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“Pride must die in you or nothing of heaven can live in you…Here is the path to the higher life: down, lower down! Just as water always seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds men abased and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless.”
Andrew Murray, Humility
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Philippians 2:5-8
Perhaps one of the first things which must be shaped by the Gospel is our ego. The Cape Town Commitment calls all believers to walk in humility: “In our fallenness and sin, power is often exercised to abuse and exploit others. We exalt ourselves, claiming superiority of gender, race, or social status. Paul counters all these marks of the idolatry of pride and power with his requirement that those who are filled by God’s Spirit should submit to one another for Christ’s sake.”
If we are honest, humility is easier said than done. It is so easy to forget that all that we have is from God and not from our own accomplishments. Humility is also difficult because it continues to be redefined by society in many places. G.K. Chesterton’s words from nearly 60 years ago still ring true, “What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place…A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert–himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason.”[1]
Take a moment, if you are physically able, to kneel on the floor in a posture of humility in body, as we would posture our hearts spiritually…kneeling as servants before the King, the good Master, let us pray.
Father, despite society’s attempts to rob Christ of his claim to sole possession of truth and rule, and despite our own jealous pride, we press in and beseech you to empower us to humble ourselves, and we say that if we cannot humble ourselves, then YOU must do it! We dare not usurp your throne. Instead, we bow now before you, the only true God. There is none like you!
Amen
[1] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy [Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1957], pp. 31-32
This blog is a part of the Lausanne Global Prayer Focus. We invite you to journey with The Lausanne Movement in prayer throughout the month of May. This journey will be a personal one, and a collective one. It will be focused on the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, his good news for all people.
In week 2, we are focusing on The People Shaped by the Gospel. 
Download a prayer guide for the week, or visit lausanne.org/pray to access the new content daily. You may also enter your email on this page to be sent a weekly email reminder with the new prayer content each week of May. Be sure to select “Prayer” as a Topic Interest.