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You will perhaps find many ready enough to say smooth and pleasing things to your face, but I hope you will know how to value an admonition from a friend. You are engaging in an important service, honourable it is beyond expression, but it is full of difficulties and snares. If the Lord gives you liberty and acceptance you are liable to be exalted above measure. Your comfort and success eminently depend upon your being humble. And if the Lord loves you and has sent you, he will find ways and means to humble you. If he has put it into my heart to give you these hints, and if he enables you to receive them in a right spirit, and to make a right use of them, it may save you some trouble in future. I am sure I have no desire to grieve you. If you take this as I mean it, I shall be glad of a line from you at your leisure to tell me so. You are now putting on the harness, but what you may meet with from within and without before you put it off, is only known to the Lord. You have reason to p...

Spiritual pride tends to speak of other persons’ sins with bitterness or with laughter and an air of contempt. But pure Christian humility rather tends either to be silent about these problems or to speak of them with grief and pity. Spiritual pride is very apt to suspect others, but a humble Christian is most guarded about himself. He is as suspicious of nothing in the world as he is of his own heart. The proud person is apt to find fault with other believers, that they are low in grace, and to be quick to note their deficiencies. But the humble Christian has so much to do at home and sees so much evil in his own heart and is so concerned about it that he is not apt to be very busy with other hearts. He is apt to esteem others better than himself. JONATHAN EDWARDS  (Source: The Works of Jonathan Edward’s, Volume 1)

Thou hast honoured me. Thou hast given me a tongue and a pen, many friends; (Thou] hast made me extensively known among thy people and I have reason to hope, useful to many by my preaching and writings... It is of thine own that I can serve thee. And if others speak well of me, I have no cause to speak or think well of myself. They see only my outward walk; to thee I appear as I am. In thy sight I am a poor, unworthy, unfaithful inconsistent creature. And I may well wonder that Thou hast not long ago taken thy word utterly out of my mouth and forbidden me to make mention of thy Name any more! JOHN NEWTON ( Source : Wise Counsel) Newton wrote these words addressed to God in his diary in 1789. In that year, Newton’s fame had grown significantly because of his publishing ‘ Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade’ and his appearance before Her Majesty’s Privy Council appointed to investigate the slave trade.  I find Newton’s words quite challenging. The words reveal a heart truly sh...

God is the author of our humility, not we. He takes the first step. The context for the biblical command to "humble yourself" is never bright, sunny, carefree days. It's always conflict, discomfort, suffering, pain, chaos. First, God's humbling hand descends. He takes the initiative. Then the question comes: Now, will you humble yourself? Will you welcome and receive his uncomfortable, even painful, work or try to explain it away or even kick back against it? Humbling ourselves is not something we decide to do in our spare time or for self-improvement in a few simple steps. Humility is a work of God. His hand does the humbling. Then he gives us the dignity of acknowledging and welcoming his work, and humbling ourselves. DAVID MATHIS ( Source : Workers For Your Joy) 

Once we learn that to be nothing before God is the glory of the creature…we shall welcome with our whole heart the discipline we may have in serving even those who try to vex us. When our own heart is set upon this, the true sanctification, we shall study each word of Jesus on self-abasement with new zest, and no place will be too low, and no stooping too deep, and no service too mean or too long continued, if we may but share and prove the fellowship with Him who spake, "I am among you as he that serveth". Brethren, here is the path to the higher life. Down, lower down! This was what Jesus ever said to the disciples who were thinking of being great in the kingdom, and of sitting on His right hand and His left. Seek not, ask not for exaltation; that is God's work. Look to it that you abase and humble yourselves, and take no place before God or man but that of servant; that is your work; let that be your one purpose and prayer. God is faithful. Just as water ever seeks an...

There is no pride so dangerous, because none so subtle and insidious, as the pride of holiness. It is not that a man ever says, or even thinks, "Stand by; I am holier than thou." No, indeed, the thought would be regarded with abhorrence. But there grows up, all unconsciously, a hidden habit of soul, which feels complacency its attainments, and cannot help seeing how far it is in advance of others. It can be recognized, not always in any special self-assertion or self-laudation, but simply in the absence of that deep self-abasement which cannot but be the mark of the soul that has seen the glory of God …It reveals itself, not only in words or thoughts, but in a tone, a way of speaking of others, in which those who have the gift of spiritual discernment cannot but recognize the power of self… O brethren! let us beware. Unless we make, with each advance in what we think holiness, the increase of humility our study, we may find that we have been delighting in beautiful thoughts ...

It is easy to think we humble ourselves before God: humility towards men will be the only sufficient proof that our humility before God is real; that humility has taken up its abode in us; and become our very nature; that we actually, like Christ, have made ourselves of no reputation. When in the presence of God lowliness of heart has become, not a posture we pray to Him, but the very spirit of our life, it will manifest itself in all our bearing towards our brethren. The lesson is one of deep import: the only humility that is really ours is not that which we try to show before God in prayer, but that which we carry with us, and carry out, in our ordinary conduct; the insignificance of daily life are the importance and the tests of eternity, because they prove what really is the spirit that possesses us. It is in our most unguarded moments that we really show and see what we are. To know the humble man, to know how the humble man behaves, you must follow him in the common course of dai...

I have a list of Christian books that people always assume I have read because I am a pastor. I have often wondered whether the underlying assumption is that I have a lot of time so I am supposed to have read them. I suspect the it is more likely that such books are regarded as "essential" so not reading them is quietly intepreted as a dereliction of personal spiritual care.  C S Lewis Screwtape Letters is one of those books. As it turns out I believe I had read the book when I was a young. Though the circumstances escape me. It is therefore entirely possible that I have simply come to believe that I had read it. Not that it matters any more because I recently read the book, just to make sure I do not forget, and of course get to grips with it.. Hence the reason I am talking about it now. What is the book about? The Screwtape Letters is a novel by C. S. Lewis that was first published in 1942. Screwtape is a senior devil writing to a junior devil, his nephew, Wormwood, on ho...

God may speak outside the pages of Scripture, because God can speak whenever and wherever He wants. But we should become increasingly humble about our claims the further we get from Scripture. MICHAEL WITTMER This would seem to be a very wise balance to strike between "my Bible is the only message" and "I had a vision in the night". God can and does speak through any means he chooses. But because the Bible is the only most clear and sure way he speaks to us, we must be have the humility to subject everything else to it. We need "holy scepticism”. Wittmer is correct that humbleness is key. I think humility / humbleness is the correct word because it takes humility to admit that the vision may be just in our head. The pride of man is what drives many of us to claim things we have not experienced. And when we find that our "10 minutes to heaven" story does not line up well with the Bible we are prone to reject the Bible rather than accept our e...