8He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8 (ESV)
Strife and anxiety in Christian lives today seem to be a result of a lot of unanswered questions. It is seen in those that have given up on church and living a mediocre spiritual life and those whom have a passion to grow in their Christian life and be all they can for their God. This strife and anxiety occurs at different levels in both extremes of these two categories of Christian people. However, they really aren’t categories the two types of people previously described are the two ends of a continuum that encompass all of God’s Children, the Redeemed, the Born Again.
So where does this strife and anxiety come from? Often for the Christian that has given up it comes from the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the truth that God has placed in their heart that they are not where they should be in the area of spirituality and their relationship with God. Through selfishness, of themselves or others, they focus on the hurts, disappointment and grief of past experiences and wrongly relate that to what it means to be a Christian. For the growing and hungry-for-more Christian it may be the realization that there is more and the desire to get there brings frustration, confusion and disappointment primarily in themselves. Are you on this line somewhere?
So what is the answer? What is the key to the resolution of this strife and anxiety? For years I have noticed the various ways understand and practice humility. The prophet Micah made walking the Christian life pretty clear, “to do justice (what is right), to love kindness (to practice the first and second commandment), and to walk (live, have a relationship) humbly with your God.” I think the words “walk humbly” (in humility) is a key here in this truth. Being humble and the practice of humility is so often misunderstood. It is interesting to me that the English word humility is directly parallel to only one word in both the Hebrew and the Greek. Often you have many words that relate when doing a word study. The Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary says humility is ‘The personal quality of being free from arrogance and pride and having an accurate estimate of one’s worth.”[1]
Max Lucado writes in his Everyday Blessings devotional[2] “True humility is not thinking lowly of yourself but thinking accurately of yourself. The humble heart does not say, “I can’t do anything.” But rather, “I can’t do everything. I know my part and am happy to do it.””
The Word of God says that “the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.” Numbers 12:3 (NKJV), now that is a model for humility. In my Christian walk I have made my humility a spiritual discipline, keeping my mind focused in what I think the area of humility is. I have also seen this same discipline practiced to a point of when a person is in the church area their faces are so contrite and burdened they look like they have just lost everything. This is a incorrect way of practicing humility and while on the other end of the spectrum there are people who seem to have no humility, it is all about them. So where do you fit on this continuum?
So maybe your prayer today is to be, “Lord Jesus, teach me the truth in the application of my walk today how to be humble before you and before those I encounter today. Show me how to walk humbly with and before You.
