Tag Archives: humility

Make this Our Only Boast: What God Has Won

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Andrea Graham| Comments Off

“Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.” (Proverbs 27:1)

We take so much for granted in life. We make our plans and we carry them out. We schedule things in advance, expecting tomorrow to be available. To a certain extent, modern life requires this, but the day will come we are reminded that we don’t know everything. We can’t account for everything. So we shouldn’t be smug, resting on the laurels we expect to receive tomorrow like we’ve already won today. Bragging about our plans for the future, taking pride in our goals and ambitions, is setting ourselves up for failure. No matter how realistic we are in dreaming big, eventualities may rise that waylay us. We could get excited and run ahead of God and find, when we get to tomorrow, he had other plans.

God knows his plans for tomorrow, but we do not. Only God knows what the broken fallen world will throw at us and how he plans to navigate us around it and bring us peace and strengthened character, and him glory, and the kingdom advanced–if we trust him. This is why James instructed us to say, “If the Lord wills, I will do this and that.”

Dream big, but don’t count on anything but this: what God has specifically promised us, that he will do. However, we may not know how he will do it, and we rarely know when. We still can’t boast in tomorrow. We can only know that one day we will win a crown in Heaven. We will be a saint dwelling in a glorified body like our risen Lord’s, set free from the troubles and brokenness of this life.

If you’re Abraham or Sarah, and God’s promised you a child even though you’re old, you will have that baby. If you’re a slave in Egypt or Babylon, He will free you and deliver you to the land he has promised, even if he has to part oceans or soften the hearts of unbelieving kings. If you’re Elijah, Elisha, Ezekiel, or Jeremiah, and, God has given you a message to deliver to his people, keep on working toward that goal, knowing he will work through you to bring it to those he wants to hear it.

Lord, grant us the humility and wisdom not to boast of the prizes we plan to win for the chickens that haven’t hatched yet, but please also give us the courage and faith to trust that what you have promised us and secured for us in the future, we will receive when you will it. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Posted in Bible and Theology, Faith, God's promises, Prayer and Devotions

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Don’t Think So Lowly Of Yourself!

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Andrea Graham| Comments Off

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”  Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. (1 Peter 5:5b-6)

I know what some of you are thinking: the title and this verse don’t match. Points to you for paying attention. Others I’m sure got only as far as the title before they stopped there, thinking, “Wait, that’s backwards, the bible tells us not to think too highly of ourselves.”

Yes, it does, but if you’re mentally correcting me,  you’re likely not afflicted with arrogance in reality and likely in no need of a lesson on humility. Our focus today is the part about the humble being exalted by God at the proper time.

Thing is, too many of us haven’t been taught humility right. We’ve been told to get our faces down on the floor and keep them there by abusers who misuse the bible to keep us “in our place,” which is in their control and serving them rather than God. Abusers trained us to equate being humble with thinking lowly of ourselves. So the proper time comes, and  God sends someone to come to us and lift us up as he promised, we rebel against His will and reject him.

Maybe we don’t out right rebuke the vessel of his grace, but we usually do politely ignore the person “tempting me to sinful pride” or we subtly reject God with an audaciously hypocritical, “thank the Lord.” We may claim we’re only instructing a misguided person to give credit where credit is due. In reality, we’re not the Lord and can’t know for sure that they haven’t offered him thanks, too. So we have no business saying something so rude and judgmental. That answer springs from spiritual arrogance, not humility.

The true humble answer to gratitude and/or praise is a sincere “You’re welcome” or “Thank you.” After the simple courtesy, if the person isn’t a believer, by all means, take the opportunity to tell them about the hope within you, if God leads.

On the flip side, while pride leads to a fall, thinking lowly of ourselves follows being already fallen and keeps us unable to get up because we think we can’t.

We tell ourselves we’re losers. We tell ourselves we can’t win. We can’t lose weight. We can’t stop getting drunk all of the time. We can’t resist the temptation to sin sexually. We can’t control our tempers. We can’t, we can’t, we can’t.

Brothers and sisters, whatever weakness we are struggling with today, telling ourselves we can’t overcome it, God is holding out his hand to us, and saying  to stop thinking so lowly of ourselves. Confess your weakness to God, accept the affirmation and encouragement he offers, and let him exalt you from the low position of guilty sinner to the saint on high that you are in Christ by grace.

