Humility

Humility

“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18

I know a man with 5 daughters. My wife says it’s to keep him humble.

I just had a salutary lesson in pride and humility. An incident left me with severely dented pride which I had to swallow before I could forgive and then be forgiven myself. Pride arose because we were completely innocent for a change and righteous indignation turned rapidly to hurt pride. Satan never turns down a good opportunity to stir it up a bit, does he? And I fell for his ploy hook line and sinker.

Our pastor had prayed for us to have abounding grace a couple of days earlier but I’m sorry to say that my outrage saw no bounds and I exhausted grace very quickly. This left me nowhere to go except down the road of wounded pride. Fortunately, Holy Spirit convinced me to lay down my hurts and take up His offer of grace. This in turn led to forgiveness all round, even though it still hurts – but that is just me refusing to die to self and that again is a different story.

It’s pretty hard to be humble when any opposing spirit raises its ugly head. I mean, when are fairly sure you are in the right, it gets somewhat difficult to actually ignore the hurt, forgive your offender, and ‘turn the other cheek’. You have to actually decide not to take offence, to forgive, and to move on.

I have only ever met one person of whom it might be said that their very presence actually convicts me – rather like was once said of Smith Wigglesworth. This particular person is an amazing mixture of humility, wisdom, and leadership by example. This person is the epitome of loving your neighbour – he loves every person he meets and they somehow know it. He carries such a presence of Christ on his life that it is difficult to imagine that he is also a very normal man with many of the little foibles that go with ‘normality’.

Truly I can say that this man carries and anointing that I would like to have, and the presence of Christ like none other that I have ever met. Yet he carries it with true, self-sacrificial humility, always preferring others before himself, always generous with his praise and thanks and always having the time to speak to anyone who wants to speak to him.

Humility like this is a garment, a cloak, which the wearer carries with great dignity and a true reflection of his faith. What a contrast to the rest of us – most of the time. Humility is the epitome of dying to self and living only to Christ Jesus.

Lord help us all to behave with a little more humility every day.