Jeremiah 48:29

There’s a certain feeling that comes when you finish something hard. The project that fought you for weeks is finally done. The repair holds. The goal you set back in January is checked off. You step back, look at the work, and something in you says, that’s good. Most of us know that feeling, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

So it might surprise us that when God turns His attention to Moab, the sin He names is pride. “We have heard of the pride of Moab- he is very proud- of his loftiness, his pride, and his arrogance, and the haughtiness of his heart” (Jeremiah 48:29, ESV). Read that line again and notice how the words pile up. Proud, lofty, arrogant, haughty. This wasn’t one bad afternoon. It was a settled posture of the heart.

Moab had grown comfortable. Undisturbed, well-off, sure of itself. And somewhere in all that comfort it stopped looking up. That’s what pride does. It quietly blinds us to the truth that our focus belongs on God, not on ourselves.

But we should be careful about what pride is and what it isn’t. When we finish a hard task or do a job well, does God want us to feel nothing at all? No. That good feeling is a gift. It’s part of what keeps us trying, keeps us working, keeps us reaching for the next thing worth doing. God made us to find joy in good work.

Pride is something else. Pride shows up the moment we take all the credit. We look at what we accomplished and quietly forget who gave us the strength, the mind, the very breath to accomplish it. The satisfaction was never the problem. The missing thank-you is.

And pride does real damage. It becomes a block in our walk with the Lord, because a heart full of itself has no room left for Him. Scripture doesn’t soften this. “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18, ESV). Moab found that out the hard way.

If we ever catch ourselves thinking that God needs us, that His work somehow depends on us, we can be sure pride is rearing its head. The truth runs the other way. We need the Lord. He does not need us. He is “not served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25, ESV). He loves us. He wants to be close to us. He even shares His work with us. But He was never waiting on us to get it done.

So the next time you finish something good, go ahead and feel good about it. That’s not pride. Just don’t stop there. Look up, and say thank You. The work was never ours alone.