I recently heard a law professor advocating, of all things, humility. To him, humility meant that you should consider you may be totally wrong in the way you’re looking at something. Humility is what I think God was after as well when, through Isaiah, he said to us:

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts”. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

All men have an ancient family tree. We are either rooted in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or we are rooted in the Tree of Life. The fruit of those trees are either lies that bind or Truth who liberates. As those conditioned by a fallen world, we scarcely have a clue as to just how saturated we became with the enemy’s lies while we were serving him. Yet, how dangerous is our pride, which presumes to have cornered the market on understanding?

This is why humility is so precious and so rare. Humility is founded on the premise that we were born in bondage, that we have lived in and been conditioned by ideas that came from the wrong tree. Humility presumes that man’s thinking needs altered if not scrapped. Humility lives in dependency on the Word and the Spirit.

As an example: our presumptions regarding money. The wisdom of this world says, “Nothing happens without it.” The scriptures disagree. Through them, God says:

 Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? (from Isaiah 55:1-2)

Apparently money is not the coin of the realm in God’s kingdom. This verse is speaking to all who, in their pride, are totally wrong and who desperately need humility, which has actual value in God’s kingdom.

 God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. (James 4:6)

So where do we go to buy this bread that is so affordable? Recall how Jesus referred to Himself:

 I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. (John 6:35)

We must come to Jesus, first to be born again and then daily as our Life. This is both impossible and simple. It is impossible to earn Christ because he is the Gift; it is simple because Jesus is the only way. We must each learn how to abide in Christ because He is our Life, from our beginning and in our ongoing.

Father, It is apparent in your words that abundant Life has been given to us and that you would continually direct our hearts to Him who is our Life. Please show us where we are attempting to live and get by on that which is not Bread. Help us to see where we are kicking against the goad, reaping time after time, that which we have sown in our own earthly wisdom and strength. Grant us the humility to admit: where the thorn and nettle continue to grow, we may be totally wrong. Amen.

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