Humility – the breakfast of champions

Abraham had it when he declared he was nothing but dust and ashes. So did Jacob as he stood before Pharaoh and blessed the most powerful king on earth as a greater would bless a lesser. As a matter of fact, every hero of God had it, but it didn’t always look like it.

David had it; Saul did not. Why? Because with Saul, it was always about Saul, but with David, it was always about God. That’s why Saul ultimately failed and why David had the boldness as a young boy to stand and mock Goliath and later on, with two of his comrades to stand and defeat an entire army in a field of barley. (1 Chron. 11:13-14)

Moses was the meekest man on earth, but you never saw him wilt before any of the bullies in the congregation. He was too afraid of God to be worried about some puffed up rebels like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

Elijah had it. You could hear it in his voice when he stood before the king of Israel and cried about “the Lord God, before whom I stand.” He feared God, not the king. It gave him the boldness to call down fire from heaven. And nobody got in his way when he started hacking the priests and prophets of Baal into pieces.

Josiah had it when they had found the lost book of the Law, and in fear and repentance, cleansed the Temple and slaughtered all the sodomites and false idol worshippers. But then he lost it later on when he thought he could take on Pharaoh who was trying to pass through Judah on his way to Babylon.

Peter had to learn it the hard way while John seemed to take to it naturally.

Paul learned it on the road to Damascus. It’s what kept him going when he faced the all the beatings and persecution that he went through.

Jesus had it. He was the essence of humility, yet he never backed down from the devil or any of the religious leaders that came against him, even whipping them out of the Temple. His boldness came from his fear of God. Hebrews 5:7 tells us that He “was heard in that he feared”. That gave him, not only his power and authority in God, but also his humility.

Humility is meekness toward God, not toward man. It is not a sense of inferiority where we stand hat-in-hand, staring at our shoes while we mumble out weak apologies for our faith. Humility is the power in God that is gained when we step out of ourselves – our flesh, our intelligence, our pride, our idea of who and what we are – and step into the mantle of the Holy Spirit and into the shoes of Christ.

Yes, they are big shoes! And no, you can’t fill them in your own power! It is only when you yield completely to the lordship of Christ that you are able to walk in them. That requires a broken, crucified walk in God – crucified unto the world and to yourself, broken from your own selfish pride and desires for recognition, and purged from your own ways until you become an empty vessel of transparent glass. Only then can you be filled with God’s power as you become invisible so that He, and He alone, gets the glory.

And with that, you enter into an authority and power in God that is devoid of all flesh so that you may work the works of God in true humility and humbleness of mind.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” Psalms 57:17

“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.” (James 4:10)

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”  (2 Chronicles 7:14)

 

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Giving

The book of Proverbs has an amazing ability to adjust to whatever message you need to hear on any given day. If you need encouragement, it will support you; if you need correction, it will reprove you; if you need wisdom, it will show you what you need to do to get it. You can read the same chapters over and over again, and they will speak differently to you each time, morphing into whatever you need at the moment.

Sometimes, it’s as if the whole chapter has joined together in a conspiracy against you to drive home the day’s message. Today was like that.

I was first pricked with, “a man of knowledge increaseth strength”. Okay, I get it – I need to read more Bible. If I want to fight battles, win victories, or overcome struggles, I need to read more of the Word of God. When you forget your reading and prayer, you can forget your power in God.

Okay, so now I have been reproved – I have to read more. But that also tells me that something is coming up that I will need that strength for. Maybe a battle or maybe a mission; either way, its obvious that He is reminding me that there is something that I have to do and I cannot do it on my own.

Then a little more down the chapter, I came to, “if thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small”. I remember this one well. A few years ago, the Lord used this one to convict me about going to Africa on a particular trip. (“Okay, okay! I’m going!”). But that proverb was only setting me up for the next verse, and this one really got me.

