Humility: True Greatness

by C.J. Mahaney

The real issue here is not if pride exists in your heart; it’s where pride exists and how pride is being expressed in your life.

False humility can be prideful

Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him.

Where have i been unreliant on God?

“Lord, in that moment, with that attitude and that action, I was contending for supremacy with You. That’s what it was all about. Forgive me.”

“How can anyone be arrogant when he stands beside the cross?”

The cross reminds of who we are and what Christ did for us.

Begin your day by acknowledging your dependence upon God and your need for God.

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”

How often do i lisyen to myself?

Let each of us recognize every day that whatever grace we receive from God is so much more than we’re worthy of, and indescribably better than the hell we all deserve.

This

I’ve learned that regardless of how I feel when I’m finished reading my Bible in the morning, I can know that I’ve made the statement, “I need You, I’m dependent upon You.” By quietly pausing to study and read and pray before launching my workday, I can be confident that I’ve taken a step to weaken pride and strengthen humility.

acknowledging your need for God; expressing your gratitude to God; practicing spiritual disciplines; seizing your commute time for spiritual benefit; casting your cares upon Him; and above all, reflecting on the wonder of the cross of Christ—are the most effective things you can do to more deeply experience the promise and the pleasures of humility.

“When we have done anything praiseworthy,” wrote the Puritan giant Thomas Watson, “we must hide ourselves under the veil of humility, and transfer the glory of all we have done to God.”1

Saved by Grace by Anthony Hoekema.

“There are two things that are suited to humble the souls of men…. A due consideration of God, and then of ourselves. Of God, in his greatness, glory, holiness, power, majesty and authority; of ourselves, in our mean, abject and sinful condition.”

Sin and Temptation

The Enemy Within: Straight Talk About the Power and Defeat of Sin by Kris Lundgaard,

Identify evidences of grace in others. This means actively looking for ways that God is at work in the lives of other people.

Here’s where I encourage you to start: Be intimately familiar with the list of the fruit of the Spirit—“joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23).

I believe in the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special love.

For too many, their understanding of God’s activity has been reduced to the spectacular, and it appears to them that the spectacular is something that happens only to someone else, never to them.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:14, Paul urges us, “Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”

Here’s how: Never correct without reminding the individual, at some point, of the gospel. Any conversation including correction must also include the gospel, because biblical correction is incomplete apart from the gospel.

The fact is, it shouldn’t be difficult for me to bring in the gospel when correcting my son, because the one correcting him is the worst sinner he knows; and the one doing the correcting would in no way want to be corrected without somebody giving him hope. And hope is always found in the gospel.

Paul David Tripp’s War of Words.

As Jonathan Edwards wrote, “How far less [are] the greatest afflictions that we meet with in this world…than we have deserved!”

Here’s a recommendation: If you’re a parent, don’t celebrate anything more than you celebrate godly character in your children.