Humbling Ourselves By Buddy Trevino 11/5/17

Transcription

1 Humbling Ourselves By Buddy Trevino 11/5/17 I want to talk about humbling ourselves/humility. James 4:6 says that God resists the proud but gives grace unto the humble. James 4:10 says, Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up. 1 Peter 5:6 says, Humble yourselves therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. Matthew 23:12 says, whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted. Exodus 10:3 Moses and Aaron came in unto Pharaoh and said unto him, "Thus says the Lord, God of the Hebrews, How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?" Humility is often portrayed as something someone does or doesn't have. I'm not saying that is entirely untrue, but I would argue that humility is rather something that one does or doesn't practice. Or rather, something someone does or doesn't see the need to practice. I think we have to learn to recognize a lack of humility within ourselves, and learn to war against it. I think practicing humility, humbling ourselves, putting that into practice as the scriptures say, will keep us in a place where less and less we have to continually remind ourselves. It's really a classic argument: do we do these things God wants us to do because of our new heart, or rather, is it by doing things God wants us to do we develop a new heart? And I think both things...even if we have a wrong heart, we do things that we know God wants us to do, it's a good heart in having a submissive attitude toward God, and then these things that God has ordained for us to do, are a recipe for changing our hearts. Then once our hearts are changed, we want to do these things more and more and we have to war against our own desires less and less. I appreciated a story I once heard. Something like, there was a king and through some circumstances he ended up adopting a pauper, some super poor, dirty little boy, and he adopts him and brings him into the palace and now he's the prince. He's got a servant that comes to him in his chamber there, and he's got fine, silken pajamas, and a fine, silken, fluffy bed. Everything s just beautiful, and he has servants to wait on him. They come to tell him in the mornings, "It's time for breakfast, your highness" and he says, "OK, if you please wait outside, I'll be right there." And he does this every morning, and finally one day the servant grows bold enough and asks him, "What is it that you do every morning when you ask me to wait outside?" And the now young prince says, "Well, I kept the clothes that I was wearing when the king found me and I keep them in the back of my fancy wardrobe, and every morning before I go out to be prince, I take those clothes and put them back on and I look at myself in the mirror. I don't ever want toforget where I came from. In one way or another, this is something we should all keep before ourselves. I think the further we get from the initial realizing of all that we owe God and all that we need, the easier it is to forget. When God first dealt with me- I don't know how to say it- I experienced a vision, or had a revelation, or he revealed some things to me. There was a time when I thought I was dying, and I still don't know whether or not I was- maybe I was dying. He showed me my sinfulness and I was terrified. I thought I was dying and he showed me that was going to

