Humility in Daily Life - Give as You Have Received

If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  (1 John 4:20)

It is easy to think we humble ourselves before God: humility towards men will be the only sufficient proof that our humility before God is real.

The insignificances of daily life are the importances and the tests of eternity, because they prove what really is the spirit that possesses us.  (Andrew Murray, Humility, Chapter 6)

There is a lie circulated in many Christian circles.  Actually, it is also popular in non-Christian therapy.  "You must forgive if you want to be forgiven."  What heavier burden could I place on another person?

The thought comes from a misinterpretation of part of the Lord's prayer and other passages like it: "Forgive us trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."  I have tried to live this false idea out and have placed the burden on other people as well.  The story is grounded in a false picture of God.

Somehow this god says that I must prove my gratitude to him by loving and forgiving other people who are disagreeable or even hurtful toward me.  He says, "I will withhold my love, peace, and joy and will not forgive you until you love and forgive your enemies."

If this is how God is, Jesus would say to the Samaritan woman, "I will not speak to you until you forgive all the men who have used and abused you as well as all the people who have mocked and excluded you.  Living water is only for those who forgive."  Maybe he would say to the woman caught in adultery, "I will condemn you until you forgive those men who were about to stone you."  Instead of saying, "Neither do I condemn you - go and sin no more", Jesus would just say, "Go and sin no more."

The point that Jesus is making in his parables and sayings about forgiveness is not that we should forgive or that we must forgive, but that those who live in the love and forgiveness of God can forgive.  As James Bryan Smith says, people who do not forgive do not lack willpower, but resources.  With this truth, when I cannot forgive, I realize that it is the measure of lack of awareness and experience with God's forgiveness of me.

Yes, lack of forgiveness points out hypocrisy in me and in others.  I make myself a liar when I withhold forgiveness.  The real story, however, is not that God holds a grudge against me until I forgive.  Instead, the story is that I need to understand and experience God's forgiveness in my life before I can share it with others.  The basic misunderstanding is that I need to forgive rather than sharing Christ's forgiveness with other people as I have received it.  "Freely you have received, now freely give."  (Matthew 10)

Humility underlies that forgiveness.  Humility toward other people indicates that I understand my place before God.  Again, this is easy to misunderstand.  The narrative is not that I am so low and unworthy before God that I only deserve to be the lowliest scum slave before other people.  No, I am loved and gently cared for by God, who is everything to me, so losing to others, serving them, and lifting them up does not take anything from me, but allows me to serve my God through my service and humility toward them.  "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do it to me," says Jesus, not as a threat, but as a promise of peace and joy in and with him.

Daily life is the place where this plays out.  It is more about how I treat people on the road than how many I invite to church.  It is more about what I do for my wife and kids than what I do for the homeless person "out there."  It is more about how I do my job at work that how many committees or ministries I serve in at church.  Humility plays out in "insignificant" places rather than ones that seem "spiritual" or "important."  This is a hard lesson to learn in many ways, but the goodness of God makes it possible for me to be trained and grow in humility and forgiveness.

Lord, Help me to lay aside the false ideas about forgiveness and humility.  I want to embrace humility that touches each area of my life.  I want to see you as the forgiving One, the humble One, and so find my hope and strength.  Open my eyes.  Clear out my ears.  Let each day bring me a time when I can yield to other people as I yield to you.  Amen.

Humility: Jesus' Disciples - New Heart Needed

Create in me a pure heart, O God,   

  and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 

Do not cast me from your presence    

  or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation    

  and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.  (Psalm 51:10-12)

Apart from me, you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

How impotent all external teaching and all personal effort is, to conquer pride or give the meek and lowly heart - for three years the disciples had been in the training school of Jesus. . . .  And yet all had availed but little. At the Holy Supper there was still the contention as to who should be greatest.

To teach them and us the much needed lesson, that no outward instruction, not even of Christ Himself; no argument however convincing; no sense of the beauty of humility, however deep; no personal resolve or effort, however sincere and earnest, can cast out the devil of pride.

