“More pride in His glory,” (“More Holiness Give Me”, Phillip Paul Bliss). Pride, insofar as it pertains to the feeling of joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment that comes from a job well done, can be a virtue, provided that it is focused on our Heavenly Father's work and His glory. When we devote ourselves whole heartedly to the cause of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of all of God's children, caring not what part we are to play, however big or small or visible or invisible, but are enthusiastic merely to be involved in so great and glorious a work and could not care a fig whether we get any kind of credit or personal recognition nor be bothered if we find ourselves doing more than our fair share while those around us seem only ever to be doing much, much less than their fair share, when we can only find it in ourselves to feel an unquenchable joy that those who were lost have now been found and we were given the inexpressibly good fortune to be involved in our own small way, then how could our pride in our Heavenly Father's glory be anything but good? The pride that Satan would have us feel would cause us to separate ourselves and our contributions from that great jumble of work and glory and service and love and forgiveness, where no one can keep track of who owes who or whose turn it was last because everyone is just so devoted to the cause. But if we cut ourselves off from that glorious tumult of selfless reciprocity, even if only to make an accounting of our exact share in the labor and the rewards, then whether we intended to or not, we have cut ourselves off from the work and the glory as a whole. We are free to start our own work and attempt to wring from it what glory that we may, but it will be the work of just one, and can only ever be the palest and faintest shadow of the glory of the work of not only God, Almighty though He is, but the shared work of all of His children that are willing to submit themselves to His will so that they may bring about His vision. Let us all feel such pride in our Father's glory that we will never give into the temptation to separate ourselves from it.