2 be separated from Him and it was the scariest thing that anybody will ever experience, and many people will. And with all my heart I cried out to Him, just the classic "Please give me another chance: I'll do anything, I mean anything! Please, let there be a way, give me some hope, let there be anything. Does anyone know what a roll of decks is? If you can imagine a bunch of 3" X5"s connected in a circle, it's just an organizer of kinds with a bunch of little cards. Anyway, in my mind, God had a roll of decks of all these lives that could be lived or were being lived on earth and he was flipping through it and He said, "I'm sorry, Buddy, it's all taken". There was "rich man" "successful man" "doctor" "lawyer" "movie star" - it was all there and it was all taken. Then it was like He said, Oh, wait! Well there is one, but it's really"...and before he even told me what it was, I was like"i'll take it. Just anything! I'll do anything!" I just wanted to have another chance. And it was a terrible life. He passed by the doctors, and lawyers, and rich guys, movie stars, and this guy is the life of somebody who's going to make lots of sacrifices and really do the right thing, then get falsely accused. Or work really hard to accumulate something; then someone is going to steal it- things like this, the short end of the stick. And this guy is always going to work hard and always do right and try real hard, but things aren't going to pan out for him. And it looked just really terrible, it looked like the worst card in the roll of decks and I said, "I'll take it!" without any hesitation. Just about the same time I said "I ll take it", I came to the realization it was actually the best card in the roll of decks. All the other guys were the guys being mean to him: he was the only one without fault, though his life seemed to be extremely difficult, and it seemed I had this moment with God when I said, "wait! that was the best card!" It was like he was offering me the best card in the roll of decks and he had just finished showing me how bad I was, then he offered me the best card in the roll of decks. And I was like, that was the best card in there, and it was like He smiled it me, like He winked at me, like "yeah. Anyways, that was the moment I thought I had with God. Then I became a Baptist and of course none of that experience made any sense: it didn't fit in with once saved always saved. Or calling out to the Lord. But it seems as I've come to learn what the new covenant is and what being a Christian is, it seems to validate that experience, like, oh, that card was Christ! It's the only life I have available for you to live is Christ. And that's the life Christ lived: He always got the short end of the stick, and if any of us would have any hope of escaping the fate of being separated from God, that's the only life, the only option we have of a life to live. Anyways, that's something I try to remind myself of, I find myself forgetting sometimes, when I feel circumstances are bad, that it's what I signed up for, and I'm not special to have decided to serve God, it's what we've all signed up for. The song that says, He never promised that the cross would not get heavy, or that the hill would be hard to climb, He never offers victory without fighting, but He said help would always come in time. Anyways, that's what we signed up for. Jesus talked about making humble choices. When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room lest a more honorable man than thou be bidden of him, and he that bade thee, come to thee and say, give this man place, and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit in the lowest room, that when he that bade thee come, he may find thee, he may say to thee, friend, go up higher. Then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them

3 that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalts himself shall be abased, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted. This man told me a testimony about one time he was sharing a communal meal and he was really hungry. There was a big bowl of apples; he really wanted an apple, but they were humble apples that had bruises or rotten spots, they weren't very good, and there weren't very many. Anyways, he was at the end of the line and he thought, 'I probably won't get one, and if I do get one it's going to be the most bruised, the most messed up one', but when he got there, the best apple was left! Because all the people ahead of him had taken the worst apple they could find. And the last ended up being the first. Prayer should be humbling. It should be a humbling thing to need help, or, also that it should be humbling that someone as great as the Lord would stoop to help us, that we would be asking the King to come help us. It seems like prayer is often toted as this tool of the powerful, or weapon of the mighty, calling upon God like He's at our service, or obligated to fulfill our requests. In the scriptures we have really precious promises that God does that very thing, that He hears us. It should be a source of consolation and hope that we have in these promises; the source of consolation and hope for the humble, for those who are broken, for those who are desperate. But people that just make these claims, I claim this or I claim that just talk to God like I know that you're going to do this, or do that, and I know you said this I believe prayer should be a humbling practice. It would be humbling to ask a man for something - how much more theking! Maybe you guys have heard or experienced people like this. We just had this man nearby us recently who was like, Oh! Well I'll just ask people for land and they have to give it to me because they're Christians". What an ugly attitude! I think sometimes we can take the promises of God with that kind of saying, "Well, He's God, He's got to help me! I'll just ask Him!" Rather than like, "who am I to be asking God? And what a wonderful thing that He would stoop down to help me. Fasting is a way that we can humble ourselves. One of my favorite passages in the scriptures is at the end of Jonah. It says, and Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey and he cried, "In 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown". So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them, for the word came unto the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, laid his robe from him, covered him with sackcloth, sat in ashes, and he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, let neither man nor beast, herd or flock, taste anything. Let them not feed nor drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God. Yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not. And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God repented from the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he did it not. There's a lot of humble works done there, but fasting...i thought I had a verse in Psalms that talked about humbling our souls through fasting. I don't fast very often. I have this memory of one time when I had a great need and I was fasting and I this realization; we should fast more. We should all be fasting more. This should be a part of our lives. It's so basic. I can't remember exactly what it felt like, what I was seeing, but I remember feeling and seeing something that I

