Humility

This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Humility by Andrew Murray Chapter 12. Humility and Exaltation He that humbleth himself shall be exalted. Luke 14.11.18-14 God giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he shall exalt you. James 4.6.10 Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. 1 Peter 5.6 Just yesterday I was asked the question, how am I to conquer this pride? The answer was simple. Two things are needed. Do what God says is your work. Humble yourself. Also trust him to do what he says is his work. I will exalt you. The command is clear. Humble yourself. That does not mean that it is your work to conquer and cast out the pride of your nature, and somehow form within yourself the lowliness of the Holy Jesus. No, this is God's work, being the essential element of that exaltation, wherein he lifts you up into the real likeness of the Beloved Son. What the command does mean is this. Take every opportunity of humbling yourself before God and man. In confidence of the grace that is already working in you, in assurance of the more grace for victory that is coming, and up to the light that conscience each time flashes upon the pride of the heart and its workings, despite all there may be of failure and falling, stand persistently as under the unchanging command. Humble yourself. Accept with gratitude everything that God allows from within or without, from friend or enemy, in nature or in grace, to remind you of your need of humbling and to help you to it. Reckon humility to be indeed the mother virtue. Your very first duty before God, the one perpetual safeguard of the soul, and set your heart upon it as the source of all blessing. The promise is divine and sure. He that humbleth himself shall be exalted. See that you do the one thing God asks. Humble yourself. God will see that he does the one thing he has promised. He will give more grace. And he will exalt you in due time. All God's dealings with man are characterized by two stages. There is the time of preparation, when command and promise, with the mingled experience of effort and impotence, of failure and partial success, with the holy expectancy of something better which these awaken, train and discipline men for a higher stage. Then comes the time of fulfillment, when faith inherits the promise and enjoys what it had so often struggled for in vain. This law holds good in every part of the Christian life and in the pursuit of every separate virtue. And that because it is grounded in the very nature of things. In all that concerns our redemption, God must needs take the initiative. When that has been done, man's turn comes. In the effort to reach obedience and attainment, a person must learn to know his impotence. In self-despair, die to himself and thus be fitted voluntarily and intelligently to receive from God the end, the completion of that which he had accepted the beginning of in ignorance. So God, who had been the beginning long before the individual rightly knew him or fully understood what his purpose was, is longed for and welcomed as the end, as the all in all. Even as this is true regarding salvation, so also in the pursuit of humility. To every Christian the command comes from the throne of God himself, humble yourself. The earnest attempt to listen and obey will be rewarded, yes, rewarded, with the painful discovery of two things, the one, what depth of pride that is, unwillingness to count oneself to be nothing, to submit absolutely to God. There was that one never knew. The other, what utter impotence there is in all our efforts and in all our prayers too for God's help to destroy the hideous monster. Blessed is the man who now learns to put his hope in God and to persevere notwithstanding all the power of pride within him in acts of humiliation before God and men. We know the law of human nature. Acts produce habits, habits breed dispositions, dispositions form the will, and the rightly formed will is character. It is no different in the work of grace. As acts persistently repeated beget habits and dispositions and these strengthen the will. He who works both to will and to do comes with his mighty power and spirit and the humbling of the proud heart with which the penitent saint has cast himself so often before God is rewarded with the more grace of the humble heart in which the spirit of Jesus has conquered and brought the new nature to its maturity and where he, the meek and lowly one, now dwells forever. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and He will exalt you. And wherein does the exaltation consist? The highest glory of the creature is in being only a vessel to receive and enjoy and show forth the glory of God. It can do this only as it is willing to be nothing in itself, that God may be all. Water always fills first the lowest places. The lower, the emptier a man lies before God, the speedier and the fuller will be the inflow of the divine glory. The exaltation God promises cannot be any external thing apart from Himself. No, all that He has to give or can give is only more of Himself, Himself, to take more complete possession. The exaltation is not, like an earthly prize, something arbitrary in no necessary connection with the conduct to be rewarded. No, but it is in its very nature the effect and result of the humbling of ourselves. It is nothing but the gift of such a divine indwelling humility, such a conformity to and possession of the humility of the Lamb of God, as fits us for receiving fully the indwelling of God. He that humbleth himself shall be exalted. Of the truth of these words, Jesus Himself is the proof. Of the certainty of their fulfillment to us, He is the pledge. Let us take His yoke upon us and learn of Him, for He is meek and lowly of heart. If we are but willing to stoop to Him, as He has stooped to us, He will yet stoop to each one of us again, and we shall find ourselves not unequally yoked with Him. As we enter deeper into the fellowship of His humiliation and either humble ourselves or bear the humbling of men, we can count upon it that the Spirit of His exaltation, the Spirit of God and of glory, will rest upon us. The presence and the power of the glorified Christ will come to them that are on humble spirit. When God can again have His rightful place in us, He will lift us up. Make His glory your care in humbling yourself. He will make your glory His care in perfecting your humility and breathing into you as your abiding life the very Spirit of His Son. As the all-pervading life of God possesses you, there will be nothing so natural and nothing so sweet as to be nothing with not a thought or wish for self, because all is occupied with Him who fills all. Most gladly will I glory in my weakness that the strength of Christ may rest upon me. Brother, sister, have we not here the reason that our consecration and our faith have availed so little in the pursuit of holiness? It was by self and its strength that the work was done under the name of faith, and it was for self and its happiness that God was called in. It was unconsciously, but still truly, in self and its holiness that the soul rejoiced. We never knew that humility, absolute abiding, Christlike humility and self-effacement, pervading and marking our whole life with God and man, was the most essential element of the vitality of the holiness we sought for. It is only in the possession of God that I lose myself, and it is in the height and breadth and glory of the sunshine that the littleness of the dust particle, playing in its beams, is seen, even so humility is the taking of our place in God's presence to be nothing but a mote dwelling in the sunlight of His love. How great is God! How small am I! Lost, swallowed up in love's immensity, God only there, not I. May God teach us to believe that to be humble and to be nothing in His presence is the highest attainment and fullest blessing of the Christian life. He speaks to us, I dwell in the high and holy place, and with Him that is a contrite and humble spirit. May this be our portion. Oh, to be emptier, lowlier, mean, unnoticed and unknown, and to God a vessel holier, filled with Christ and Christ alone. A prayer for humility. I will here give you an infallible touchstone that will try all to the truth. It is this. Retire from the world and all conversation, only for one month. Neither write nor read nor debate anything with yourself. Stop all the former workings of your heart and mind, and with all the strength of your heart stand all this month, as continually as you can, in the following form of prayer to God. Offer it frequently on your knees, but whether sitting, walking or standing, be always inwardly longing and earnestly praying this one prayer to God, that of His great goodness He would make known to you, and take from your heart every kind and form and degree of pride, whether it be from evil spirits or your own corrupt nature, and that He would awaken in you the deepest depth and truth of that humility which can make you capable of His light and Holy Spirit. Reject every thought but what of waiting and praying in the matter from the bottom of your heart with such truth and earnestness as people in torment wish to pray in order to be delivered from it. If you can and will give yourself up in truth and sincerity to this spirit of prayer, I will venture to affirm that if you had twice as many evil spirits in you as Mary Magdalene had, they will all be cast out of you, and you will be forced with her to weep tears of love at the feet of the Holy Jesus.