Cast Out Many Nations: Pride

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you,
and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them.
[Deuteronomy 7:1-2 NKJV]

The Amorites

The Amorites - self-elevating and boasting Is their place as evidenced by the meaning of their name. What I believe this comes down to is those who walk in vanity, pride and arrogance. These things are present in all of us, and we often do not realise it, or if we do, we can only suppress it Ineffectively – it is a basic drive in all of us to protect the self from harm – and we do that in part by telling ourselves 'I am better than him'; ... ‘of course, such things come naturally to someone like me' and so on.

We can see a progression forming in these nations. They are all things of the self; part of our nature that have great power over us.

The spirit of fear inspires in us a desire for a settled untroubled existence and we become complacent in that cosy existence. We settle into a ‘religious’ existence instead of life in the spirit and see no need for change - maybe believing that we are spirit-filled too - which will inevitably lead to a pridefulness in how awfully well we are doing! Good for me. Well, I ask you! Satan begins to have a field day in us.

And that spirit of pride is inextricably linked with so many other spirits that fill us. It is like Japanese knotweed, or ground elder, it creeps along under the surface and before you know it, it's everywhere – choking the good stuff you are trying to cultivate. (I should know for I’ve just spent 3 weeks battling the stuff in our garden and still pull out more daily! )

Our verses make it plain that these things are part of our fallen nature and not something we can deal with under our own steam. Thankfully we know a strong and mighty gardener who, if we ask Him, can pluck this stuff up by the roots and consign it where it rightfully belongs - and at the same time create in us a genuine humility. Then we can genuinely express pride, and so boast in knowing a great almighty Saviour.

The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; you who say in your heart, ‘Who will bring me down to the ground?’
Though you ascend as high as the eagle, and though you set your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down,” says the LORD.
[Obadiah 1:3-4 NKJV]

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“I Will Boast” - Paul Baloche

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OSWALD CHAMBERS - RUN TODAY’S RACE
Monday 15th June 2020
If God is first, you know you can never think of anything He will forget.

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