Humility and Exaltation: Collecting Dew From Heaven

(Another imaginary interview with Andrew Murray and his book Humility.)

MCF: Humility and exaltation do not seem to go together very well.  When I am lifted up, it's hard to stay humble.

AM:  Two things are needed.  Do what God say is your work: humble yourself.  Trust him to do what he says is his work: he will exalt you.

MCF:  How do I go about humbling myself?

AM: It is not your work to conquer and cast out the pride of your nature and form within yourself the lowliness of the holy Jesus.  No, this is God's work.  It is the very essence of how he lifts you up into the real likeness of the beloved Son.  What the commandment does mean is this: take every opportunity of humbling yourself before God and man.  Accept with gratitude everything that God allows from within or without, from friend or enemy, in nature or in grace, to remind you of your need of humbling and help you to it.  Reckon humility to be indeed the mother-virtue, your very first duty before God, the one perpetual safeguard of the soul.  Set your heart upon humility as the source of all blessing.  The promise is divine and sure: he that humbles himself will be exalted.

MCF: When I do this I find myself getting increasingly frustrated and tired.  How can I find a higher humility which lifts up my heart and soul rather than grinding me into dust?

AM: All God's dealings with people are characterized by two steps.  The first is the time of preparation. Command and promise mingle with the experience of effort and impotence, of failure and partial success.  But also there is the holy expectancy of something better which these awaken.  These experiences train and discipline people for a higher stage.  Then comes the time of fulfillment.  Faith inherits the promise and enjoys what it had so often struggled for in vain.  This principle holds good in every part of the Christian life, and is the pursuit of every individual virtue.

MCF:  This time of preparation can be discouraging.  Why doesn't God just give a person humility immediately?

AM:  It is grounded in the very nature of things. In all that concerns our spiritual growth, God must take the initiative. When that has been done, a person gets his turn. In the effort after obedience and attainment, he must learn to know his impotence and to die to himself in self-despair.  Then, voluntarily and intelligently, he is able to receive from God the end, the completion of what he had accepted at the beginning in ignorance. It is God who had been the Beginning of it all, before the person rightly knew Him, or fully understood what His purpose was.  Now at the end, he longs for and.welcomes God as the End, as the All in All.

To put it another way: we know the law of human nature: acts produce habits, habits breed dispositions, dispositions form the will, and the rightly-formed will is good character. It is no different in the work of grace. God works through persistently repeated acts to beget habits and dispositions and to strengthen the will, and comes with His mighty power and Spirit.  The humbling of the proud heart with which the penitent saint cast himself so often before God, is rewarded with the "more grace" of the humble heart.  In that heart the Spirit of Jesus has conquered, and brought the new nature to its maturity.  Now the meek and lowly One dwells there forever.

MCF:  It would not be surprising that I am afraid of the effort.  At the same time, though, I find myself hungry for the promise of being lifted up by God.  Any final words about humility and exaltation?

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AM:  This humility, my friend, is a secret of secrets.  It will help you to reap where you have not sown, and be a continual source of grace in your soul.  Everything that inwardly stirs in you, or outwardly happens to you becomes a real good to you, if it finds or excites in you this humble state of mind.  Nothing is in vain or without profit to the humble soul.  It stands always in a state of divine growth.  Everything that falls upon it is like a dew of heaven to it. Therefore, close yourself in this form of Humility.  Always be enclosed in it.  Let it be the clothes you wear.  Breathe nothing but in and from its spirit, see nothing but with its eyes, hear nothing but with its ears. Then, whether you are in the church or out of the church, hearing the praises of God or receiving wrongs from men and the world, everything will build you up and everything will help you grow in the life of God.

Lord, I long for you to lift me up.  I find myself beaten down by my desires and unable to fulfill them.  I want to turn them over to you.  I want to wait for you in humility so I might be wet with this "dew from heaven," this heavenly help, this grace that keeps on giving.  Let it be so.  Lift me up today as you teach me the joy of lowliness.  Amen.

Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.  (Luke 18:14)

Humility and Happiness, an Interview with Andrew Murray

(An interview with Andrew Murray from my imagination using his book Humility, Chapter 11)

MCF:  How can we find pleasure in our weakness or happiness in humility?  How do we enter into this "new stage in relation to our trials," as you call it?

AM:  Let's be clear.  Nearly every Christian passes through two stages in his pursuit of humility.  In the first he fears and flees and seeks deliverance from all that can humble him.  He prays for humility, but in his secret heart he prays more to be kept from the very things that would make him humble.

MCF:  So recognizing the first stage in the journey of humility can open the door to the second stage?

AM:  Yes, we can recognize we have further to go.  In the Christian's pursuit of humility, there is a sense of burden and bondage.  Becoming humble has not yet become the spontaneous expression of a life and a nature that is essentially humble.  It has not become his joy and only pleasure.

Can we get there?  Undoubtedly.  What will it be that brings us there?  That which brought Paul there as he dealt with the thorn in his flesh (2 Corinthians 12) - a new revelation of the Lord Jesus - who he is and how he loves.

MCF:  Looking inward, then, does not help us grow in this process as much as looking upward.

AM:  Upward, yes.  The highest lesson a believer has to learn is humility.  Oh, that every Christian who seeks to be holy and mature may remember this well!  There may be intense callings and fervent passion, and heavenly experiences, and yet, if it is not prevented by special dealings of the Lord, there may be an unconscious self-exaltation with it all.  Let us learn the lesson: the highest holiness and greatest maturity is the deepest humility.  It is indeed blessed, the deepest happiness of heaven, to be be so free from self that whatever is said of us or done to us is lost and swalloed up in the thought that Jesus is all.

MCF:  Humiliation in itself is not pleasurable, but it is "swallowed up" in the joy of sharing in Jesus' glory and goodness.  Can this joy in Christ really be enough to swallow up any trouble?

AM:  Let us trust him who took charge of Paul to take charge of us too.  He who cared from him will care for us too.  He watches over us with a jealous, loving care, "lest we exalt ourselves."  Pride kills.  He seeks to show us that evil and deliver us from it.  In such trial and weakness and trouble, we learn his grace is all, his strength is made perfect in our weakness, his presence fills and satisfies our emptiness.  This is the secret of humility that never fails.

MCF:  Any final words about happiness and humility?

AM:  The humble person has learned the secret of abiding happiness .  The weaker he feels, the lower he sinks, the greater his humiliations appear, the more the power and the presence of Christ are his possession.  As he learns to say, "I am nothing," the word of his Lord brings ever deeper joy: "My grace is sufficient for you."

The humility of Jesus is our salvation: Jesus himself is our humility.  Our humility is his care and his work.  Let us choose to be weak, to be low, to be nothing.  Let humility be to us joy and gladness.  Let us gladly glory and take pleasure in weakness in all that can humble us so the power of Christ will rest upon us.  We will find the deepest humility is the secret of the truest happiness, of a joy that nothing can destroy.