Basic HTML Version
Christian Humility, January 8
Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands,
ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
James 4:8
.
The Lord bears long with men, and when they manifest a determination
to follow their own judgments, the Lord allows them to do so. I have been
made to see the weakness and ignorance of fallen man, even in his best estate.
As man goes deeper and deeper in his studies, improving in learning the will
and ways of the Lord, he sees more of his own ignorance, thus revealing that
he has made decided progress from the beginning.
The nearer the Christian lives to God, the more he advances in divine
illumination of mind. He has more distinct sense of his own littleness, discerns
his defects of character, and sees his duty in the light in which God presents
it. The more closely he draws to Jesus, the more he has a near and clear
sense of his own defects which had before escaped his notice, and he sees the
necessity of humbling himself under the mighty hand of God. If lifted up it
will not be because he lifts and exalts himself, but because the Lord exalts
him. Having his eye fixed upon the purity and perfection of Christ Jesus,
and acknowledging and obeying God in all his ways, he is not blinded to his
own failures and imperfections. When his deportment in the eyes of men is
unblamable and irreprovable, God reads the intents and purposes of the heart.
Christian humility is a wonderful grace—the very antidote to the apostasy
of Satan, which has unholy ambition and every delusion that he can frame.
The grace of humility through Christ Jesus will make an imperfect man
discern his imperfections and make him meet for the inheritance of the saints,
where God is all and in all....
Has not the Lord reproved your course? ...You have entrusted capabilities
that may be improved greatly and be made efficacious under the discipline
of God. Then His righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the
Lord will be your rereward. “Without me,” says Christ, “ye can do nothing”
(
John 15:5
). If you set at naught His counsel, then you are in danger.—
Letter
21c, January 8, 1892,
.
[17]
13