If you want to become more humble, simply read and apply what our Lord Jesus taught. This is from Luke 6:41-42 (NIV):“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? … You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
From this we can see that the 10 Days goal of humbling yourself and having a repentant heart is part of the Lord’s will for us–remove the speck from your own eye. Jesus is further pointing out that what you see as wrong in others is most likely something that you are guilty of yourself. What a great teaching for our day and age! Yet it has to start with us as believers.
Can you take an honest look at yourself? Who in the church or at work bugs you?What don’t you like in others regarding their political views or how to handle the current turmoil of race and COVID? Jesus is telling us that we have to deal with ourselves first. How are you like others you naturally do not like without realizing it? For example, people on the Right and the Left have the exact same spirit of finger pointing. They are actually just like each other. To be free of this requires thought and prayer.
C. S. Lewis wrote with great insight along these same lines:“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves…. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves…. The vice I am talking of is Pride…”
No fault of which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. Ouch. Painful but true.
I shared this past year in a message how during an argument with Ingrid, she with great frustration exclaimed, “You’re the most defensive person I’ve ever met!” We laugh now about it, but at the time my pride was raising its ugly head and defending myself rather than going humble and apologizing. Pride is indeed something of which we are unconscious.
So we must pray and seek to humble ourselves.
Father, please help me to take an honest look at myself, especially regarding traits in others that bother me. How am I like them? How do I need to repent and change my attitude? I confess my pride and want to be free from it. Lord Jesus, I want to be like the wise man who built his house on the rock by putting into practice what you teach. May I become one who is quick to repent and to take the log out of my own eye. Amen.
Peace,
Dave