The Answer to Pride
What is the antidote to our pride?
Verse of the Day
‘Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.’
Today’s Devotional
Humility. The antidote for our pride is humility. But that is much easier to say than to fully understand and put into practice. The only way I know to truly grasp something is to study it, which works best when I look at something from all different angles.
We are going to spend some time over the next several days looking at humility from as many angles as we can. Because if humility is the answer to our pride, and pride is something God opposes, then I want to know as much as I can about humility.
I mentioned on the first day of our pride study that the answer to pride is not what we might think. So saying that the answer is “humility” is rather anticlimactic. But, just like pride has many forms and symptoms, so does humility. I like to think of this as a recipe. If I want to bake a delicious cake, then I need to include all of the ingredients, not just the ones I have handy. Over the next few days, we will be looking at the recipe for humility. Some “ingredients” may be simple and rather easy to acquire, some may be a little more challenging.
Sometimes the best way to learn something is to look for examples. I need to be able to see what humility looks like. I need to see it being lived out to begin to wrap my brain around it. If you read the posts from the last few days, then you have already been exposed to many examples of how a person of humility acts in certain situations. We (I) need to keep studying these things so that I can put them into practice.
Samuel Brengle, who was an early Salvation Army official, was once introduced as the “Great Dr. Brengle.” He later wrote in his diary, “If I appear great in their eyes, the Lord is most graciously helping me to see how absolutely nothing I am without Him, and helping me to keep little in my own eyes. He does use me. But I am so concerned that He uses me and that it is not of me the work is done. The ax cannot boast of the trees it has cut down. It could do nothing but for the woodsman. He made it, he sharpened it, and he used it. The moment he throws it aside, it becomes only old iron. O, that I may never lose sight of this.”
We are each merely an ax in the hands of the Woodsman. If we, for even one second, forget our role and our place before God, then we are likely veering into pride.
Looking at today’s verse, we are told to humble ourselves before God. So our humility must begin with God, before God, in our relationship with Him. We come before Him and bow low in reverence and awe. He is so mighty and still chooses each one of us every single day.
I had the privilege of watching a beautiful sunset last night. My heart could not contain my joy over the display of God’s majesty. I cannot, even on my very best day, create a sunset. Seeing God’s majesty on display reminds me of His greatness.
Perhaps humbling myself before God is as simple as praising His greatness. Humility seeks no glory. Humility gives all glory to God. Bibleref.com puts it this way: “Jesus, God Himself, refused to fight for His right to be glorified. He “made himself nothing” and became a servant, even to death. Then, when the time was right, the Father exalted Jesus to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name. God calls us to walk that same path: Humility today, God’s glory forever.”
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
How can you humble yourself before God today?
How can you acknowledge God’s majesty?
Where have you been seeking glory for yourself? How can you give all of that glory to God instead?
How can you “make yourself nothing” today?
How can you see yourself as an ax in the hands of the Woodsman today?