HUMILITY IS THE ABILITY TO LOWER ONESELF

John the Baptist declared, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30) How do we, in a practical way, work out that decrease in our lives?

The first time humility was spoken of in the Bible was not when God sent the children of Israel into four hundred years of captivity. Humility has nothing to do with humiliation, oppression or depression. God did not sent Israel into captivity to make them humble. Remember when God spoke to Abraham about the future captivity of Israel, as Abraham laid the sacrifice, cut up as separate pieces upon the altar. The fire of God came down upon the sacrifice between flesh and bone, and God took on an inferior position that He could make a covenant with Abraham. God humbled Himself, and spoke to Abraham and said that He was going to take the children of Israel into four hundred years of slavery. Genesis 15: 13, “ Then He said to Abram: ‘Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.’”

To be in oppression means to be in tyranny, suppression, injustice, abuse, harshness, and persecution. For four hundred years there was injustice, oppression, tyranny, yet these things did not teach humility. Through the oppression, God was not trying to teach them to have humility, but rather, to have a new cry in their hearts. Out of that oppression, injustice, and tyranny, came a cry for liberty and freedom that was stronger than food or anything in their lives, but it did not teach them humility. Humility cannot be forced. We are not humbled because we are humiliated, and when we are humiliated as a people, it is not humility. If we feel humiliated, it is usually because we feel like a foot mat for someone else or we give up certain rights because we do not have the right self-worth. When tyranny and oppression come in our lives, we have to dig deep to find freedom. Without freedom, we have no power of humility. Humility is the ability to lower oneself.

The first time the word humility was ever mentioned in the Bible, it was not about slavery, but it was related to Pharaoh. Exodus 10:1, “Now the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go in to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants, that I may show these signs of Mine before him.” And in verse 3, “So Moses and Aaron came into Pharaoh and said to him, ‘Thus says the Lord God of the Hebrews: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? Let My people go, that they may serve Me.’ ” The Lord took away the ability of Pharaoh to humble himself. When God takes away my ability to humble myself, I no longer have the ability to express the heart of God, and God will be at enmity with me. Pharaoh was proud of his kingdom, his power, his influence, his horses, and he was proud of who he was. As Moses came in humble shepherd clothes, and came as a humble man, that hardened Pharaoh’s heart because pride goes before the fall. When God brings situations and relationships in my life that I have to deal with, and I have no control, how do I express Christ? When I feel affliction like thorns piercing me on every side, how can God’s love and character be expressed in my affliction that I might make visible God’s purpose in my life? God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. The phrase, to harden, means to make heavy, to make dull, to make unresponsive. Humility does not mean that we have our tail between our legs like a dog, and we do not know how to rise up against the enemy. The Lord does not say that we need to humble ourselves when we face the enemy. Our humility has to come from the Lord. It is something we chose to do because our perception of Christ is greater than the awareness of the lack in us. One of the first things that happen to us as God’s people is that we become so proud that we are no longer good. We are proud that we are the elect of the select and proud in many areas of our lives that we lack the ability to lower our selves to lift Him high.

In His Love,
      Sigi

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