Utumishi Blog

Its good to humble yourself – to clothe yourself with humility. It’s clearly commanded in the Old and New Testaments. It’s fitting for the children of a humble God. We should be bowing low, we should be practicing the spiritual disciplines, acknowledging our sinfulness and God’s greatness, cultivating a grateful dependence on Him, expressing gratitude, transferring all the glory to God, above all looking regularly at the Cross (C.J. Mahaney, Humility).

But what about God humbling us? I hear quite a bit about humbling ourselves under God’s mighty hand but far less about being humbled apart from or against our will. Speaking personally, far more often and more significant in my life has been God forcibly humbling me.

Again and again through the Bible you find the Lord humbling his people – both in encounters with him and as a means of drawing them back to him. He takes them through trials, he lets them get themselves completely entangled in their sin; he shows them their depravity and his glory; he cuts them down to lift them up.

Again and again Yahweh is the God who brings down the proud of all the earth. As Hannah sings, “He humbles and he exalts” (1 Sam. 2:7).

Look at Simon Peter – humbled at least five times – in his first encounter with Jesus (Luke 5:8), in his denial (Luke 22:61-62), in his reinstatement (John 21:17), in a vision (Acts 11) and in a public rebuke (Galatians 2).

Or, perhaps the premier example of being humbled – Nebuchadnezzar – the pagan king who ends up writing a chapter of the Bible. This is a man who’s made a 90 foot high gold statue of himself for public worship. And he’s stripped of everything – his worldwide kingdom, his glory, servants, friends, even his mind. Like a tree, he is cut down. And this is how he concludes: “those who walk in pride he is able to humble” (Daniel 4:37).

A church leader in the UK, now with the Lord, was once asked whether God could use someone from a lowly background in his service, he answered: “The only way God can use someone from a privileged background is when they have been deeply humbled.”

Here’s something from Keller on being humbled.