Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul

by Hannah Anderson

If your thankfulness is rooted in comparison, it will evaporate in an instant.

1. I will not overlook my privilege. I will take stock of the resources that God has given me including time, talent, education, and wealth. 2. I will not feel guilty about what God has put in my hands or attempt to earn it. I accept it as a gift and rejoice in it.

I will allow God to lead me in cultivating these gifts for His glory and the good of those around me.

Just as God is the source of your life and gifting, God is also the source of your desires.

And through Jesus, He is actively redeeming those desires. He is actively restoring your ability to want the right things in the right way.

the greater presumption is not found in speaking your desires but failing to acknowledge their e...

is precisely through the process of wanting certain things that we also learn to trust God to fulfill those desires or to trust Him when he changes them.

It is precisely the process of pursuing desire that brings us rest.

Part of submitting to God also means recognizing that even our desires originate from Him.

By acknowledging your desires, you are embracing the truth that God has made you to be something very particular.

And, ultimately, this leads to rest.

humility leads us to embrace desire,

powerless we are to make our desires come to fruition.

we are not guaranteed a harvest simply because we worked har...

Pride tells us that all we have to do is organize well enough, plan effectively enough, and work hard enough and we can achieve our dreams. Humility teaches us that it was never up to us in the first place.

Part of humility means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will not be fulfilled.

Humble people understand that their work is no guarantee of success; but the humble also understand that the possibility of failure is no reason not to work.

The fact that success comes without our efforts is testimony, yet again, to God’s surpassing power and goodness.

If we limit ourselves to working only when the signs are promising, if we only plant when everything is perfect, we limit our ability to see God at His best.

And so to grow and preserve green beans is also to experience grace. The grace to rest in the future that He has planned for us. The grace to work. The grace to wait. The grace to dream.

“The essential heresy [is] that work is not the expression of man’s creative energy in service of society, but only something one does to obtain money and leisure.”

Remember that pride both overestimates our abilities and underestimates God.

In the midst of injustice, humility believes that God is just. In the midst of grief, humility believes that God is comfort. In the midst of brokenness, humility believes that God is health and life.

We rest by saying, both to God and others, “I am not enough. I need help.”

Nothing, except this small gesture of hope that one day spring would come again for her.

To trust that I wasn’t necessary to my own success.