So where do we begin in our pursuit of this Jesus who loves us so passionately and gave up His Kingly rights to romance our hearts? Scripture tells us where to start this journey to meet with Him: “Enter His gates with thanksgiving; enter His courts with praise.” (Psalm 100:4)
Yes, Jesus, we praise You and thank You for the incredible gift of Yourself. And unlike any other gift that we could live without, we desperately need You. Marie Barnett says it so beautifully in her song Breathe: “This is the air I breathe…Your holy presence. This is my daily bread… Your very word spoken to me. And I can’t live without You.”
Tommy Tenney writes in his book, Finding Favor With the King: “Most of the time, we enter the court of the King according to the protocol of His presence…. We thank God because He has done something wonderful in our lives that we want to acknowledge and remember. We praise Him because of who He is, because of His attributes, or because of His ways. He is worthy of praise—period—whether we are having a good day or a bad day.” (p46)
Tenney continues, “But there are more rooms in the palace than the outer courts and the inner courts…. [W]orship…transports us into the Holy of Holies, the inner chamber, the sacred dwelling place of God’s glory…. We humble ourselves before Him simply because of who He is.” (p47)
Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, requires humility in the person who craves His glorious presence. Why? Because while He is passionately in love with us, He is also a holy God. Pride simply cannot be in our hearts if we desire to have a heart-to-heart encounter with our wonderful Savior. Jesus shared this in His parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector. “Do you think this man went home justified [who praised himself and condemned others]? No, but God accepted the man who beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’” (Luke 18:11-14, my paraphrase)
James and Peter both felt it necessary to warn the church: “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”(James 4:6, I Peter 5:5) And God makes it very clear when He proclaims in Isaiah 66:2, “On this one I will look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at My word.”
So what is humility? One of the key ways the enemy can trip us up is by redefining the words we ought to know, skewing their meanings away from God’s intention into a human perspective. But in order to run after our Heavenly Bridegroom, we must know what pleases Him. Humility always acknowledges my frailty and gives all the glory to God. Are there areas in our lives where we tend to pat ourselves on the back, saying to ourselves, “Good job! You were really smart to think of that. You’ve really done well with the gift God’s given you?”
Oh, dear friends, I hope that we catch ourselves and direct all the praise where it ought to go. Proverbs 27:2 says, “Let another man praise you and not your own mouth. A stranger and not your own lips.” If someone compliments you, well and good, but let us always seek to turn the attention to the Master who gave us the talents. Without Him, we are nothing. We can do nothing. “So why do you boast as though you have not received?” Paul asks the Corinthian church. (I Corinthians 4:7)
True humility directs all the glory to God. It is a conduit of praise and thanksgiving and worship. And then we find ourselves stepping with bare feet onto holy ground.
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