Day 5: Humility Begins with Hearing

Our humbling, at God’s lead, involves our minds and hearts and wills and behaviors. And while there is no simple program for making ourselves truly humble, God has given us examples to follow. He has also given us some practices and patterns to cultivate and sustain.

Note well that developing habits and rhythms of life that ready us to receive God’s initiative is not the same as, but a far cry from, setting out on our initiative to develop humility. The “habits of grace” that God’s word commands for our preparation for self-humbling are not directions for securing humility. Habits that cultivate in us sensitivity to God’s grace and initiative are not a “get it done” approach to Christian humility. Nor is humility something we only wait on, to be given us passively.

Humility is not our doing without God’s initiative and empowering, and it’s not something he acts exclusively to do for us, which we receive passively. Perhaps the single most important habit we can develop, or at least the first and primary means God uses, is the daily and weekly welcoming of his word in the Scriptures.

Every new morning presents a fresh opportunity to bend our hearts toward humility — or to re-calcify them in our native pride.

Each rising sun brings with it the question, Will you try to handle this day on your own, or re-consecrate yourself with a renewed declaration of dependence? And in particular, Will you begin this day with the sound of God’s voice, the whispers of your own, or the words of someone else? 

Some voice will be the first you hear — and the first you heed for the day’s direction. Will it be yours? Will it be the opinions and demands of fellow humans? Will it be the world’s voice through various media — the voices of political polemics on news media, the voices of comparison and complaint on social media, the voices of self-help in popular podcasts? Or will it be the only words that truly give life?

Welcoming God’s word, or rejecting it, not only happens at the top of every day, but also the top of every week. Each Lord’s Day corporate gathering of the church offers a new opportunity to bow gladly beneath the hearing and proclamation of God’s word, or bow up with the pride of our own ideas. How we hear each Scripture read, and sermon preached, conditions our souls, for better or worse, toward humility or self-confidence.

Whether a morning reading, or a Sunday sermon, or a verse spoken and applied by a friend, we must decide how we will respond to God’s word. What will be our reflex to divine initiative when we hear the voice of God in Scripture? What instinctive response will we have to words from God that confront our sin and land on us as unpleasant, even painful? Will we respond with reverence and glad-hearted submission? Will we make a habit of welcoming God’s word, or subtly resisting it?

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This plan was adapted from another resource. Learn more at humbledbook.com.