Humble

What does it mean to humble one’s heart, to have a humble heart? The book of Deuteronomy is a good place to begin to learn about how God wants to humble our hearts.

Deuteronomy 6.5 Hear, O Israel: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Deuteronomy 6.11b – 13 … when thou shalt have eaten and be full; Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name. 

God tells us to beware, when we have it good: We’ll start thinking we did all this ourselves, start patting ourselves on the back. We’ll forget our Lord God, forget His goodness and mercy and generosity. He did not design us to function that way. He designed us so that our greatest joys, our most complete fulfillment, our most abundant life, happens when we humble our hearts before Him.

God knows it is good for us to be humble, so He humbles us through allowing trials and tribulations. Deuteronomy 8.3 And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live. (By the way, this is the verse that Jesus quoted to Satan when He was tempted in the desert. Jesus humbled Himself and came to us.)

1 Peter 5.6 Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you (lift you up) in due time.

Lift us up from what / to what?

Lifting up from our pit / morass of slime and sin.

If you don’t know that you are in this slimy pit, then you need to meet Jesus Christ (1Jn 1.8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.)

Lifting us to Him, setting our minds on things above, not of this earth.

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus ©1922 by H. H. Lemmel

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full, in his wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace

Pride is thinking we have control over anything; Humble hearts acknowledge that God owns everything, and we are His grateful servants.

Humble: “giving” all to God, knowing He owns it all; being reduced to simply a heart for God, a heart that HE gave me (Ezekiel 11.19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36.26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.)