12 You Are Only as Holy as You Are Humble.
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You are only as holy as you are humble.
What does that mean? Why are we only as holy as we are humble?
The simple answer is this:
There is NONE….NONE holy but God.
No one but God is holy. No one.
This means that we have as much holiness as we have of God. The more we possess of God, of His spirit and His character, the more holiness we have.
Now how do we possess more of God? We’ve been talking about this all series. We possess more of God, or rather I should say God possesses more of us the more control we give up. The more we surrender. The more we empty ourselves. In other words, God possesses more of us the more we humble ourselves.
We cannot be holy without being humble.
And the sad truth is that there are many people in our world who profess holiness and possess none of it. They profess Jesus as Lord and Savior yet they do not possess His Spirit. There is a reason Jesus says in Matthew 7 that not everyone who says to Him ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…I mean in the Bible the people who knew the most about the Scriptures were the same ones who persecuted Him the most!!!! What am I saying here? I’m saying you can grow and grow in your knowledge of the Bible, you can grow in leadership in your church or your ministry, you can do so much in pursuit of growing in holiness, but if you do not grow equally as much in humility, it is worth nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
It is very similar to love. I believe I’ve fallen and have seen many people fall into the lack of knowledge-trap the enemy uses, where he convinces us that we don’t know enough of the Bible to share with others.
So we go learn more…we read books to help us understand but all they do is help us understand that we really don't know anything…so we go to bible college to realize that we really really don’t know anything, so then we go to seminary only to realize that we really really really don’t know anything…and so we go on and on learning more and more and then sure enough year upon year has passed by and sure we’ve grown in knowledge of the Scriptures but we’ve forgotten and lost our love for people, and the importance of having and showing that.
It is the same way with humility.
You grow in knowledge of the Bible, you grow in relationship with God, and you walk with Him for a long time, and all of a sudden it becomes easier and easier to rely on your own knowledge and your own charisma to get by. You start to think you're pious enough to be used by God. In other words you become prideful. You think you’re strong. And you lose what made you holier in the first place, which was complete dependence upon God and the need for Him to fill your soul.
Andrew Murray says that ‘the great test of whether the holiness we profess or seek to attain, is truth and life, will be whether it be manifest in the increasing humility it produces’.
Isn’t that good? I love that. I have been warned time and again and now I warn you that there is no pride as dangerous as the pride of holiness.
That Isaiah 65:5 “I am holier than thou” pride. That pride will kill you. Just ask the Pharisees. Need I say more???
It is so dangerous and to that I can testify. The Lord has brought me low, and I have fallen greatly, due to the pride of holiness. God truly does, as written in Psalm 18:27, humiliate the proud. This is why with each advance in holiness that we make, we ought to make the same advancement in humility. I say all of this today because I believe we have disassociated holiness with humility.
Let me ask you this: Have you heard a single pastor preach on humility recently? Or ever for that matter? Probably not.
Now I‘m not saying all pastors should be preaching humility, but I am saying, generally speaking, we have supposed preachers of the holiness of God in the pulpit and they never even touch on the humility of Jesus and/or the humility needed of man to be saved and used by God. This leads me to say that the chief mark of counterfeit holiness is the lack of humility. Look for that, firstly in yourselves, and then discern with others.
Are you truly humble?
There are many pastors who preach holiness but have haughty hearts. And there are many people such as myself who have sought to grow in holiness while ignoring the need for humility. It is very very easy to do. I’m saying all of this to emphasize the point that if you desire to live a life marked by holiness, you desire greater humility.
The holiest of men and women to walk this earth were the humblest. They were people who had given God full control over their life. They recognized they were nothing and God was all. They recognized they needed God to be the strength of their life, not their knowledge, piety, or abilities.
You need to realize today that you are not the strength of your life, God is. And there is such beauty in that. You gain life by losing it. You find more joy by giving up control to the God of the universe who has better plans for you than you have for yourself.
Holiness is the blossoming flower that comes from the seed planted of humility.
And on the flip side of that, humility is the true beauty of holiness. Not knowledge. Not zeal. Not charisma. Not mighty works. No. Humility is the true beauty of holiness.
Look to Jesus as the example of that.
You truly are only as holy as you are humble.
Next week is our pen-ultimate week, and we will talk about the promised reward of humility, which is God’s exaltation.
See you all then.
I love you.
God bless.
