Luke 18:9-12 (NIV) To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’”

As it states in this Scripture, this attitude causes us to look down on everybody else. The message being portrayed by this Pharisee is a message of hopelessness.

I have it and you will never get anywhere near it. That is the message the prideful send out. This can happen between Christian leaders and new and untrained Christians. The greater we appear to them the less they want to share the things of God with others. If we are the standard whereby people are ministered to, and we appear to them to be far above anything they will ever be, they may be willing to bring people to hear us. But, they aren’t going to consider themselves candidates for being used by God.

If our prideful ways of ministry keep putting them down, they may never yield to Jesus for the service ministry that He wants to do in and through them. Our pride ministry may make them feel so inadequate that they are unable to believe that Jesus wants to use them in a mighty way.