Do you ever feel like your own worst enemy? We’ve been walking through the book of Daniel, and we’ve seen how God is able to deliver us from our enemies and the trials of life. We’ve also seen how, at times, God chooses to not deliver us from our trials, but to deliver us by walking with us through our trials. Before any of this, however, God first needs to deliver us from the greatest enemy of all. Ourselves. The danger facing Daniel and his friends threatened their bodies, but the danger facing Nebuchadnezzar threatened his very soul. The threat of his own pride.

Our culture sees pride as a virtue, but scripture tells us it is the deadliest sin. Pride is what made the devil the devil, and it led to the fall of mankind. Pride is at the root of every sin, every vice, and every evil the world has ever seen. It is also ironically humiliating. The great irony of pride is that while attempting to make ourselves into something more than human, we inevitably make ourselves into something less than human. Pride dehumanizes us and causes us to dehumanize others. It warps our desires and puts enmity between us and everyone else.

Daniel 4 is one of the strangest stories in all of scripture. Pride was dehumanizing Nebuchadnezzar, so to address Nebuchadnezzar’s pride, God turns him into an animal (or at least causes him to think he is one for 7 years). Join us as we see how this played out in the life of King Nebuchadnezzar, and as we search for the key to unlocking the prison of pride and experiencing the freedom of humility!