Sermon Central
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Lord It Is Hard To Be Humble
Contributed by Thomas Bowen on Nov 25, 2007 (message contributor)
Summary: Revival only comes when someone is ready, a person, a church a community.
O Lord It’s Hard to be Humble
We are picking up with last Sunday’s topic and talking about revival this morning.
As we said last week, Revival does not come by design. God can not be manipulated to send revival.
A revival is not about saving souls or converting people to be Christians.
A revival is to bring a comatose Christians and the church back to life.
It is like the electric shock applied to a stopped heart to get it going again.
Revival is not the church deciding to do something.
It is God deciding to do something to or with his church.
Also from last week, revival will not come unless it is desired. It is an invasion from heaven at the request of the saints on earth.
God longs to send revival to his church. He is waiting for his church to seek it and He tells us how in II Chronicles 7:14.
14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
This verse is very clear on exactly what God is looking for before he grants revival. God says, "If…then." If you will humble yourself, seek my face, turn from your wicked ways, I will hear, I will forgive, I will heal. IF My people…Then I will hear … that is a conditional statement clearly identifying 3 steps on our part.
The real question is do we know what those three things mean. The very first thing that God says He is looking for, the first thing He must see before He sends revival is Humility. There are a couple things I have learned about humility.
HUMILITY is an intentional project most of the time
Do you remember the Mac Davis song?
Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble
When you’re perfect in every way
I can’t wait to look in the mirror
Cause I get better lookin’ each day
To know me is to love me
I must be a heck of a man
Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble
But I’m doin’ the best that I can!
I see pride as being the opposite of humility. I don’t believe that many of us feel exactly like that song describes. But, we all have a certain amount of pride; our kids, our jobs and our homes and unless we go to extremes this kind of pride will not affect the kind of humility that God is waiting for.
The humility that God seeks is that kind that recognizes the gifts that God has already given all of us.
Humility understands that grace and mercy are a part of the gift.
Humility keeps us from being puffed up with our own success.
God chooses to fill empty vessels to do his work. Vessels that have been prepared for Holy use, which means empting ourselves on self supporting pride. (I did it and If I weren’t here this place would fall apart.)
Unrealistic pride is way too common. We tend to be full of ourselves and only have a very little of God and the Spirit. We tend to want to be in control and want to be right. We live the Burger King Life wanting it our way. We rarely even consider what God Might want. We think everything we have we earned….
If we fall into just a few of those ideas we have a level of pride that will block or at least interfere with our relationship with God.
It is not too hard to “act humble” when someone says that you are doing a good
job, or that you raised your children well.
The difficult humility is when we remove “I “from the vocabulary. I think, I want , I need, I did, it is just human nature to form an opinion from the inside out.
While it is hard to be really humble, God is looking for a person and a people that are humble enough that he or she puts their own will aside.
He is looking for a person or people that have made themselves small enough that the world will notice that impossible things are happening. People that God can us as a tool. People that He can direct and control for his work.
However, all too often the hammers and screwdrivers think they built the house. They think, “Go away God, I can handle it now.”
Pride can get us into trouble. I guess a better word would be arrogance, conceded-ness, superior attitude.
For revival to be sent we are the ones that have a responsibility to humble ourselves and review our attitude and actions for improper pride and arrogance.
