The Forgotten Word

 Humility.  Do we know this word exits?  If so, do we know the meaning?  In looking it up for this post, I was struck by one definition that makes my case clear.  Unassertiveness!  Unassertiveness was defined as a person "not having or showing a confident and forceful personality."  Oh my!  I could just end right there and my point be made.  

As a new believer in Christ back in the mid-seventies, the pastor of the church I attended gave the following definition of "humility": power under control.  That is a far cry from the above dictionary definition.  But if you read the gospels, you will see that displayed by Jesus time and time again. One such demonstration was when He took the basin and towel and washed the disciples feet. (John 13) God, in the flesh, washed the nasty feet of lowly men.   Jesus, by His example, revealed the embodiment of humility in order to teach us, as believers how that looked.  

Last week, on Sunday, our pastor brought out that passage in all its revealing, raw and ugly evidence of our sin-embedded flesh.  We must see ourselves in light of Christ, in order to a ask Him for help each day in our sanctification.  We must know what we really are in order to lay at the throne of grace for continued help in this process.  Each day, we see the depth, and each day, He bestows His power to change us.  That is the freeing beauty of the release of the heavy chains of sin.  With that comes great rejoicing and new strength for the battle ahead until He brings us to Himself.

In his book, Call Unto Me, Charles Spurgeon entitles one of his sermons, "Humility the Friend of Prayer". He uses Genesis 32:10 as his reference.  Jacob, of whom God refers to over and over in scripture, is the subject of that passage.  And Spurgeon chides other pastors and teachers who decry Jacob as the scoundrel.  He writes, Jacob "was at times crafty, but God is not ashamed to be called his God" and "no fellow-believer has any right to be ashamed of Jacob.  He was a man full of energy, active, enduring, resolute, and hence his infirmities become more conspicuous than they would have been in a quieter and more restful nature...but he was a master of the art of prayer, and he that can pray well is a princely man."

Jacob's prayer in this passage is, "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which Thou hast shown Thy servant."  This is power under control.  And for all our pointing fingers at the sins of other believers, this is truly a display of the attitude of a man who knew he was needy and powerless without God.  And as Jesus washed those dirt-caked feet, that dirt from which God in His power made us, we must fall on our face before Him, in both adoration and pleading for the change that only He can create in us.