Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James 4:10
Being humble before the Lord is a lot different than the definition of humble that we use today. God didn’t want the Israelites to grovel and self deprecate themselves before Him. Just the opposite, He loved them and wanted them to live amazing lives. He also knew they couldn’t do that without Him, but they thought they could. Over and over they became prideful and arrogant thinking that what they accomplished was all of themselves and God was there only in times of crisis or when they were up against something they couldn’t accomplish themselves. God wanted to remind them they were totally dependent on Him for everything and He was willing to work with and through them to accomplish amazing things for Him.
Times have not changed much. We can be so aware of God and even doing all the things he wants us to do. But then like now true godly humility is not a matter of behavior, it’s a matter of the heart. That means listening to Him through His Word, in times of prayer and meditation and hearing His voice for wisdom and direction. To know that without Him we truly can do nothing. Let’s begin to humble ourselves by admitting we aren’t as smart as we think we are. That maybe we need to take another look at our personal relationship with the Lord. Take time to stop, ask questions of Him and listen for the answer. To allow the Spirit to flow and direct us, rather than us trying to direct Him to do what we want. True humility is knowing that God knows best whether we agree with His leading or not and to be willing to follow His lead no matter how crazy it may seem. After all some of the greatest ways God showed Himself was asking people to do things that seemed strange; Moses leading the Israelite out of Egypt to only walk to the Red Sea, Gideon decreasing the army down to 300 men, Naaman dipping himself 7 times in the dirty Jordan river and of course the entire nation of Israel to walk around the fortified wall of Jericho 7 days only to bring it down with a shout of praise!
What is Holy Spirit leading you to do? The only way to find out is to listen to Him and follow through. Just know God wants you to trust Him and know He has a wonderful purpose for you so that others will see Him and come to know Him as their Savior and Lord.
Leave a Reply