The Success Trap of Pride

Beware of pride sprouting from the soil of God’s blessing.

Why Your Greatest Victory Is Often Your Biggest Risk

When the Spanish conquistador Cortés arrived in the Aztec capital, he didn’t appear as a conqueror. He was a guest. Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, believed that radical openness would ensure peace. To impress his visitors, he showcased the inner workings of his empire: the vast stores of gold, the flow of tribute, and the intricate layout of the city’s causeways. Cortés took notes. He mapped the security measures and identified the vulnerabilities.

Within two years, those guests returned as invaders. The Aztec capital fell not through a sudden surge of violence, but through a slow bleed of unnecessary openness and misplaced trust.

This tragedy mirrors a pivot point in the life of King Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20. Hezekiah was a man of God who had seen a miraculous healing, the sun move backward, and an army wiped out overnight. Yet, he fell into the most subtle trap of all. His story serves as a haunting reminder: Pride is a counterfeit currency of self-worth, and it grows most aggressively in the soil of God’s blessing.

Success Requires More Vigilance Than Suffering

Victory demands a level of vigilance that suffering never does. We pray when we are sick; we boast when we are well. Hezekiah’s blunder didn't happen during the terrifying siege of the Assyrians or while he was weeping on his deathbed. It happened after God healed him and gave him fifteen more years to live. It happened when the pressure was off.

We often assume our character is most at risk during seasons of trial. In reality, we are frequently safer in our suffering than in our triumphs. Suffering drives us to our knees in raw dependence; success drives us to our mirrors in self-admiration.

"Pride often appears not when God withholds, but when God gives."

Beware the "Gate of Flattery"

Shortly after Hezekiah’s recovery, an envoy from Babylon arrived with letters and a gift. They came under the guise of goodwill, representing their king, a man named Berodach-Baladan. The name here is a warning: Berodach refers to Marduk, the winged serpent-god of Babylon, and Baladan means "giver of life."

The irony is piercing. Hezekiah, who had just been granted life by the Living God, opened his doors to men whose very names attributed that power to a representative of Satan. He allowed them into his home through the gate of flattery. Pleased by the attention of a rising world power, Hezekiah’s ego blinded his discernment. Instead of pointing his guests toward the Temple—the very presence of God next to the palace—he pointed them to his treasuries.

Pride always seeks an audience. It longs to be admired for what it possesses, rather than the God who provided it.

You Are a Steward, Not an Owner

To understand Hezekiah’s mistake, consider the mindset of a museum guard. A guard is surrounded by masterpieces worth millions. He knows their history and their rarity, but he never confuses the art with his own identity.

He does not sign autographs. He does not take credit for the brushstrokes. He is there to protect what he did not create. The moment a guard begins to say, "Look at what I have," he has falsely transitioned from stewardship to ownership.

Hezekiah treated the wealth and armory in his palace as evidence of his personal achievement. He forgot that everything in those vaults was a gift of grace, replenished only because God had been merciful. Pride sprouts the moment we stop guarding what God gave us and start displaying it for our own validation.

The "Generational Echo" of Private Pride

When the prophet Isaiah confronted Hezekiah, he delivered a chilling verdict: everything the king had flaunted would eventually be carried off to Babylon. This wasn’t just a personal failure; it was a generational echo.

A single moment of self-exaltation can shape the future of a church, a family, a legacy, or a nation. This is not ancient history; it is present reality. The current struggle over a single mountain in Jerusalem—Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount—is a direct consequence of the pride and compromise of generations past.

Pride is never private. What you do in a moment of "harmless" self-promotion can set the stage for a collapse that your children and grandchildren will have to navigate.

Conclusion: In the late 1800s, Chicago was sinking into its own waste. In a feat of engineering, the city used thousands of jacks to lift entire blocks and buildings several feet into the air. But as the city rose, the Union Stock Yards remained at the original level. The stockyards became a basin. All the waste, runoff, and sewage from the elevated city flowed downward and pooled there, creating a pit of rot and disease. The very success that lifted the city turned the basin into a stench.

Our lives follow this trajectory. When God lifts us—answering our prayers, expanding our influence, or granting us success—our hearts can easily become basins for the runoff of pride. We start to believe the elevation is our own doing, and we allow the rot of self-importance to pool in the lower parts of our souls.

The safest posture after a blessing is not self-confidence, but deeper dependence. If we are not careful, the same success that raises us up will be the very thing that buries us.

If God lifted you up today, what parts of your heart would become the basin for the runoff?