Then the word of the Lord came to me, thus says the Lord, “Even so will I spoil the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.”
– Jeremiah 13:8–9
Did you hear that language? God says, “I will spoil the pride of my people. I will spoil their great pride.” We see this all over the Bible, how God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, to quote directly from James and many other places, how God lifts up the humble and brings down the proud.
Jeremiah 13:8–9 is a calling to examine our hearts.
So I want to encourage each of us to examine our hearts today before God and to ask him to expose, to show us any and all pride in us. What C. S. Lewis called “the great sin,” because it’s at the root of all sin, thinking about ourselves and our ways above God and his ways, asserting ourselves in any way. Living for ourselves instead of living for our God, thinking too highly of ourselves, and preferring ourselves, and our interests, above others and their interests.
I could go on and on, but here’s the question. What pride exists in you, in your heart, in your mind right now? Let’s just pray. God, please cleanse us of all of our pride. God, we want to be free from pride. We pray for humility. We seek humility from you. Oh God, please give us humility. Grant us the ability to see ourselves as you see us, and to live for you according to your ways, according to your thoughts, according to your desires. To love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love others as ourselves. 2 Philippians 2, “put others above ourselves.” God, we pray for humility. We pray that you’d forgive us for our pride in all the ways it plays out, in each of our hearts and lives, and that you would replace our pride with the humility of Jesus.
Jeremiah 13:8–9 is calling to imitate the humility of Jesus.
Jesus, we praise you for your humility. For though being in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. But you made yourself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and humbled yourself and became obedient to death, even death, a cross, for us.
Jesus, we praise you for your humility and we pray for your humility in our hearts. And just as you and your humility died for us, oh God… Please help us to live today for the good of others. To live today, to spread the gospel. God help us to put aside our pride, and our concerns about what people might think of us and help us to share the gospel of Jesus. Lord, please forgive us for pride that makes us quiet with the gospel.
Prayer for the Sorani Kurd People
God, please… We pray for humility that leads us to share the gospel boldly with people around us… With people around the world.
God, we pray for the Sorani Kurds of Iraq. Lord, for 4 million of them. God, we pray for the spread of the gospel to them. And we pray that we as your people would be humble enough to do whatever you’re calling us to do to get the gospel to people groups like them. God, we pray for humility according to your word in Jeremiah 13:8–9. In Jesus’ name, we pray, in the name of our humble savior, Lord, and King, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
