October 20th
Humbling Ourselves Further Still
Philippians 2:8
8 And after He [Jesus] had appeared in human form, He abased and humbled Himself [still further ] and carried His obedience to the extreme of death, even the death of the cross! AMP
First Jesus humbled Himself by appearing in human form. This, in itself, was already very humbling because He is God and yet He submitted to the Almighty God lowering Himself to be like man and lived amongst man.
Then He had to further humble Himself to submit to God to go beyond human suffering to suffer the separation from God which had never occurred before. He had to further humble Himself in order to further submit Himself to the very purpose He came to earth.
To humble and to submit ourselves so as to yield to God and man is an ongoing process. You may have humbled yourselves and God has promoted you, God has blessed you, for you to have walked into the plan of God. You are on the road to success. When the time comes when you are promoted and you become the head of the department, or earn your first million, or you may have achieved success with the business strategy you had received from God, or you may become the next CEO then attaining your next level of success is the place where you need to bow your knees again so as to bow your hearts before God.
We bow before Him at each level of success to do three things:
1. To thank and to worship Him so as to acknowledge that it is God who has blessed you. We give Him the glory. You do not forget the hand that feeds you (before you achieve success, He is the One who feeds you.) In your success His hand continues to bless you.
2. To acknowledge that it is by His grace that you are who you are and where you are. For apart from Him you can do nothing (John 15:5). Faith accesses the grace of God (His grace of blessings) and He gives grace to the humble (Romans 5:2; 1 Peter 5:5).
3. To constantly remind yourself to put Him first and to seek Him continually. This will help you not to stray away from God’s grace into pride. Pride will always be the beginning of your downfall.
Proverbs 8:13
Pride and arrogance and the evil way
And the perverse mouth I hate. NKJV
Proverbs 11:2
2 When pride comes, then comes shame;
But with the humble is wisdom. NKJV
Proverbs 13:10
10 By pride comes nothing but strife,
But with the well-advised is wisdom. NKJV
Proverbs 16:18
18 Pride goes before destruction,
And a haughty spirit before a fall. NKJV
We humble ourselves and yield to submit to God’s Word, His Spirit and to one another, and to those who are in authority, now! So that when we achieve our next level of success in life then it becomes natural to humble ourselves before God again. Life is a process of humbling ourselves further still; it’s a continuous process.