God is the starter, worker and finisher of our sanctification - the process where we are becoming Christ-like in holiness and righteousness. This world and our bodies will still have their fallen nature but God has promised that he has equipped us with everything good to be able to do his will.
"His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. (2 Peter 1:3)"
"His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. (2 Peter 1:3)"
The ultimate test right now is whether we cooperate with God's work in our lives. There are cases where the sanctification is instant like when you confess an area and Jesus sets you free from that bondage. These can be external habits that can immediately stop once you come to Christ. And there are cases for example in the case of pride - a very internal and delicate issue - that takes God's hand not just inside you but also externally through your circumstances to bring into fruition His work of making one naturally humble (without effort).
Obviously confessing we have pride in our lives is the beginning. But sometimes God deems that for us to learn the path of humility we have to walk alongside Him through the tests of life in order that humility of the heart becomes more of a natural willing response that does not need to be strived for. The more you cooperate with God, the less your rough edges will remain rough. The more you walk and commune with God, the more you see yourself in God's eyes accurately - not less nor more than what you really are. Humility according to an author is to see yourself accurately - not more or less. Another one, Chip Ingram, says it is to think of yourself less. That's an entirely different nature that takes God's process of bringing it out - some of the reasons why He doesn't normally take us to heaven in an instant once we receive Him. We still have to go through a process in this life - our salvation secure - but our perfection being...perfected.
An example of this pruning process is when God takes you through a very difficult circumstance and you reached the end of yourself. You become so desperate you don't want to control things anymore. Or your will is not working out. The more I resist, the more out of place things get. Confronted by my many sins and failures, you will tend to lose your self-righteousness (a form of spiritual pride). This time it is not just you working on your sanctification (trying to not have prideful thoughts, etc), but God using your circumstances to refine your humility. Some Christian leaders say that the path of a Christian is a U-shaped one. You receive Christ, and then you reach the end of yourself where you acknowledge God's truth, God's standard of things, and then God brings you up again into victory. Or you receive His truth, you die to yourself through repentance by changing how you view that sin, and then God pours out his grace to you with faith. It is a process. A different U-shaped interpretation can be you start as you are and then sometimes you fall and then you get up again until you're victorious to take on your next challenge. It's like a series of upward U-s.
Pride is not just something we can clean on our own hoping and praying we do the right thing every time to resist its temptation. Though that's part of it. But then sometimes God intervenes by bringing us to our own cross (a failed marriage, career or venture, rejection, betrayals, etc.) so we can acknowledge our humanness, the reality of our pride and thereafter be purified of it when we surrender our lives - every area - to His Lordship.
Pride is a sinful nature. It belongs to our old nature. When we received Christ, God gave us a new nature and a new heart. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17)" But it takes practice as well to die to ourselves to walk in this new nature that God gives us. If we had a way of living our life before, God will take ownership of our lives until we can fully say, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me (Galatians 2:20).
My journey towards humility is not yet complete. However seeing the changes in my reaction to things - lack of anxiety that normally plagued me easily before - and others such as contentment, less people-pleasing or image-conscious, less reliance on my own strengths than God's, less dependence on my own wisdom than God's have shown me where God has been in the last years of my life. He was truly at work to remove my rough edges and replace them with His character and Spirit. What used to be a hard choice choosing directions (my will or His) is now more natural because through trial and error God has taught me that I can trust His way and not mine.
Pride may not be something that can change as fast but I find the more we allow and let God do His work in us, the more we give him complete control over our lives, and the more we obey His instructions step-by-step, the less its hold in our lives becomes. God's medicine to pride is fostering obedience in us until we practice to the very end, "Lord not my will but Your will be done."
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