03 November 2023
A friend asked me about humility the other day.
I told him that the most important thing he should know is that humility cannot be had by discipline. It is born in you, or it isn't there at all. When the Holy Spirit awakens your spirit, your very first reaction is to fall on your face before the Lord. The first real conviction is that you are a sinner, wholly unworthy. That's humility.
It's possible for your flesh to become distracted and not pay attention, but humility is either there or it isn't. You can't put it there. It's part of the package; it's from the Holy Spirit. That's the first mark of His Presence. If you don't see humility in someone, you aren't seeing God.
The other primary mark of the Holy Spirit is compassion, love for His people. People who struggle with compassion are choking on themselves -- their fleshly nature. You see, the fleshly nature cannot be humble and cannot really care. It might appear to be love, but it's really a matter of the flesh valuing what someone else provides. The flesh doesn't even love itself, and has no clue how to be humble.
This is why we make so much of the dominance of the heart. Sure, your heart can be darkened by commitment to the wrong things. That's where we get all those verses about how the human heart is so awful. That's the heart without the Holy Spirit's Presence. Once awakened, your spirit speaks only through your heart. You must move your conscious awareness into your heart, because your brain/intellect is the flesh, and doesn't even have a connection to your spirit. The only way the Spirit of God speaks in your soul is in your heart.
At that point, you are creating a sense of distance from your own fleshly nature. It is no longer you. Instead, you are a spirit stuck in a fallen fleshly body, and that body needs constant watching and guidance. It does know how to surrender, but it hates doing it.
Eventually your convictions will drive you to seek closeness to the Lord. You will become very hungry for Him. This typically translates as a passion for knowing the Bible, but that's only part of it. You'll become a sucker for anyone who seems to have a real grip on God's peace, and you'll listen to whatever they tell you. This is a vulnerable time and predators will sense it, taking advantage of you.
In the next to last chapter of Proverbs, the sage Agur says some things that aren't easily discerned in an English translation. We get the feeling that a couple of people asked him about wisdom, because the first thing he does is deny being a wise man. While people can fake it, a real wise man always denies being wise.
He asks a series of rhetorical questions that amount to: No man is like God. No one is on His level. Then he says we should trust no one else. God is your Master; every human who makes a claim on your fleshly existence is just borrowing your services from God.
Can you see how humility is the other face of confidence in the Lord? If you are humble before Him, you are in the right place to receive a commission in His power. It's the only way you can know your divine calling. That's when you get the overwhelming sense that your mission cannot fail, even if you do.
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