The Humility of Christ:
“Adam ate the fruit of his own pride and died, we eat the fruit of Christ’s humility and live.”
Week 10 Day 4
Pray:
Ask God to reorient you to Himself. Confess any known sin. Thank Him for His forgiveness. Be still and reflect on Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s Word. Pray for others in your life that they, too, would know and love God today.
Read:
Phil. 2:3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross! 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Reflect:
How does humility impact obedience? Surely sin is pride, so obedience is humility. Sin believes you know better than God what will lead to your own fulfillment and happiness. In order to believe you know better than God, you have to somehow, maybe subconsciously, believe you are smarter than him. Or, perhaps, if he just had all the facts, he would side with you. However, sin often isn’t that well thought through. Sometimes it is just people wanting what they want in spite of the facts of the matter. But, how do we come to want what we should not want and to not want what we should want? Pride seems to be a key factor. We are used to believing ourselves. When our thoughts or emotions tell us something is real or true we are accustomed to believing it rather than subjecting it to the truth of God. Sometimes people will say “I know better…but.” How is it that we “know…but?” If we know, actually know, won’t we act in line with that knowledge? Sometimes another factor comes into play. We have practiced pride so long, in the form of believing ourselves implicitly, that we have trained our mind and even our will to do what seems right for us to do. What are we to do? To start with, humble yourself today. Admit your absolute need for God, to God. Absolute means total. Without him, you have and are nothing. Confess your long-held pride in all its forms. Even insecurity and feelings of inferiority are a form of pride. Confess all of it to him. Then, enter into a pattern of retraining your reflexes for humility. Confess pride every time it appears in your life. Choose the humility of obedience. Christ did not sin, but he faced temptation with the same advantages you have…a will, a set of desires, the opportunity to choose, the Holy Spirit, and the word of God. He humbled himself to obedience on the cross. This was the culmination of a life of training for the humility of obedience. Use the resources God has made available to you and close the gap in your life. Train for obedience, humble yourself before God and others.
Pray:
(Personalize this prayer today; make it specific to the circumstances that face you.)
Ask God to lead you through His Spirit as you go through your day. Ask Him to bring to mind the truth of the gospel and its implications for what you will encounter today. Tell Him “Yes” to His will and ask Him for His power and protection to live this “yes.” Ask God to create and reveal opportunities to proclaim the good news today.