Humility

Jesus is the door (John 10:9 NASB) into God’s presence and we cannot enter any other way.

1 Peter 5:5-6 (Amplified Bible)

⁵ God sets Himself against the proud (the insolent, the overbearing, the disdainful, the presumptuous, the boastful)–[and He opposes, frustrates, and defeats them], but gives grace (favor, blessing) to the humble. ⁶ Therefore humble yourselves [demote, lower yourselves in your own estimation] under the mighty hand of God, that in due time He may exalt you.

“Unless pride dies in you, nothing of heaven can live in you.”¹

As Christians, our lives should reflect our deliverance from sin, and our desire to be more like Christ every day. As pride makes us fall, the moment we humble ourselves, God lifts us up.

And as Andrew Wommack so aptly says: “I am a zero with the rim knocked off”, in other words, apart from Christ we are nothing and we can do nothing of ourselves according to John 15:5. Of our own we have no value, therefore it cancels poor or good self-esteem out, our esteem should only be considered as God-esteemed.

Jesus who had every right to boast where He came from, humbled Himself, not only to come as a vulnerable little baby in the care of human beings, but also as the Servant who washed His apostle’s feet, and Jesus was willing to forego His will for His Father’s will, and so He went ahead to the Cross and died in the place of all the sinners in the world, so that we might be reconciled to His Father. What amazing love this is …

Jesus is our ultimate example of true humility. As Jesus thought us to serve one another in love at the disciples washing of their feet, so we are invited to serve one another in love. Serving is a divine privilege that draws us nearer to God’s presence but that does not make God love us more. God’s love for us is our only motive to love and serve God and others and when we serve one another, we serve God. Obedience to God is the fruit of our love for Him.

Psalm 46:10 (Amplified Bible)

¹⁰ Let be and be still, and know (recognize and understand) that I am God.

Isaiah 40:31 (Amplified Bible)

³¹ But those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles [mount up to the sun]; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired.

True humility is being full of trust in God, void of pride (me doing it). Worry, fear, self-preservation, anger, selfpity, impatience, jealousy, lust, selfishness, laziness … etc. are all forms of pride, as they lack trust in God. Humility is the anti-dote to pride and all of pride’s other forms. God is big enough to provide for our needs as long as our eyes are on Him and not on ourselves.

The Christian life is one of Spiritual growth: more of Jesus, less of me. God accepts us where we are at on the way to where we are going but He loves us so much that He is not willing to leave us that way.

Humility saves us from ourselves (our ego). The motives in our heart, why we do what we do is more important to God than what we actually do. The more we submit to God the more peace and joy we will experience for it is God who is at work in us and through us.

Humility comes as we become so aware that we are totally dependent on Him, that we know that apart from Him we can do nothing (Jn 15:5).

True humility does not compare us with each other, true humility only compares us with the perfect standard of Jesus which points us to why need a Saviour. Instead we are to see others in the light of being children of God and creations from God.

Jesus has to take the place of our ego, Jesus is our Lord, the Landlord of our body, the temple of the Holy Spirit. As Joseph Prince points out, we need to become Cross conscious not sin conscious. To be Cross conscious makes us aware that we can go straight to Jesus whenever we have sinned and be cleansed in His blood 24/7, without having to wait.

The whole point of pride is that we don’t know when we are being proud, because pride is a deception of the enemy, in fact the vice that made Lucifer fall.

I pray that we may be delivered from pride, fear, worry, self-preservation, anger, self-pity, jealousy, lust, selfishness, laziness and any other sin that puts faith in what we do rather than faith in Jesus. I pray that we may have such a revelation by experience of God’s love and His faithfulness towards us that we will wonder why we never trusted Him completely before. I pray that we will become so dependent on God and so transformed by Him, that others will want what we have, not because of what we say but by how we live.

1. Why is humility so important to enter the Kingdom of God?
2. Why was Jesus our true example of humility?
3. What leads us to become humble?