Lord, forgive us for thinking too lowly of ourselves. Help us to stop seeing ourselves through the darkness of the failures, flaws, and mistakes of the past and present. Help us to focus on the good work you are doing in us and to believe that is who we truly are and who we can become with your spirit of power, love, and self control/sound mind in us. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

 

Posted in Abuse, Addictions, God's promises, Grace, Prayer and Devotions, Sin and Holiness

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God Promised the Rain, If We Pray–Humbly.

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Andrea Graham| Comments Off

“Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God,for he has given the early rain for your vindication; he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the latter rain, as before.” (Joel 2:23)

This comes at a time when God’s people are being oppressed by enemies from the literal North and have been, not coincidentally, far from God and have turned from his ways to practice what the surrounding unbelieving culture does. God calls for his people to return to him with all their hearts, to call everyone together, and pray for God to spare them from the oppressor threatening to destroy them as a people.

It is in prophetic response to the expected obedience to this word that he tells us ahead of the time the answer to the prayer we’ve been commanded to pray: he will drive out the oppressor, restore their fruitfulness and feed them until they are satisfied of their hunger–and bring the rains in season. It appears in Israel there are two rainy seasons during which crops can be grown. Rain is water, and water is life, especially in the dessert. It means the crops can grow and that means food on the table and that means your family won’t starve.

God we know cares about our spiritual growth and the state of our souls. We can trust he means to deliver us from the power of the spiritual oppressor and make his people spiritually fruitful and and maturing in him. But at the time this was written, his people needed literal deliverance and literal rain–and he gave them.

Let’s not kid ourselves–God didn’t promise us a billion dollars in the bank, a swimming pool in the yard, and a red mustang convertible in the drive. Actually, he promised us it’d be hard and sometimes even painful in this life. But he will meet our physical needs and give us our literal daily bread as well as feeding our souls daily of his life-giving spirit.

This was, however, a conditional promise, dependent on us turning from the ways of the culture around us, follow God with our whole hearts, and humbly ask Daddy for his help, not obnoxiously demand and claim our “due inheritance.”

Posted in God's promises, Prayer and Devotions

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Does the Bible Advocate Mind Control/Group Think?

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Andrea Graham| Comments Off

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” (Philippians 2:1-2)

Paul writes these words from prison, where he is facing the possibility of being executed for treason due to his preaching that Jesus Christ is Lord, not Caesar, who claims deity and demands to be worshiped. Paul first seeks to reassure the Philippians that God is using his imprisonment to advance the gospel, and that he rejoices at this even if others are preaching it out of rivalry with him. He also reassures them of his own predicament, saying he is prepared to die and gain Heaven, but is expecting deliverance to continue his ministry on Earth.

Now he turns to how they can encourage and comfort him (likely answering a question), and says they can do so by “completing his joy” and being of the same mind. This references back to what he rejoiced at in the prior chapter: Christ being proclaimed. He doesn’t want them to all be clones of each other. He wants to see their whole church grow to full maturity in Christ, and as an outgrowth of this for them to all be at peace with each other and obtain doctrinal harmony. From the perspective of the Jewish rabbinical tradition that Paul comes out of, he wants to see his own disciples mature to be like the rabbi Jesus that he has himself learned to be like and walk in the footsteps of.

Again, this is a mutual one another condition: both the teacher and the student are called to love one another as Christ loved us and be humble, not acting from conceit or rivalry. The overseer (be it pastor, employer, parent, or spouse) is to be looking out for the flock’s interests, not telling the flock not to look out for their own interests while the overseer looks out for their own interest, acts like they think you were put on this earth to worship/serve them, and conceitedly equates all of their beliefs with the mind of Christ everyone should have. These abusive overseers will point out Paul told his flock to imitate him, but Paul was imitating Jesus and they clearly are not.

Likewise, the spiritually abusive will tell you to count others more significant than yourself, while positioning themselves as being the most significant person in the church. Doing that evidences that they hypocritically count themselves as the most significant person in the church.

Keep watch and do not be deceived if you encounter these lies from the wolves in sheep’s clothing  who steal God’s sheep for themselves and devour their flock. If our churches, families, and para-church organizations are going to seek to obtain the goal of being one mind, we must all be seeking God’s mind. Those who would have you submit to them must prove they truly have the mind of Christ and indeed humbly count themselves least by being the servant of all rather than the controller of all. They must in their actions intimate Christ, who washed his disciples’ feet and gave even his literal life for those he would rule.

Posted in Abuse, Legalism, Prayer and Devotions

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