“Pride is the first chapter in the book of failure.”

From a thought in Chase the Lion: If Your Dream Doesn't Scare You, It's Too Small by Mark Batterson. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Mark then says, “Humility is the first chapter in the book of success. God won’t put you in a position of leadership until you take a posture of servanthood.” 

Mark tells of “When he was a young man, Benjamin Franklin was quite scathing in his editorials, more than a few of which targeted the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather. In a rather magnanimous gesture, Mather invited Benjamin over for dinner one night and showed him his library. Franklin spent much of his time and money as a young man acquiring one of the largest libraries in America, consisting of 4,276 volumes. As they walked through a narrow passage into the library, Mather yelled back at Franklin, ‘Stoop! Stoop!’ Franklin didn’t understand the exhortation until it was too late and bumped his head on a low beam. Like any good preacher, Mather turned it into a sermon. ‘Let this be a caution to you not always to hold your head so high. Stoop, young man, stoop— as you go through this world— and you’ll miss many hard thumps.’ Many years later Franklin told Mather’s son that he never forgot that moment, that lesson. ‘This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me,’ said Franklin, ‘and I often think of it when I see pride mortified and misfortunes brought upon people by carrying their heads too high.’”

Mark goes on, “One of the defining moments of my life was getting cut down to size by a summer intern. I made a prideful statement about National Community Church, and he called me on it. At first I was defensive. But I’m so grateful he had the courage to call me out. I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I’ve conquered pride. Like each of the seven deadly sins, pride has nine lives. You have to fight the battle every single day, but there are decisive victories. And that was one of them. It was that humbling experience that gave birth to a little mantra that we repeat around NCC all the time: If you stay humble and stay hungry, there is nothing God cannot do in you or through you.”

In the Bible, Proverbs 16: 18 says, “Pride goeth before destruction.” And Proverbs 18: 12 says, “humility precedes honor.” 

So which book are you reading, the book of success or failure?