4 don't feel and see now at this moment, or times when I'm not fasting. Turning from evil is an act of humility that was mentioned there. Confession of sin is an act of humility. Just like God does, we do. Maybe this can help us. We feel the need to humble those who don't humble themselves. I remember this one guy, he was making so many bad mistakes in his life, was such a mess, and he had caused, and was currently causing such harm, and yet he was talking bad about other people, and finally, I don't know that I blew up, but I'd been just trying to hold back and finally I quit holding back and I was like, "your whole family is falling apart, your children are being destroyed, you've done this, and you've done that, how can you be saying bad things about other people? Who do you think you are?" To some degree or another we feel this, when somebody doesn't see what they're doing wrong, we feel the need to try and help them see. Sometimes with a good attitude, sometimes maybe with a bad attitude, but it's just there. Somebody doesn't see how bad they're doing, they need to see that and you want to help them. And conversely, you can tell when somebody really does see what they've done, and they really feel bad about it, your inclination is to comfort them, to console them and to give them hope. I knew this man at one time and he practiced martial arts. Like he studied physical warfare and he was this real strong guy. It wasn't karate, but it was like he had his black belt in karate, had really learned a lot about combat physically and hurt people. And I had committed this sin so grievous that he had it in his mind to find me and hurt me really badly. He planned on doing it, and I called him and asked him if I could speak with him. He'd planned to meet me and do me physical harm. He had a dream that night before he was going to meet me. Something happened in his dream and he changed his mind, but that's how his heart was toward me, even though he decided not to hurt me, he told me that that was in his heart -that was how much it had offended him, what I had done. And I just confessed everything that I had done to him, even though he knew some of it, I told him all of it and maybe for one of the first times in my life, just dumped it all out. I wasn't holding anything back from him, didn't try to make it seem less bad than it was, but just wallowed in it. I mean, if he had wanted to beat me up, I would not have resisted: I literally felt so bad. Then he was comforting me, and then he started confessing sin to me, like this humility, I don't know what, like the spirit of God came down. I mean, he wanted to beat me up because of how bad I was, and then he was confessing sin to me! I wrote down here, humility is contagious. I just wrote down some points here. Sometimes the humble thing to do is to sit and be quiet. And sometimes the humble thing to do is maybe stand on the street corner and speak really loudly, and that might be something we might not want to do, but like in humility we would submit to God and do that. To walk in humility or to practice humility is to not be resentful at a change in plans. Who are we that we should be offended that our plans have been altered? Humility is easy on others and hard on ourselves. We probably all know Micah 6:8-9 He has shown thee, Oh man, what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy...do justly means you pay what you owe, you do what you're supposed to do, you don't steal, you work hard for what you get...love mercy, is giving others more than they worked for, or what they've earned, or forgiving others, living a life where you don't need to be forgiven, but loving to forgive others: easy on

5 others, hard on ourselves. Someone said recently we should have alligator skin, not alligator teeth It should be easy for us to forgive personal wrongs. Who are we to hold a grudge? We know the story of the servant that was forgiven the debt, and he did not forgive his fellow servant, and they told his lord. Then the lord, after he had called him, said to him, Oh thou wicked servant. I forgave thee all that debt because thou desired me. Shouldest thou not also have compassion on thy fellow servant even as I had on thee? And his lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due him. So likewise shall my heavenly father also so also do unto you if ye from your hearts do not forgive everyone his brother their trespass. If we can really keep before us all that we've been forgiven, we shouldn't have any difficulty forgiving everybody for anything done to us. I mean, I can, without trying to impress anyone, fairly confidently say that I'm the worst sinner in this room, and yet I'm aware that every other person should feel that way. Practicing humility means you don't need to get credit for something. You hear about something, "well, you know, I gave him that idea" "I'm the one that brought that up in the first place" or somebody tells us something and we want to say, "I knew that already"..things like this. If you have a good idea and it changes things for the better, it shouldn t matter if you get that credit for it, it should matter to you that things got changed for the better. I feel the desire to be recognized like that, I assume we all do, but we shouldn't need that. I need to remind myself. Even the soul that we have to solemnly warn or steadfastly reject for choices that they made, we shouldn't have an attitude that we're better than them, a haughty attitude, judgmental attitude, a mean attitude, no matter how bad you think someone is doing. The thing might be so bad that we have to warn them so strongly, and we have to absolutely have no fellowship with them, and yet there shouldn't be some like, yeah, that guy...a dismissive attitude toward him, we should have compassion. The realization that if it wasn't for the mercy of God and His kind intervention in our life, what would prevent us from being worse off than them? What do any of us have that we have not been given? Isaiah 5:15 says, And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled. We should have more compassion on our enemies than on ourselves. If somebody does us wrong, we should feel worse about the consequences that they're going to have before God for the wrong they've done, rather than the loss that we've suffered at their hands. I had for a long time really bemoaned my childhood. I don't want to give you examples, because this happened and that happened, this circumstance in my life, I guess I don't even want to like speak of those things. I think we all know as time progresses we can all see that it's just getting more and more terrible. Parents are so bad, divorce is sorampant, people are so unkind and impatient and unloving toward their children, and it's just getting worse and worse. Jesus said, whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. A little child is utterly dependent. Some animals that get born, they don't need any care, can make it on their own. Humans need years and years of care. You could never put out a baby or even a child at several years of age: they can't make it on their own. Every single one of us who is grown up enough to be capable of caring for themselves, owes their existence to others. No matter how mean of a

