Humility

Yesterday at church I heard a sermon that made me think about humility. After the service, my friend and I were discussing humility and recognizing how easy it is to get prideful and think we're doing great on our own, etc. It's so easy to get caught up in thinking that we are doing good - as if we are doing it ourselves and earning God's favour. In my daily devotions, the past few days have been focusing on the Beatitudes - the first of which reminds us that we cannot do good on our own. I combined all that was said about the first Beatitude from the several readings, and am going to share that today. :)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).
To be poor in spirit is to realize what state you are in before God. It is to be actively conscious of your total inability to walk with Him, please Him, or serve Him. To be poor in spirit is to abandon all pretense and to acknowledge your total dependence upon God for vindication from your sins. To be poor in spirit is to cry out with the apostle Paul, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Romans 7:18).
… Humanity truly is poor in spirit—poor beyond our reckoning. Until people see their utter poverty of spirit, they are not ready for the kingdom of heaven. …When we recognize that we are utterly powerless and completely destitute, and we throw ourselves on God’s mercy, He hears our prayers and transforms our lives.
… Poverty of spirit is not to be some passing emotional experience or a one-time event in the life of a child of God. Rather, it is a whole way of life, a life of total dependence upon Him. It is continually realizing that in and of yourself you could never please God. You could never meet His standards of righteousness. Only by God’s gift of His Spirit and by walking in the Spirit can you please Him. Can you identify influences or attitudes in your life that might be keeping you from seeing your true poverty of spirit? What are they? Wealth? Worldly wisdom? Strong natural abilities? Your own righteousness? … go before the Lord; tell Him you choose to surrender these attitudes or things to Him, and acknowledge your complete and utter dependence on Him.