Today I want to challenge you, as I have been challenged, with this excerpt from an Andrew Murray devotional on humility. Truth is not always easy or comfortable, but in the end it is what sets us free. Let God speak to your heart, as he has mine, from the heart of a man of God whose words still live on today.
"For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 1 John 4:20
It is a solemn thought that our love for God is measured by our everyday relationships with others. It is easy to think that we humble ourselves before God, but our humility toward others is the only sufficient proof that our humility before God is real. To be genuine, humility must abide in us and become our very nature. True humility is to be made of no reputation - as was Christ.
In God’s presence, humility is not a posture we assume for a time—when we think of Him or pray to Him—but the very spirit of our life. It will manifest itself in all our bearing toward others. A lesson of deepest importance is that the only humility that is really ours is not the kind we try to show before God in prayer, but the kind we carry with us, and carry out, in our ordinary conduct. The seemingly insignificant acts of daily life are the tests of eternity, because they prove what spirit possesses us. It is in our most unguarded moments that we truly show who we are and what we are made of.
The humble person seeks at all times to live up to the rule “Serve one another; consider others better than yourselves; submit to one another.” The humble person feels no jealousy or envy. He can praise God when others are preferred and blessed before him. He can hear others praised and himself forgotten because in God’s presence he has learned to say with Paul, “I am nothing.” He has received the spirit of Jesus, who pleased not Himself and sought not His own honor as the spirit of His life.
Let us look upon everyone who tries us as God’s means of grace, God’s instrument for our purification, for our exercise of the humility of Jesus. May we have true faith in the sufficiency of God and admit to the inefficiency of self, that by God’s power we will serve one another in love." - Andrew Murray
May God grace us to embrace a lifestyle of humility