I Hate My Pride!!

While I was driving home from seminary class this past saterday, I was overwhelmed by how invasive pride is in my life, and how much I HATE it! It ruins everything, especially my relationship with God, which is the foundation for anything that is good in my life.
It really is like those invasive plants and weeds... that sick around in places you would never expect them. If your not looking for them, you might never notice they are there untill they have grown and completely taken over every part of your life.
God has been teaching me about my sin these last 6 months, and pride is at the heart of my trouble. I've realized that so many behaviors and feelings, which I have previously chalked up to shyness or insecurity, is really just plan ol' pride. For example, I'm in class, and I'm afraid to engage something the teacher says... there is a knot in my stomach. The fear I feel is just my pride. It stops me from engaging in the discussion, it HARMS me. How many of my behaviors and issues in my life have I excused for some reason or another, but is just my stuped pride getting in the way!
We see throughout the scriptures that God uses people who have been broken... who see their sinfulness and brokeness. God then fills them with His spirit, and power, and works through them. The problem with pride, is that it try's to straighten you out by itself. It is like a patient who goes to the doctor with a formerly broken leg that has not healed properly, leaving it deformed and un-usable. That is us in our sin. God needs us to be broken so that He can remake us into His own image, but our pride try's to keep the leg from being broken... try's to keep us from feeling how sinful and needy we really are. This, to me, is the biggest difference between myself now, and myself 6 months ago. I have for a long time "KNOWN" that I was sinful, but I did not feel broken over it. Now, I have begun to feel broken... and the strange thing is, the more broken I feel, the more joy I feel. When I'm broken, I run to God... I don't feel anxious, becuase I have nothing to protect, there is nothing left to protect, only hope that God can take this sinful, dead, fleshly body and transform it into a child of His.
That is such an AMAZING THING! I am His child! He is SO big, that He can even cover my increadible sinfulness... the pride that has seeped into every area of my life... the increadible arrigence that I show every day when I rely on myself, or question Him. God is truely awsome, loving, and merciful!