SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/29/2020
9:40 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Achieving
Humility
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 5:3
Message
of the verse: “3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.”
The
question to how do we achieve humility goes along with the question “how do we
become poor in Spirit?” As we look at
this 3rd verse in Matthew chapter five we can see almost by the
definition of happy are the poor in spirit we can determine that it cannot
start with us, as with anything we can do or accomplish in our own power. That is the answer but it is like other
things found in the Scripture that happen to us and we realize that we can’t do
it on our own, but then in our humanness we try to do it on our own and kind of
mess it up. Now we have talked about
what humility is not when we looked at Dr. Wiersbe’s book “The Strategy of
Satan,” when he writes that humility is not thinking putting ourselves
down. We are already down; humility
according to John MacArthur “simply recognizes the truth. And simply being hopeless, helpless, and in
need obviously is no virtue. That is not
God’s will for anyone. His will is to
get us out of that condition and into blessing.
The fulfillment of that goal depends on His sovereign, gracious work of
humbling.”
He goes on
to write that “Humility is not a necessary human work to make us worthy, but a
necessary divine work to make us see that we are unworthy and cannot change our
condition without God. That is why
monasticism, asceticism, physical self-denial, mutilation, and other such
self-efforts are so foolish and futile.
They feed pride rather than subdue it, because they are works of the
flesh. They give a person a reason to
boast in what he has done or not done.
Such self-imposed efforts are enemies of humility.
“Yet even
through genuine humility is produced by the Lord as an element of the work of
salvation, it is also commanded of men.
There are numerous divine commands to humble oneself (Matt. 18:4; 23:12;
James 4:10; 1 Pet. 5:5), which the Lord perfectly harmonizes with His sovereign
work of humbling. Sovereign saving work
is never without personal cooperation.
Because of that it is helpful to look at some of the steps from the
human side of the divine paradox.”
MacArthur
then goes on to talk about different steps from the human side of what he calls
a divine paradox. My smart phone gives
this example of a paradox “in a paradox, he has discovered that stepping back
from his job has increased the rewards he gleans from it.” The definition of paradox (noun) is “a
seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when
investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.”
Now
because this is Sunday and even though we are not able to go to church we are
about to listen to our service online and so it is my desire to wait until our
next SD to give these three steps we are talking about today. I also kind of want to savor this as it is
something that I have been looking for answers for some time now. 3/29/2020
10:03 AM
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