Humility

I greet you in Jesus' precious name! It is Wednesday morning, the 8th of November, 2023, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start off in the Book of Isaiah 2:17:

 "The loftiness of man shall be bowed down,
And the haughtiness of men shall be brought low;
The Lord alone will be exalted in that day,…" 

Very, very powerful words. We need to be careful how we stand lest we fall. Then we go across to the Gospel of John 13:12-14 in the New Testament:

"So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet." 

Wow! A band of feet-washers, that's what we are! And who gave us the example? None other than the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, Emmanuel - God made flesh. The best way to keep humble, and not to become proud and haughty, is to wash someone's feet. You see, you have to get down on your knees to wash someone's feet, you can't do it standing up. John Wesley, the great reformer, went all the way to Germany to learn from Count Zinzendorf, who was responsible for the Moravian church, which really shook the world, and do you know what happened? Count Zinzendorf put him in the garden. He had to look after all the vegetables and the flowers; this man who had a Master's Degree in Theology, was on his knees, tending the garden. That's how he taught him. 

I remember people telling me about the great evangelist Reinhard Bonke, who has been with Jesus now for a couple of years. He took Africa by storm, he preached to millions of people, live. They told me that after a meeting, when he would be exhausted, having prayed for the sick for hours and preaching the Gospel, they would be looking for him and he would be in a caravan with his team, his crew, and what would he be doing? Well, he had the apron on, didn't he? He was cooking supper for them at midnight! That is a mark of humility, a mark of a great man of God.

I will never forget when I went to bonny Scotland, they told me that my dear old father had come over a few years before and had done very well in Africa, he had succeeded and became manager of an engineering company, that blacksmith, and he had his suit on. He was coming to visit some relatives on the small croft, a small farm. As he walked through the front gate, he saw that they had been cutting oats, and the oats were lying in the field. He took his suit jacket off, put it on a post - he was a very strong man, my dad - and started stooking the oats up for drying. They were amazed at his humility.

Today, keep yourself humble and God will raise you up.
Jesus bless you and goodbye.