Humility

Hi. I am back, after a tumultuous start to the year, and almost letting go of this viaion I have for this blog, I am back. Back with the quiet confidence of an athlete before a race: who breathes in and out slowly and reminds themselves that the arena is not where champions are made, but merely where they are revealed. And I look forward in hope, and trust and with joy because I know that the God who has been dealing bountifully with me will continue to do so: because it is who He is to give good gifts to His children.

Today, I want to talk a bit about humility: a virtue one writer describes as the absolute foundation without which we cannot see God. Indeed, if we think about it, how else can one draw near to God exept he realise that God is Lord, and we are not? And how else will one desire to seek Him, exept we realize that without him and outside him, life is meaningless: a pointless endurance of each day… that can only very briefly be brightened by vanishing pleasures.

I recently listened to a sermon where the speaker (Eric Johnson) put it this way; “Jesus is not on our lives as an accessory to make our lives better, but it is all about Him..” And that has struck me: because marvellous and to be desired are the many promises of God. Is it not a blessing to live in health, in peace, in abundance and in a place where we have victory over sin and destructive habits? Is it not something to long for, to walk in the fullness of the Spirit, and to see miracles and power today in the same way that they did then?

Indeed all these things make our lives better, and it is possible to seek and desire the blessing outside of the blesser: to seek the benefit of comfort, without seeking the comforter. Not that I would like for anyone to feel guilty, but rather realise this: to settle for the gifts without the giver is to settle for a much lesser gift.

It rains on the righteous and on the unrighteous—it is a gift of unconditional love: but only in His presence, is there fullness of joy. Only in His presence, can we experience that fullness of love that can still our hearts in the darkest storm, and we will know that we will be ok, and that our identity in Him as the beloved is secure. Only in Him, can we know that each gift merely reveals another facet of who He is, and that He has already demonstrated that He ia withholding nothing from us. Jesus Christ came in the flesh, born of the virgin Mary. And He died in my place, having won the victory, rising on the third day in the full assurance of salvation.

How can it not therefore be all about Him? Where not all things made by Him? And does He not hold all things together? Was not the fullness of the God-head pleased to dwell bodily in Him? Must not Christ have the Preeminance in all things? And is there a greater name by which man can be saved?

How then are we so easily bewitched so as to think that it is about making our lives better; and not about him?