Breaking the Pride Cycle: Lessons from Ancient Empires for Spiritual Growth - Episode 5

Discover the obvious patterns that have caused the downfall of great empires and personal lives alike. Understanding these ancient cycles could transform your own spiritual journey as you seek to get out of the cycle. Join me, Todd Andrewsen, as I unravel the pride cycle utilizing the historical stories of empires long since fallen. Through historical insights and personal anecdotes, I explore how pride often follows success, leading to a disconnect from spiritual growth. I'll share biblical stories that highlight why humility is crucial for staying connected with our Heavenly Father.

As we anticipate Christ's Second Coming, our overriding goal is to learn how to design a spiritually fulfilling life that aligns your personal goals with your current life. Self-awareness and intentional living are key themes as I discuss breaking free from the pride cycle to create a more meaningful relationship with God. Together, let's recognize the signs of pride within ourselves and foster a balanced, humble approach to our faith. If this episode resonates with you, I encourage you to pass it on to others who might find it valuable. Thank you for tuning in, and may your day be blessed. This is Todd signing off.

Chapters

• 0:00 Defining the Pride Cycle
• 19:22 Preparing for Christ's Second Coming

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Once again, it is time to define your spirit and design the spiritual life of the divine. I'm your host, todd Andrews, and in what used to be Todd Talks, your spirit by design is now on its fourth or fifth week. I hope you enjoy what we talk about today. You know I like doing these in one go. I don't really plan too much about what I'm going to say. A lot of it is off the cuff and just basically my thoughts on certain areas. I will bring in scriptures, I'll bring in different things at times, but in this developing, designing the spiritual life that you want to have, I figure it's important to go from where you're at, to start from where you're at, because you can't really jump ahead, go back Really in life. You have to start where you're at. You may not be where you want to be Like in my case, I may not be able to get to church every Sunday because of work. In fact, most Sundays I don't, and so the whole purpose behind this is to help you design the spiritual life, the relationship that you want to have with your Heavenly Father in Jesus Christ. So because of that, today's topic is very apropos.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Today I felt impressed to talk about the pride cycle. And the reason I find that the pride cycle is very apropos is because we have a tendency to not notice it going on. And the pride cycle, if you don't know anything about it, is very interesting because you see it in every aspect of history, whether it's empires, whether it's families, whether it is political, whether it is spiritual political, whether it is spiritual. The pride cycle is one of those things that is enigmatic of real life, because we all go through these cycles, hence the pride cycle, hence the pride cycle, where we go through ups and downs and twists and turns and I'm not trying to sound like I'm just talking in general of these, but one of the best explanations I heard for this is Is a phrase, not a phrase, a group of phrases that go like this that hard times create great men, great men create easy times, easy times create soft men, soft men create hard times, and it's a cycle, right, and the pride cycle is this is the same we're blessed, the Lord blesses us, we're proud, we start believing that we did it, we start losing our spirituality because we focus on how good we are at something right and our pride grows. Then we get to a point where, because of pride, we're forced to be humbled and we fall. And then, once we've fallen and are humbled, we remember the Lord, we come back to the Lord, we repent and the Lord blesses us and it starts all over again. Hopefully, the cycles last a lot longer, whether it's your personal pride cycle, your family pride cycle.

Speaker 1: 4:51

You look in the Bible and you see it starts with Adam and Eve, right, their kids had a couple of kids. Cain and Abel had a couple of kids, cain and Abel. Cain was proud, being the firstborn, and proud of his fields and what he grew. And then, when his offering was not accepted because he did it out of the pride in that he did it rather than giving it unto the Lord as part of the Lord's blessing him with it he got proud, got so upset with his brother because his brother was humble and was basically thanking the Lord that the Lord had done this and provided. He then killed his brother.

Speaker 1: 5:48

We see it in history with all the empires the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, these empires that grow and grow and grow and then they get so big that they believe they can do all things and are all powerful until somebody Alexander the Great comes along and humbles them and knocks them down until they're humbled. We see it in all aspects of life. We see it going on now in the political arena. We see it going on with America, where America has been on top for so long and in some ways, well, we're in the cycle where we've been on the america has been on top so long. It's been turning away from god. And you see, that pride that is is causing divisions and dissensions and problems in american society because of it. These, whether on the micro or the macro, have a direct effect on your life.

Speaker 1: 7:21

So the question is what attempt to improve? First, you have to recognize that there's an issue, that there's a problem. First, you have to recognize that you are part of the problem, that you have this pride cycle within you. You're human, which means you're going to have it within you. We all do. That's the interesting thing, you know.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Being proud of accomplishments is not bad. Being prideful and thinking that you did it all by yourself is a sin. So there's a difference in all the things that I've done and the Lord has blessed me to do a lot of different crazy things in my life and here I am now flying planes all over the place to different continents. I've been to many, many parts of the world and I've been blessed to do so many things, and that's the key, in my opinion, is that I acknowledge that I've been blessed. I didn't do this on my own. When I talk about the languages I speak, I always give credit to Heavenly Father giving me the gift of learning language, because I don't want to become proud and think that I've done it all on my own, learning to fly these planes. I know that I have been given a gift by Heavenly Father to be able to do this and to have a good eyesight and good hand skills and good eye-hand coordination to be able to do this.

