisdom. Proverbs implies that wisdom and pride are in complete opposition to each other. Since “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,” the wise person knows his or her in-the-dust position before God (Proverbs 9:10). This verse states that wisdom is impossible without a relationship with God. It’s God who gives wisdom. In turn, like the verses at the top of this page, God-given wisdom brings respect and honor to the life of the person who requests it. Wise people have no need to brag on themselves – they realize that there’s nothing to brag about (Psalm 144:3).  

I guess it goes without saying that I started to pray for wisdom and continued to pray for humility.  

However, pride is a funny thing. It often attacks you where you actually can legitimately prove yourself (or at least you think you can), not areas in which you already know you lack skill. For example, I never brag about anything musical. Studying at a university with a good music program means that I am surrounded by fantastic musicians. Sure, I can play the piano and the French horn, and I love singing and writing my own music, but I never walk around with a chip on my shoulder. Any freshman in the Piano Pedagogy program could play three inversions of scales with the correct figuring before I even figured out whether to cross my third finger or my fourth finger during the scale in order to avoid hitting a black key with my thumb.

No, pride strikes where you’re sure you have it all together. Where you kind of forget about God because you think you can practically do whatever it is in your sleep. Where you’ve convinced yourself that it’s your knowledge and study and time and effort that has finally paid off. You may receive multiple compliments for your skills in this particular area. You may think, “I’m not bragging. I can do ____________ very well. Everybody knows it. It’s a fact.”

Personally, I know that I struggle with these thoughts in certain areas of my life. I’m not going to tell you the areas in which I struggle with pride simply because it would only be my pride inviting you to agree that I do excel in these areas. That would defeat the purpose of learning this lesson.

God did touch this area of my life recently. Yes, I was mortified. I did wish I could physically dissolve into thin air. I did make a ton of promises. At long last, I fell on my knees and prayed. I wish I’d done that first.

The truth is, God is the giver of wisdom. All wisdom. All knowledge, too. He created it. We know that, but we don’t act like we do. We act like it was our years of study and interest that took such amazing strides. We forget that He created everything. The only reason we can have any knowledge about anything is because He gives it to us. He wants us to know!

Sometimes I think He laughs because He’s put it in such an easy spot to reach, yet we can’t even come close to it without His help. Sometimes I laugh with Him because I can’t believe how feeble I am.

On a more serious note, pride is the fastest way to ruin our testimony as Christians. Simply put, pride removes God. Pride tells God that we may have once needed Him in this area of our life, but now, oh man, now, we’ve arrived!

Sometimes it tells Him that we haven’t needed Him all along.

Personally, I think that is why God has to touch the areas where we think we are strong in order to humble us.

If we’re proud Christians, we’re acting just as bad as unsaved individuals; we have refused to recognize our need for God as Lord in our life in that area in the same way unsaved people refuse to recognize God as Lord of their lives.

In fact, we are acting even worse because, in most cases, we have far more knowledge of God and of our condition before Him than unsaved individuals, yet we refuse to apply that knowledge. Even if it is only in one area of our life, pride destroys our testimony. It utterly devastates our witness.

Maybe we should be telling other Christians, “And it was serious because I was ruining my testimony by refusing to recognize God as Lord in that area of my life.”