Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul

by Hannah Anderson

One possible source of stress is the fact that we are submitted to unkind and unjust masters.

If anything, those of us who are busy “working for Jesus” may be the first to miss that we are struggling with pride because it can hide behind our good intentions.

And now you can see the relationship between pride and stress. Pride convinces us that we are stronger and more capable than we actually are. Pride convinces us that we must do and be more than we are able.

We may even be convinced that humility is essential to experiencing rest. Without it, we will continue to be agitated, anxious, and frustrated because our pride will lead us to live beyond natural limitations.

When you encounter a person who—for whatever reason—is “trying” to be humble, you can spot it almost immediately.

In fact, false modesty is so prevalent in our culture that we even have a term for it: the humble brag.

He intends to strip us of the pride that keeps us from experiencing rest. He intends to get to the root of the problem so that humility becomes natural to us.

As long as we refuse to accept that our pride is the source of our unrest, we will continue to wither on the vine.

And suddenly we begin to understand what’s at stake in our fight against pride. What’s at stake is our own sense of identity.

In the last chapter, I defined humility as a correct sense of self, as understanding where you come from and where you belong in this world.

Without God’s breath in us, we are nothing but a pile of dirt.

In modern parlance, herbs are distinguished from other edible plants by the intensity of their flavor and aroma,

throughout history, human beings have used them to promote both physical and emotional well-being.

Throughout history, what we now term “emotions” have been referred to as humors, passions, appetites, affections, and sentiments.

the word “emotion” didn’t even enter the English lexicon until the eighteenth century and at the time simply referred to a “physical disturbance.”

In other words, we do not resolve our emotional uncertainty—our stress and anxiety—by focusing on our emotions themselves. We resolve our uncertainty by getting to the root cause.

The premise of this book is that much of our emotional instability is rooted in pride.

Humility teaches us that we don’t have to obey our emotions because the only version of reality that matters is God’s.

What if humility could free us from obsessing about how other people feel about us or even how we feel about ourselves?

The only person whose judgment counts is the Lord’s. He’s the only one who can accurately understand my heart (even I can’t understand it), and I trust Him to judge and reward faithfully.

I can rest in God’s ability to vindicate (or correct) me.

In fact our greatest skill lies in the infusion of Hopes, to induce confidence and peace of mind.”

Not only does humility free us from the condemnation of others, it also frees us from self-condemnation and unnecessary guilt.

One reason that we’re tempted to assume unnecessary guilt is because it can make us look humble without actually having to be humbled.

But the research does reveal how our emotions don’t always correspond with reality. And because they don’t, we can’t be led by them—especially when it comes to the Holy Spirit’s call on our life.

Ultimately, by silencing the cacophony of emotion, humility frees you to hear God’s call and leads you to a place of both rest and flourishing.

As much as humility frees us from condemning ourselves, it also frees us from condemning others and using emotion to manipulate them.

Because human beings so readily act on their emotions, all you have to do is stimulate a certain emotional response, and you can lead them wherever you want them to go.

When we use fear to persuade a person to make a decision “before it’s too late,” we make God look like a cosmic bully who is just waiting for the opportunity to strike them down.

Humility teaches us to trust God. And suddenly a burden rolls off our back.

it also frees us to enjoy the depth and variety of our inner life. We are free to enter into our emotions, letting them do what God intends for them to do: draw us back to Himself.

“Half of what we are going to teach you is wrong, and half of it is right. Our problem is that we don’t know which half is which.” —Dr. Charles Sidney Burwell

wisdom is ultimately an outgrowth of humility.

Wisdom is not the result of formal education or religious practice; wisdom is the result of humility.

Not only does humility teach us that knowledge comes from outside us, it also reminds us that we cannot perfectly categorize and process the knowledge that we do have. Humility teaches us the limits of human reason.

modernism rejects divine revelation

what modernism fails to account for is the possibility that our minds might be limited and our reason corrupted by sin.

Humility teaches us to wait for God for answers.

this process can only happen in relationship;

When questions come, we offer prepackaged, simplistic answers, and unwittingly teach others to find answers this way themselves.

In fact, the world is so mixed-up and broken, so complicated, that the only one who can lead us through it is God Himself.

Instead of seeking certainty, we must teach them to follow Jesus in the midst of uncertainty.

We must learn to wait. We must learn to trust.

And we must remember that He is growing all of us in the process.

To wait for the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth. To wait for those we love to come to understanding.

“Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,

Because pride convinces us that we are more significant than we really are, it also convinces us that we deserve a certain experience of the world;

And it feels valid because we actually believe ourselves worthy of a different experience.

We fail to recognize how much we already enjoy because we assume we deserve it or because we’ve earned it. We are blind to our own privilege.

Humility teaches us that all is gift.