Get Humble

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” I Peter 5:6-7

In the early ’60’s, a young, brash kid named Cassius Clay burst onto the the boxing landscape. His talent was unprecedented, but it was overshadowed by his ego! Long before he became the heavyweight champion, he proclaimed, “I am the greatest!” He even wrote a poem and published a spoken word album under that title. Sadly, even the strongest fail in strength. Clay, who later became Muhammed Ali, fought Parkinson’s for two decades and died a few years ago.

We all struggle with pride on some level. It may not be as evident and public as Ali’s, but we want control, because we are quite sure we know how our lives should go. I Peter 5:7 is a familiar and cherished verse. We can give all of our anxieties and cares to God knowing that He loves us and cares about what we are going through. Yet, we rarely read verses 6 and 7 together. We should. Peter challenges us to humble ourselves before God, to set aside our predilection for control, for independence, for success–and acknowledge God’s control. Then, by so doing, we can rest in the fact that everything about which we are anxious is in His hands. At that point, we can truly rest.

But we don’t humble ourselves naturally. God often has to humble us. It is one of the ways He uses pain in our lives. Suffering exposes our prideful, independent ways and forces us to acknowledge our lack of control. Friends–we need to get humble. Our lives are in God’s hands, not ours.

-Pastor Mike