“If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? And he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? And shall not he render to every man according to his works?” (Proverbs 24:11-12)

Is that our default attitude when we are not being pushed or convicted? Do we maintain our status quo with, “I love everybody, and I sure hope they all figure it out and get to Heaven somehow”? We know there are multitudes starving, not only for food and physical needs, but more importantly, for spiritual needs. Amos tells us in chapter 8 that God would send a famine for hearing the Word of God and men would travel everywhere seeking it but would not be able to find it. As chilling as that may sound, do we answer that challenge by questioning what we can do? Or perhaps more like what we are required to do? Or worse, what the absolute minimum is that we can get away with?

Water seeks its own level. So do we. Left alone, we have a tendency to slip into complacency and rest when it concerns others outside our immediate circle. In other words, we become lukewarm.

And then the chapter conspired against me one more time to finalize it all at the end:

“I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:

So shall thy poverty come as one that travels; and thy want as an armed man.”
(Proverbs 24: 30-34)

I get it. Life is a test. It is not about us and what we can get for ourselves by padding our own nest and keeping as much as we can, but rather, it is about seeing how much we can do for others with what God has allowed us to have. If we gave it all away, somehow I feel that our bucket would never be empty.

This Thanksgiving season, I want to stop for a moment and thank God, not just for what I have, but for the opportunity He has given us to give.

It’s what God did for us.

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

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Bait

“And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple; Who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple asked an alms.” Acts 3:2.3

What a surprise this guy ended up getting!

This guy had been lame all his life and knew the best place to set himself up to get a few shekels out somebody was as they were entering church. He had a regular spot there, and everybody knew who he was, so he must have been doing okay for himself – maybe not great, but at least he knew how to work the crowd.

Then along come Peter and John.  The only problem was that they were broke.

This guy had no idea what was coming.  He didn’t even know enough to ask for healing, never mind expect one. He was just trying to scrape together enough pennies to eat.  But God healed him anyway.  I think that was pretty cool.

But the thing that has always stood out to me was how amazed everyone was at this healing. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that all Israel was buzzing with all the miracles that Jesus had done?  So why were they so surprised?  Did they not believe the stories they had heard?

Or maybe they didn’t want to believe them.

You see, if they believed in those miracles, then Jesus had to be the Messiah, and if that was true, that means they killed the Son of God, and if THAT was true, they were in a hell of a lot of trouble!  It would be a whole lot easier to just turn off the switch, ignore the stories, and make believe it never happened.

After all, where was Jesus now?  Dead gods never impress anybody, miracles or no miracles, and Jesus was dead (wasn’t He?).

It’s the same today.  Yeah, we remember the stories about the Brush Arbor revivals, the Faith Healers like Aimee Semple McPherson, Katherine Khulman, Smith Wigglesworth, and so many others, but where are they today?  They’re all dead!  When is the last time you saw the blind to see, lame to walk, and deaf to hear?  Been a while, has it?

We pray, we “speak the word of faith into existence” (like that’s really supposed to do something), we make a profession of faith in God’s healing power … and then, as soon as we’re done praying, we make an appointment with the doctor.

We don’t believe it anymore because we have not seen a flowing of the miraculous working power of God in years. There’s a reason why that is — we’re not hungry enough.  Until we become desperate, we will remain in the belly of the apostate slump that the church is in.  As long as we’re satisfied with our complacency, and are not cut to the heart for what we are missing in God, then we will sit right there waiting for a revival that will never come, because God will not set His seal of approval on an apostate church that doesn’t care.

Want to know how to get God to move?  Simple. God hears desperate prayer, and He feeds desperate hunger –we’re just not desperate enough. The blueprint for revival is in chapter 2 of the Book of Joel. (No, I’m not going to quote it. If you won’t read it yourself, then what difference would it make?)

Ask any fisherman – you can take your very best rod and reel with the most expensive bait out to the ol’ fishing hole, position yourself perfectly and fish there all day long … but if the fish ain’t hungry, they ain’t taking the bait.

And we ain’t hungry.

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