Some Humility

And a very good morning to you! It is the 2nd of February, Wednesday morning, the year 2022, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

“For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.”

Romans 12:3

We need to be careful we don’t think too highly of ourselves. Like I've always said, our biggest enemy is not the devil, because his neck was broken on the Cross of Calvary, our biggest enemy is ourselves.

Now, John the Baptist, he was the opposite, in John 3:30, he says:

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”

And that is why John the Baptist is such an amazing person. He is one of my heroes in the Bible - A humble man.

A Scotsman by the name of Oswald Chambers wrote a devotional called, My Utmost for His Highest. Think about that... My utmost for His highest. We are not here on earth to promote ourselves, we are here to promote Jesus. Solomon had everything that money could buy. He was handsome, he was the wisest man that ever lived. He had anything he needed and yet what did he say at the end of his life? He says (paraphrasing): “Vanity, vanity, it is like grasping for the wind.” Ecclesiastes 1:14 & 12:8

You can read that in Ecclesiastes 12:13, where he says:

“Fear God and keep His commandments, For this is man’s all.”

You and I today need to strive to serve the Living God and not ourselves. Jim Elliot, that young, dynamic American student - He was sick and tired of chasing the wind. He went to the jungle with his young wife and little baby and he was martyred by the Auca Indians. They stabbed him with a spear. But you know, before he died he wrote something in his journal. He said, “It is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose, eternal life.”

Elijah, the prophet, in 1 Kings, was crying out (paraphrasing):

“I am the only one left in the whole world who is a prophet.” And the Lord said to him, “There are 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to the devil.”

1 Kings 19:14-18

It's not a bad thing to be humble. One of the most humble men I have read about was James Hudson Taylor. A small Englishman with a peaches and cream complexion and watery eyes that took a thousand families to China and started the China Inland Mission. While he was sitting in a little Bible Study an American journalist walked in and he wanted to get a big scoop on this incredible 'giant of God'. He was introduced to everybody and there was this small man sitting in the corner with a dark trench coat on who never said a word throughout the whole Bible Study. Who was he - James Hudson Taylor.

The journalist thought to himself, what am I going to write about - until at the end of the Bible Study, when this man started to pray and speak to his God. He said, never in his life had he heard a man pray like that.

Go out today and lift up the name of Jesus.
God bless you and goodbye.