It Is Hard To Be Humble . . .

When looking at a Hairless Chinese Crested dog
When looking in a mirror
When looking at a chocolate fountain
While holding your grandchild
While holding a taser
While holding four aces
After catching an 8 pound bass
After catching the thief who grabbed your wife’s purse
After catching the bouquet
While driving a Corvette
While driving a Fire Truck
While driving a Zamboni
When standing next to a movie star
When standing next to an elephant
When standing next to a chocolate fountain
After taking a long vacation
After taking a natural male enhancer
After taking the last piece of pie
When wearing a custom made, silk, three piece suit
When wearing an Elvis jumpsuit
When wearing your birthday suit
While in charge
While in a hot tub
While in a chocolate fountain
While buying a banana split
While buying Boardwalk
While buying domain names
After completing an obstacle course
After completing a rubix cube
After completing Fable 2
With a mohawk
With a monocle
With a mocha latte

Just because it’s hard to be humble, doesn’t excuse you from trying.

Broken Bread And Poured-Out Wine

There is a beautiful representation of humility found as a reoccurring theme in the well-known devotional, “My Utmost For His Highest.” Oswald Chambers calls upon Christians to become “broken bread and poured-out wine.” Learning what that means will give us insights into the humble life. Here are excerpts from Ozzy.

Jan 18: It is easier to serve than to pour out our lives completely for Him. The goal of the call of God is His satisfaction, not simply that we should do something for Him.

Feb 2: God makes us as broken bread and poured-out wine to please Himself. To be “separated to the gospel” means . . . every ambition, every desire of life, and every outlook is completely blotted out and extinguished. Only one thing remains – “. . . separated to the gospel.”

Feb 15: Am I willing to be broken bread and poured-out wine for Him? Am I willing to be of no value to this age or this life except for one purpose and one alone – to be used to disciple men and women to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Feb 25: Paul focused his live on Jesus Christ’s idea of a New Testament saint; that is, not one who merely proclaims the gospel, but one who becomes broken bread and poured-out wine in the hands of Jesus Christ for the sake of others.

May 15: The only proper goal of life is that we manifest the Son of God; and when this occurs, all our dictating of our demands to God disappears. We are here to submit to His will so that He may work through us what He wants. Once we realize this, He will make us broken bread and poured-out wine with which to feed and nourish others.

Jun 2: How long is it going to take God to free us from the unhealthy habit of thinking only about ourselves? . . . There is only one place where we are right with God, and that is in Christ Jesus. Once we are there, we have to pour out our lives for all we are worth in this ministry of the inner life.

Jul 15: Quit praying about yourself and spend your life for the sake of others as the bondservant of Jesus. That is the true meaning of being broken bread and poured-out wine in real life.

Sep 30: “Here am I! Send me.” This call has to do with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we have to be crushed. . .

Nov 15: When we are consciously aware of being used as broken bread and poured-out wine, we have yet another level to reach – a level where all awareness of ourselves and of what God is doing through us is completely eliminated. A saint is never consciously a saint – a saint is consciously dependent on God.

Boasting About Tomorrow

There may be something we can learn about humbling ourselves from those occasions when we are humbled by circumstances. I have often said that being made humble does not count for character. When our pride gets knocked down by some extremely stupid and embarrassing mistake, or when we get cut off at the knees by someone who far excels in something with which we were prideful, we are humbled. We did not choose in this case to be humble. We merely suffered a loss of pride. When our cause for pride is taken away by an economic crisis that guts our investment port folio, or a company crisis that results in our demotion or loss of job, then we are made humble. We have not achieved humility out of desire to be virtuous.

We may be able, in those humbling experiences, to learn how to be humble when later we can choose it. One lesson we might learn is how little we can take credit for the things over which we swell with pride and how little control over our circumstances we actually have. The athlete who excels today could tomorrow be a paraplegic. The business owner today could tomorrow be the janitor. The bountiful crops today could tomorrow suffer drought. The mansion today could tomorrow be in ashes. The great nation today could tomorrow be in ruins. Whatever we enjoy today should be counted as a blessing, not cause for boasting. “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.” (Proverbs 27:1)

In the New Testament book of James, after his instruction, “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you,” James then gives to us this council. “Come now, you who say, ‘today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.’ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil." No matter our circumstances, whether rich or poor, powerful or weak, smooth sailing or ship-wrecked, we must choose to be humble. “But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ . . .” (Galatians 6:14)

Sometimes I . . .

Sometimes I don’t feel like bowing to the demands of humility. I get angry at arrogance around me. I have grown tired of apathy and laziness. My contempt for insolent people has resulted in my own rude behavior. I find myself ignoring those who are ignorant. I get fed up with fat people. People who are materialistic don’t really even matter to me. The mentally unstable drive me crazy. Those who are Immature make me want to cry. I can’t get along with combative people. Selfish people make me want to leave them completely out of my world. I wish those people who always obey the speed limit would get a ticket. When I am around confused people I want to mess with their minds. Impatient people make me antsy. I can not bear the Intolerant. People with phobias just scare me. People with demons scare the devil out of me. I don’t know what to think about blonds. People who read are alright in my book. I try to disguise my expressions when around ugly people. It’s easy to overlook short people. I have very little use for the unproductive. I go back and forth on people who can’t make up their minds. I go back and forth when people won’t hurry up in the bathroom. I could tell you what I think about liars but it wouldn’t be the whole truth. I don’t know how to read the illiterate. I can’t talk with the highly intelligent. I’m always complaining about whiners. People in the hospital make me sick. People in jail make me want to escape. Kin folk are like family to me. Anything I would say about them would be relative. I’m hot and cold when it comes to moody people. I can’t say enough to gluttons. I can’t seem to say enough to this ranting. Enough! Well . . . I guess I can.