6 thing...maybe somebody's parents were unkind to them, or somebody's parents were unkind to each other, or whatever kind of circumstances, if you're here right now, it's because somebody fed you, it's because somebody bathed you, somebody kept you warm. You would not be alive, none of us, no matter what kind of trauma we experienced, would be alive if it weren't for the care of others, even those who might've been mean to us. It s a little bit foreign to our society, but I think more in the past it was more obvious to everybody, to a son, how he owed his life to his father. A debt he could never repay. That's why your elders are so much to be honored, so much to be esteemed: we owe our lives to our ancestors, to our elders, to our parents. It's just really abominable to then have resentment toward that person, your father or your mother, even if they actually do something wrong. I think it's just utterly distasteful in the sight of God when we dishonor our parents, no matter what they have done to us! You have the mental faculties, or the mouth to dishonor your parents. It's just altogether unseemly. How could you dishonor somebody to whom you owe your life? We should be thankful to exist. False humility can be hard to see within ourselves: I don't have the solution for that. I know words like...speaking ill of yourself, "Oh I'm nothing" or, "I'm a wretch" doesn't really make us humble. Anybody can say those things. I had some examples here. I saw a video of a man singing in a church and he said in the beginning, "Well, I did just win a big singing competition. It was a nationwide singing competition, all the best singers in the world were there, and I just finished winning that" and he's like "I'm not saying that to be proud, I'm not trying to boast on myself, it's just a fact" I mean, just like, how often do we say, "I'm not saying that to be proud, and I don't mean to be boastful" and then we go on to boast? To a degree I have a degree of compassion for somebody that does that, it probably comes from low self esteem, a need to feel worth, so I don't just utterly despise that person, or somebody that would do or say things like that. This other time, this guy, I didn't like him/had a hard time liking him, and we had this night of speaking or preaching and he shared this emotional kind of speech, but I thought it was clever, it was pretty good, and I was just kind of exercising myself because it was difficult to like this guy and be nice to him. I saw him afterwards and I said, (I just had to push through) and I said, "Hey, I appreciated that thing that you shared." And he just hung his head with his hand on his chest and said, only the Lord! No! Don t give any praise to me; no, no, it's all the Lord! To me, what he was communicating was that this wonderful display you held, that supernatural, really infused, powerful thing was beyond human ability, what you saw, God did that! It wasn't even me. I think we can go too far with things like that as well. In Corinthians 13:4 it speaks about charity, and I just noticed a correlation between these traits that charity has and that humility has or should have. And I wrote down that we cannot truly love without humility. It says, Charity suffers long, it's in part because of humility: I'll just say this, when you're humble, you suffer long, you're kind, you don't envy. It says, vaunts not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and I believe humility is an ingredient in proper or perfect charity. It s easy to do these things if we don't think highly of ourselves. I wrote down, we cannot love without humility. We cannot please God without humility. I wrote here, only by pride comes contention.