Speaker 1: 9:17

The first step in acknowledging where you are at is acknowledging the Lord in all things. Okay, so do I have areas that I need to work on? Absolutely. Do you have areas that you need to work on? I bet you do. In fact, that's a bet that I could take to Las Vegas and win, because you and I, we know that you have things to work on. It's one of the reasons you're listening to this right. We know that you have things to work on. It's one of the reasons. You're listening to this right.

Speaker 1: 9:59

So in the pride cycle, if we forget that the Lord is the benefactor in all things good that come to us and we start believing only in ourselves, then we can get too big for our britches. We become proud and we become arrogant. We become ripened for a fall. You see it everywhere around you. When people get too arrogant, somebody tries to bring them down. Whether for good or ill, these things happen and the pride cycle will continue until we recognize that the Lord is at the helm and we give ourselves over to letting the Lord guide us.

Speaker 1: 10:58

My last few episodes I've talked about prayer. I've talked about faith. I've talked about scripture study, because those are ways that the Lord talks to us and guides us. I've talked about personal revelation because the Lord will guide you through this life if you let him. He will not decide everything for you to do, but he does have a path and purpose for you in life that you can find. But you have to have eyes open, okay.

Speaker 1: 11:36

So the whole the the reason I like to talk about the pride cycle and I've been reading in the book mormon about the nephites going through their pride cycle how they, right before christ came. They were wicked. And then the all their leaders were the Gadianton robbers. They, the leadership of their country, had just, was evil and was only there to get gain and to get riches and to get power. And Nephi came and prophesied that they were ripening for destruction and they didn't believe him. But he told them about a murder that happened to their chief judge and they ran out and saw that he had seen it in vision and was actually true and people started to believe. And then that element, you know, like I talked about in the past, that faith to believe that, even if it's as small as a mustard seed grew in them so that some believed and many did not. So some people started to develop that. But because of these robbers, these the leaders that just wanted power, their entire country broke apart into factions that were killing each other and wars started, civil war among all of these people.

Speaker 1: 13:14

You can see there could be parallels with what's going on in our day, with factions et cetera. But they those that believed, especially Nephi the prophet. He was given the power to change things and here's something really cool, really interesting that I just recently saw. So he commanded a drought to happen in the land Three years no rain, and so people, they stopped fighting each other and they started dying because of the drought and famine. But an interesting fact is recently a study was done on stalactites that showed that there had been a massive drought, a three-year drought, 2,000 years ago, the same time period that this was happening in the Book of Mormon. So there is scientific evidence proving that this happened. Just a fun fact I love giving fun facts and so, because the people were forced to be humble through war and death, through famine, they turned to the Lord. They famine, they turned to the Lord, they were humbled and turned to the Lord and for the next 10 years or so, everybody was converted unto the Lord until they started prospering again and then they started having pride again and the whole cycle started over. We find parallels in our day.

Speaker 1: 15:02

If you can't find the parallel to what's going on today, re-listen to the last 10 minutes of what I just talked about, or go read in the book of Helaman. Or go read in the book of Helaman. Go read about in the New Testament. Okay, so why are there so many epistles, the letters in the New Testament, the epistles of Paul, the epistles of Peter, the epistles of James. All of those letters were written to the newly organized Christian church.

Speaker 1: 15:37

The different people and sects in the Christian church, after Christ, had gone back into heaven to clarify doctrine, because people were falling away, they were changing, or others were becoming proud and not following the doctrine as it was given to them. And so the epistles were to help them reorient, recognize where they were in the wrong, repent so that they could be humbled by themselves without having to be forced to be humble. You never want to be forced to be humble. It's much better that you recognize what's going on with you than that you're forced to be humble, because being forced to be humble usually comes with pain, agony, sadness, misery, sometimes death. Okay, so we don't want that Much better, as you're listening to this, that you, one, recognize that you got issues and need to change.

Speaker 1: 16:52

Two, make the effort through study, prayer, scripture, study and seeking of personal revelation. Three, give glory to God that it is Him that provides for you. And four, always remember Him. Okay, this is the keys to growth, the keys to improvement, the keys to living a spiritual life, even when you're not able to make it to church. The first key is that you have to recognize areas that you need to improve. I know I've repeated myself improve. I know I've repeated myself and I hope that you are learning, because in repeating repetition helps us to learn.

Speaker 1: 18:06

Now, my friends, I appreciate that you get on here and that you listen to these. I appreciate the fact that you have a desire to change and as you exercise that desire, let it grow in you you will continue to do the things that you need to change so that you don't have to go through a drought, famine, war, murder. Because look, look outside, look at the world. I will not get into politics on these episodes because this is for spiritual growth, but you have to recognize the world as it is, and the world is changing. Satan has control of the hearts of men and he is making it so that more and more people turn away from God. Gadiants and robbers are in charge in the governments. If you don't believe that, then you really need to look inside. But we are truly in a time in preparation, in the last days, for the second coming of Christ.

Speaker 1: 19:22

In preparation in the last days for the second coming of Christ. Prepare yourself by recognizing the pride cycle and getting out of the pride cycle, design the life that you want. Design your spiritual life the way that you want. As always, my friends, thank you for listening. Spiritual life the way that you want. As always, my friends, thank you for listening. Tell others about it, about this show, about this episode, if you like what you hear and, as always, have a blessed day. This is Todd signing off. Thank you.