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March 13 - April 4, 2025
Because human beings are made in God’s image, it’s natural that we end up looking and acting a lot like Him. As we mature in faith, we strive to become more loving, more gracious, more wise, and even more productive. But as we do, we must never forget that looking like God does not mean that we are God. We are made in His image, but we are made nonetheless.
Instead of finding identity in our roles—in being fathers and mothers, teachers and writers and pastors—we must find identity in being image bearers of God.
In other words, the humility that brings us rest is the same humility that frees us to be the people God created us to be.
Your heavenly Father knows what you need. He knows your heart is troubled. He also knows, better than you do, that all these things are beyond you. And so, this is what you must do, all that you must do: You must seek Him. And let Him take care of the rest.
Jesus comes to bring us freedom and rest. But this rest is contingent on something. We must come to Him. We must take His yoke. We must learn of Him.
The rest that Jesus offers only comes when we humble ourselves and submit to Him. This is why Jesus uses the image of a yoke; the yoke is a symbol of authority. By calling us to take His yoke, Jesus is calling us to submit to Him as our true master.
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.
our words and actions gradually reveal our character and our essential nature. If we are humble people, it will be obvious.
So when Jesus calls us to learn of His own humility, He’s not calling us to adopt humble posturing or master a new skill. He intends to fundamentally change us. 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.
By coming to Jesus, we remember who we are and who we are not.
Through His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus shows us our true identity as people dependent on God for life. And through His life, death, and resurrection, He imparts this humble life to us once again.
And we learn this by encountering Jesus Himself. Through His humanity, we learn what ours is supposed to be. Through His deity, He enables us to be what we are supposed to be. And when we are, when we exist as God has intended us to exist, we will find rest.
As Mr. Darcy notes in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion and sometimes an indirect boast.”
Even more interestingly, the English words “human” and “humility” share a common Latin root: humus, which means dirt, earth, or ground.
Ancient Hebrew reveals a similar linguistic pattern. In the Genesis narrative, the word adam is a collective noun meaning “humankind” and comes from the Hebrew word adamah which means “ground.” Linguistically, at least, there is an intrinsic connection between the ground, our humanity, and humility. In other words, humility begins by remembering where we come from. Humility begins by remembering that to be human is to be dirt. Humility begins by remembering that we are “dust and to dust [we] shall return.”
After creating the man and woman, God tasks them with caring for each other and cultivating the world; as the text puts it, they are to be “fruitful and multiply” and “have dominion.”10 Dependent on their Creator for life, they are also to live dependently on each other as partners in that life.11
To consume the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would be, in essence, to reject God as God and establish mankind in His place. To consume the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would be to deny everything that is true of the creature’s dependence on God. To consume the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would be to deny our own humanity.
Jesus Christ is the one who alone fears the Lord and who bears good fruit. Jesus Christ is the one who restores both our humility and our humanity. And in His glorious resting place—under the shade of His branches—we find rest.
The core issue, and the theme of this book, is this: We are not Jesus. Jesus comes to restore our humanity through His, but we are not Jesus. We can be entirely well-intentioned, but if we attempt to pursue even humility apart from Him, we will simply act out of our own pride once again.
we are called to fall at His feet and worship Him. We are called to affirm that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”27 And it is through this worship, through recognizing His rightful place, that we are finally humbled.
When we are consumed with God’s glory, we forget to worry about our own. When our eyes are fixed on Him as the source of all goodness and truth and beauty, we accept that we are not. When we are enamored by His worth and majesty, we can stop being so enamored with ourselves. And fascinatingly, when we seek God’s glory, we’ll be able to appreciate it in the people around us. Instead of seeing them as threats to our own glory, we will see them as beautiful reflections of His.
Theologically speaking, humility is a proper understanding of who God is and who we are as a result. We may feel certain things because of this understanding—we may feel safe in the care of our Creator or we may feel fear when we disobey Him—but these emotions are the result of our reverence for God.
your judgment of me doesn’t matter. My judgment of myself doesn’t matter either. 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.
Humility reminds us that the lack of confidence does not determine whether God has gifted us and called us. Humility also reminds us that the presence of confidence does not mean that God has gifted us and called us. Just because we believe in ourselves doesn’t mean we should.16 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.
Humility calls us to feel deeply precisely because we know that “God is greater than our hearts.”
wisdom is ultimately an outgrowth of humility. Becoming wise people, becoming people who can make good decisions only comes when we understand who God is and who we are as a result.
