Many of us fall into the trap of thinking more
highly of ourselves than we should. Even in social situations Jesus reminded us
to not seek a seat of honor because someone more distinguished might have been
invited and we could be asked to give up our seat. Jesus said, “For everyone
who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted”
(Luke 14:11 NIV). I have to laugh when I hear Jesus describe our worth, “Don’t
be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12:7b).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Helen Keller’s experience helps us to realize the full extent of humility and how it works in knowing the Lord. She went deaf and blind at nineteen months old. But the world continued around her all the same. The shapes of things and situations, colors, and sounds had no way into her mind. For a month after Anne Sullivan began working with her, she was only frustrated by all Anne’s attempts to introduce words to her. She had no idea what Anne was doing. Whatever was going on in her head had nothing to do with what Anne needed to be going on in her head. In fact, it probably had little to do with most realities going on around her.
-----But after a month of effort, Helen finally understood that all the finger trails Anne was drawing in her hand were assigned, unique representations of familiar objects she had placed in her other hand. When her mind stopped trying to relate to the finger trails in whatever terms it thought to relate and began relating in the terms Anne meant it to relate, she learned the concept of words, recognized their utility, exhausted Anne in teaching her more, and learned language.
-----Humility is a truth process. It is the willingness to reshape ideas, concepts, and beliefs according to new, relevant, and true information. It is the willingness to put the self into the place truth has prepared for it within any given situation or ideological context. It is also the unwillingness to reshape according to irrelevant and/or untrue information, or to put the self anywhere within a situation and/or ideological context which is not the place truth would put it. Humility is the process of surrendering to the truth.
-----It is an important process, because it is your soul’s doorway through which the truth of reality comes to you. Arrogance, its opposite, is the door within that doorway made of all your soul’s desires, ambitions, and ideologies maintained at all cost. The mind distorts all new information and perceptions of the outside world to fit the soul’s understanding. Therefore, the mind’s concept’s never will match reality as closely as they would if they had been formed from the humble process. “Seek the LORD, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the wrath of the LORD.” (Zephaniah 2:3)
-----That God told Moses He was “I AM THAT I AM” both indicates how little of God we can know as well as the mental condition of total humility necessary to know anything true of Him. We must be trained into the terms of who He is in the same surrender Helen finally made with a mind as free of preconceptions as hers was once blank.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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