What humility means this season
That morning in my quiet time, I prayed for humility. I asked God to saturate my life and ministry with it; to protect me from the dangers of pride.
We all know we need humility. So we pray for it, asking God to “make us humble” without really grasping what it is that we ask.
Humility characterizes God. This is His nature and we can’t understand it without understanding how it looks in Him. Humility isn’t something we put on and take off; it is an inner transformation brought about by being exposed to who God is.
We have prayed those “Jesus, humble me” prayers many times. We wait for the Lord to make us humble; for some emotional-spiritual transformation to take place…but if we honestly look at what our hearts has asked Him, the truth is apparent: we want the kind of humbling that is convenient.
We want the kind of humility that protects only our reputation.
The loss of right and reputation is the example of Jesus — giving up His right to reign, surrendering His perfect reputation, and sacrificing His very self for a person who deserved none of this.
Me.
This season, there are many humbling situations that left me feeling quite the fool. My initial response was to dwell in it and facilitate a pity party in my head. Yet in that place, faced with my own limitations and inability, I realized these seasons helped me comprehend the greatness of God’s grace.
Humility is only attained by daily communion with Christ. Communion exposes me to His humble heart, and I learn to see the parts in me that may have offended His heart. Even in my most genuine request for humility, I know sometimes that I fear the cost of it. I know what it will take — and that’s the part I don’t want. I want the character, the beauty, the grace of humility without the pain and discomfort; but they come together. They are one.
Every choice to reject pride is a choice to reject self; to say “yes” to the spirit of God. It is the loss of “me” and the gain of Jesus, even when the gain looks less like Jesus. That’s why humility won’t be a one-time transformation. Rather, it is the daily decision; a thousand minute decisions to put Christ first.
I’ve read this in a book way back. It says,
“Humility is not just doing a lowly task; it is a life committed to the hard task of lowering one’s defenses.”
One reason the world remains deeply fractured is because there’s too much to defend. This is particularly true within each of us, whether we admit it or not. Our hearts and minds reason a lot. The interior walls we build are too deep and too high to root us in love, so instead of these walls “protecting us”, they actually place us in an unprotected danger zone where the heart becomes naturally defensive and prideful.
The Lord taught me that there is a healthy (yet imperfect) way to navigate through pride — Grace and Value.
If we go back to the Word, it says so much about how Grace enables us to be truly humble and less conceited. It also speaks about how “bearing with one another in love” (Eph. 4:2) and “doing nothing from rivalry or conceit and counting others more significant than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3) display humility.
A person who realized how gracious God is in his life sees himself and the people around him with value, both when they fall short and fly high.
When we truly realize how much value God places in us, we become more gracious to ourselves and gracious to one another both in disappointment and in love.
God’s presence is the perfect place to process our pride.
In our secret place, we are securely wrapped in God’s love and find that there is no need to project or protect it. A heart that is secure finds its identity in something much deeper than human words of approval or criticism. A heart that is insecure is incapable of this level of freedom.
When we pray for humility, we are committing to a lifetime of pouring out. We’re saying “Lord, empower me to empty myself the same way You did.” To make such request is bold, and we need to be prepared for what comes next: Not merely “humble feelings”, but the opportunity to give ourselves up for the gospel. We will be called to die emotionally, spiritually, mentally, for all sorts of people.
Humility is a life committed to pouring out.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit [those devoid of spiritual arrogance, those who regard themselves as insignificant], for theirs is the kingdom of heaven [both now and forever.] Matthew 5:3 AMP
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