Humility, on the other hand, predisposes us to believe that we always have something to learn. Because humility reminds us of our dependency and limitations, it also reminds us of the limits of our mind. It reminds us that there is always a place where our vision could be corrected or our understanding grow. This is why Proverbs 18:15 says, “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” The humble person seeks knowledge because the humble person knows how much she doesn’t know. The humble person recognizes that she “lacks wisdom” and so she is not afraid to
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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.
humility teaches us to be less concerned with knowing the answers and more concerned with learning the answers.
Humility teaches us to wait for God for answers. Humility teaches us to let knowledge ripen on the vine.
In God’s wisdom the very process of learning binds us to Him in a way that simply knowing the answers cannot. And so He asks you to trust Him. He asks you to live in dependence. He asks you to humble yourself to wait for Him.
And so we must become comfortable with the ripening process. We must learn to wait. We must learn to trust. We must remember that we are merely undergardeners. We must remember that the Master Gardener faithfully tends His seedlings and young fruit. And we must remember that He is growing all of us in the process.
But humility also teaches us that we don’t need to know everything as long as we know the one who does know.
“Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food,” the Lord says through Isaiah. “Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live.… For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”17 And in this knowledge—in knowing Him—we can finally rest.
No, gratitude born from humility is not a gratitude rooted in having more than someone else. It is a gratitude rooted in having anything at all. Instead of comparing what you have with other people (either more or less), humility teaches you to compare what you have now with what you had when you entered this world. You entered this world with nothing. You didn’t even have clothing on. Your very existence is a gift and everything that you have or have ever had is a gift as well.
Remembering how we entered the world helps us understand why Jesus calls us to enter His kingdom like babies, why we must be born again.
the language of childbirth also illustrates how we are to humbly depend on God for life. We are to depend on Him the same way a child depends on his mother for life and nourishment.
You, too, have resources at your disposal. They may not be many or public, but you have them. And no matter how small, no matter how few, God intends for you to use them. He intends for you to become a humble, resourceful person, first by receiving His gifts with gratitude and then by cultivating them for the good of those around you.
But in His wisdom, He’s crafted the world in such a way that you can’t do this apart from Him. You will regularly have to take risks, you will regularly feel pressed past your abilities, you will regularly feel like the husk of your life is being broken open and your seeds scattered to the wind. But this is exactly how He means to teach you humility. This is exactly how He means to relieve you of your burden of guilt and self-reliance. Just as you must accept your resources as good gifts from Him, you must accept that you cannot cultivate them apart from Him. The very process is meant to teach
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humility teaches us to ask, “What has God given and what responsibility do I have because of it?” And by doing so, humility changes the frame of reference entirely. Suddenly we are no longer at the center; God is. Suddenly our sense of entitlement or guilt no longer drives our choices. Suddenly everything is a gift and everything has purpose.
Humility is understanding who God is and who we are. Humility remembers both your human limitation and God’s transcendent power.
But even as we dream, humility teaches us to never lose sight of who’s actually in control. We make plans. But only God can make those plans happen.
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. He is actively giving you a new heart. In this sense, the greater presumption is not found in speaking your desires but failing to acknowledge their existence in the first place. If they do not exist, how can they be reformed? If they do not exist, how can they be changed?
Surprisingly enough, humility teaches us to embrace desire as a means of learning to submit to God. It 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 through the process of learning to plan that we learn to depend on a God who makes our plans happen.
God only reveals the course of our lives one step at a time. God only makes our path straight before us with each step of faith.
And it is precisely this “slow reveal” that keeps us dependent on Him. It is precisely the process of pursuing our desires and waiting for Him to either establish or alter our plans that humbles us. It is precisely the process of pursuing desire that brings us rest.
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. When you recognize that you love something and are gifted to do it, you must also immediately recognize that you do not love everything, and you are not gifted to do everything. Suddenly you realize your own limitations; desire humbles you. And suddenly you are free from the tyranny of “keeping your options open.” You are free from the responsibility of feeling like you have to “do it all.” You are free to do only what you have been made to do.
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. The same God who gives us our desires is the God who orchestrates how, and whether, those desires come to pass. And the hard truth is that they may not.
But here again, humility offers rest. If we are submitted to God’s hand, even our unfulfilled desires can be fruitful because our unfulfilled desires can be the very things God uses to draw us to Himself.
