The strength of humility

"Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed
than to share plunder with the proud."

-- Proverbs 16:18,19 (NIV)

"Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited."
(For example, we have the right to feel angry and confused
about other people and their actions and choices, but we
do not ever have the right to be hurtful or vengeful,
and if we honor that, the right - and latitude
others grant you - to be direct grows.)

-- Jean Jacques Rousseau

"Pride ends in (weakness and) destruction; humility ends in (strength and) honour."

-- Proverbs 18:12

"Humility leads to strength and not to weakness. It is the highest form of self-respect to admit mistakes and to make amends for them."

-- John Davis McCloy

"Many people believe that humility is the opposite of pride, when, in fact, it is a point of equilibrium. The opposite of pride is actually a lack of self-esteem. A humble person is totally different from a person who cannot recognize and appreciate himself as part of this worlds’ true marvels and a masterpiece of God's creativity."

-- Rabino Nilton Bonder

"The first test of a truly great man is his humility and humor. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do (as well as what shouldn't be said or done). By humor I mean his refusal to take himself too seriously at any time, especially when he feels very right about what's wrong."

-- John Ruskin

"A humble man can do great things with an uncommon perfection because he is no longer concerned about incidentals, like his own interests and his own reputation, and therefore he no longer needs to waste his efforts in defending or explaining them. For a humble man is not afraid of his failure - in fact, he expects it, and in knowing this he's not afraid of anything, even of himself, since perfect humility implies perfect confidence in the awesome power of God before Whom no other power has any lasting meaning and for Whom there is no such thing as an impossible obstacle. Humility and a willingness to be wrong, to learn, to grow in maturity, which brings an even greater humility, is the surest sign of spiritual strength."

-- Thomas Merton


STEP SEVEN (in AA's Twelve Steps): "I humbly asked God to remove my shortcomings." This one makes many people very uncomfortable. They tend to choke on the word "humility." That word sets off all sorts of alarm bells inside us. It's like waving a great big red flag in front of a mean longhorn bull. We have somehow grown to equate humility with the word, "doormat." The last truth we're prepared to admit is that "Humility puts us on the road to wholeness, pride locks us into denial and defeat." Humility is a great word for others but a bad word for ourselves.

STEP SEVEN: Do we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings? The emphasis is on "humbly" ask. Millions ask every day but few ask humbly. Why is humility such a bitter pill to swallow? Paul answered that question rather eloquently when he wrote to young Timothy in 2 Tim 3:2, "For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, (KJV)."

One reason humility is such a bitter pill for us to swallow is because we want to be God and have the world revolve around us. Why would we stumble over humility if it puts us on the road to wholeness? It's because our strength comes from obedience to God's word, not our own desires and willfulness. The true test of humility is how we receive truth from God. What goes on inside of us when we're brought face to face with truth we don't want to obey? We begin to discover that God is more than a security blanket that we occasional take to bed with us when and if we remember to. He's more than a great big Sugar-Daddy up in the sky. We come to realize that God wants to be God in our life and to live in every room in the house of our life. As a matter of fact, our Creator and Saviour wants to take control and guide every step we take, to be at the center of everything, for our benefit. We discover that God views life from a much different perspective than we view it, and He is prepared to totally live it for us, if only we would ask Him to. He didn't ask for the best or biggest part of us; He asked for all of it.

-- from a church sermon on AA's "Step 7"


I sure don't have a clue,
And yet I'll insist that I do.
My "right thoughts" 're so few.
I must humbly ask Him to renew
my windswept mind and my mileau,
so my relationships don't end up so few
that I've nowhere to go & nothing left to do.

-- Yours Truly,
in a very humble moment of truth,
on my knees in prayer,
like a little boy


People do stuff, God. I wish they'd do different things. I sometimes wish I'd do different things. We're all such a mess. We don't really know what we're doing, especially when we're trying so hard to act so convincing that we do. We really don't have a clue. Please help by giving us one or two, if you wouldn't mind and have a few to spare. We love You and trust You. We want to love others like You asked, but we have to feel Your presence first. We get so scared of each other. Please make it clear that You are here with us, and that Your love is real and able to save us from ourselves.

"Humility is to make a right estimate
of oneself before God and other people."

-- C.H. Spurgeon

The oldest re-tread yet

Wow! This one is from almost 6 years ago! It was one of my first entries in the Revolution Consulting blog, back before most people knew what a blog even was, way back in April, 2002, on the subject of "humility," and when I first sent it out, I'm not so sure I really "got" what it meant, but I am finally coming to understand the overwhelming and quite liberating truth about humility. I remember the inner "wall" that led me to write this one like it was yesterday, and I'm experiencing that memory from a whole new and different perspective, 6 years later.

Humility

"The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient."

-- St. Augustine

We all have relationships and situations where we feel hopelessly incompetent - where, despite our best intentions, things just keep backfiring and blowing up in our face. I've worked with several of you this week in just such situations, and I've experienced one myself today. The automatic response is typically to feel angry, judgmental, and/or resentful, but these are just reflections of our own inner boundaries - those emotions that show us the limits of our own ability to listen, love, understand, and transform. Instead of giving in to these feelings, I'd like to take just a moment to honor those who show us our inner walls - the very ends of ourselves. By clarifying for us the "insufficiency of our merit" in situations that are simply beyond our current capabilities, they enable us to improve the future targeting of our best intentions, to grow in strength and wisdom, and to ultimately learn how to forgive ourselves, let go, and move on.

A timely treatise on humility


"In some sense we're all hypocrites in transition."

-- Erwin McManus

"We'd like to be humble ... but what if no one really notices?"

-- John Ortberg

"Greatness lies not in loudly trying to 'be' somebody but in quietly trying to 'help' somebody."

-- Unknown

"A humble knowledge of ourselves is a surer way to God than is the search for depth of learning."

-- Thomas a'Kempis

"God is not proud ... He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him."

-- CS Lewis

"Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility."

-- Saint Augustine

"The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but how aware you are of your own impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace."

-- Phillip Yancey

"Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but it screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honor and recognition."

-- Richard Foster

"The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. He has accepted God's estimate of his own life: In himself, nothing; In God, everything. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him, and he has stopped caring or worrying about that."

-- A.W. Tozer

"I am sure that there are many Christians who will confess that their experience has been very much like my own — that we had long known the Lord without realizing that meekness and lowliness of heart should be the distinguishing feature of the disciple, as they were of the Master. Such humility is not a thing that will come on its own; it must be made the object of special desire, prayer, faith, and daily practice."

-- Andrew Murray

"We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied, enriched, and strengthened us in our success, and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to actually pray in earnest to the God that made us."

-- Abraham Lincoln

Humility is a tricky thing. If you think you have it, you obviously don't. If you know you don't, thinking that's the right answer, you're wrong. Humility is not a state you can actually ever achieve; it's a surrendered preparedness for grace, a quiet waiting for the other shoe to drop right on your ego, which you know will only attempt to rise up again, only to be stomped on again with a loving, but pulverizing foot. Humility is a growing awareness and acceptance of how much you need that pulverizing, and how little public acknowledgement or recognition you need about that, such that you are freed up to meekly and quietly serve.