Pride: Contending with God

Reading Humility by C.J Mahaney, I have been guilty of many things he writes is "manifestations of pride". Here's an excerpt from the book:

"Why does God hate pride so passionately?

     Here's why: Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him.

     Charles Bridges once noted how pride lifts up one's heart against God and 'contends for supremacy' with Him. That's a keenly insightful and biblical definition of pride's essence: contending for supremacy with God, and lifting up our hearts against Him.

     For purposes of personal confession, I began adopting this definition of pride a few years ago after I came to realize that, to some degree, I'd grown unaffected by pride in my life. Though I was still confessing pride, I knew I wasn't sufficiently convicted of it. So rather than just confessing to God that 'I was proud in that situation' and appealing for His forgiveness, I learned to say instead, 'Lord, in that moment, with that attitude and that action, I was contending for supremacy with You. That's what it was all about. Forgive me'.
    
     And rather than confessing to another person, 'That statement was prideful on my part; will you please forgive me?' I began saying, 'What I just did was contending for supremacy with God,' and only then asking for the person's forgiveness. This practice increased a weight of conviction in my heart about the seriousness of this sin.

     Pride takes innumerable forms but has only one end: self-glorification. That's the motive and ultimate purpose of pride--to rob God  of legitimate glory and to pursue self-glorification, contending for supremacy with Him. The proud person seeks to glorify himself and not God, thereby attempting in effect to deprive God of something only He is worth to receive.

     No wonder God opposes pride. No wonder he hates pride. Let that truth sink into your thinking..."