Pride is more of a virtue in our culture than humility. What is glorified in the world are self-accomplishments, and we thrive on showing the world our best sides and hiding the rest.
Unfortunately, this makes its way even into our faith, and even when we're following the way of Jesus, the motive is all wrong. We're all guilty of it because we long to be noticed for the good we do.
The challenge is to determine which reward we want: the in-the-moment reward of the approval of others, or the long-term reward of being noticed by our Father for what we do in private.
Our need to be noticed is harming us, and we sometimes don't even know it. How do we combat it?