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.