It is only by the indwelling of Christ in His divine humility that we become truly humble.  (Andrew Murray, Humility, Chapter 5)

A little while ago I tried to revive a laptop computer from the dead.  I did a couple of fairly small repairs on it and it seemed to do well for a little bit, but then it would crash and burn again.  I try to use things until they are no longer usable.  In this case, I had gone a little beyond the expiration date of this computer.  It had given several years of good service, but needed more than I could give to it.  We discovered that we needed a new computer instead of fixing the old one.

The human heart was not made to be disposable like that computer.  The human heart will last into eternity.  It will either be thrown on the trash-heap of its own pride or placed in the setting of God's grace to shine with him eternally.  The fix for the human heart is not a "tuck here and there," but a complete overhaul.  I do not need my heart to be tweaked, I need a new heart altogether.

I need a heart that bleeds to be in God's presence and beats along with his.  I need a heart that is willing rather than willful.  I need a heart that seeks one thing in purity.  I need a heart that lives in the joy of being delivered.  I need a heart sustained by God.

Since my need is for a new heart, I cannot fix myself.  If my problems were small and relatively easy to fix, then I might be able to get somewhere.  (I think this is one reason I tend to be blind to my own sins: I want to believe I can fix myself.)  No, I find instead that my spirit is not repairable, but completely unusable in seeking and staying with God and navigating life in general.  I find neither the strength nor interest to remain with Christ long.  Without Christ, I am helpless and hopeless.

Seeking humility brings me to this point quickly.  How true that I can study, seek, and try to beat myself into submission, only to find that pride has been at my side instead of God.  I want God to help me, but find that he won't.  Instead he wants to inhabit my life.

It's sort of like asking a therapist to help you with a problem and having the therapist say he has to move in with you.  Or maybe, it is like spending two weeks in a hospital hoping to get better, only to find you'll have to stay there indefinitely to continue living at all.  This is what my "old heart" tells me.  It tells me, "If you let him have too much, he'll take it all, and you'll be miserable."

This much is true.  Jesus wants it all.  He asks to move in permanently.  He asks me to move away with him.  However, the "being miserable" part has to do with that "old heart" and how it works.  It lives on getting what it wants.  If that "old heart/spirit/will/self" doesn't get what it wants, it dies.  The only solution to my problem is to put it to death through suffocation.  I do not let it get what it wants.

If I do not have a new heart, then my old heart has to come up for breath every once in a while.  I live with "managing" my sin, "coping" with my problems, "compromising" with God.  In the end, I am frustrated with God because he won't cooperate.  I end up thinking he demands too much and gives too little.  This is because I am operating out of that old heart that pridefully wants its own way.

The new heart does not live in me apart from God living with me.  The new heart dies when it is not doing what God wants.  It lives to see him, walk with him, work with him, play with him.  The new heart actively puts the old one to death by depriving it of its own way and seeking God's ways.  The new heart has desires just like the old one does, but they originate and end with God instead of the self.

Humility is the beating of that new heart.  Pride is the beating of the old one.  Every life-giving pulse from the new heart feeds the body, mind, soul, and relationships with God's love, joy, and peace.  Every pulse from the old heart brings further death and ruin to the soul, body, mind, and relationships, striving to make them serve my own desires rather than God.

While lessons might inspire me to seek a new heart, they will never give one.  While the testimony of other people might show me how much I long for a new heart, they will never give me one.  Jesus is plain about what the operation requires.  "Come with me, stay with me, make your home in me.  Let my words be your words.  Let my life be your life."  His teaching is more than teaching.  His example is more than example.  He lives.  I must let him live with me and through me.  He will be closer than even my family if I will let him.  He will give me the whole treatment - a new heart - and I will find everlasting, fulfilling life with him and in him.

Lord, I want a little humility, but not too much, so I end up with none.  I want to live my way and your way and hope it will all work out, but it never does.  Let me come to you and leave everything behind.  Let me move in with you and out of this old life I am trying to make work.  Make humility the blood that flows in my veins even as my heart beats for you.  Amen.


Do you fear giving God "too much?"  What do you fear he would do to you?  Could it be that your pride is afraid to die?  Can you really live compromising with God?