C.J. Mahaney’s book, “Humility: True Greatness” is a must-read for pastors and all Christians. This book helped me to see the greatness of a humble, contrite heart before God. While reading the book last fall, I wrote down some of the most helpful quotes and directions for growing in humility from the book to aid in my own pursuit of true greatness. I hope this summary of some of the book’s main points serve you as you seek to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, causing us always to grow downward in humility and upward in praise to our great Savior.
How to Weaken Pride and Cultivate Humility
Always:
- Reflect on the wonder of the cross of Christ.
As Each Day Begins:
- Begin your day by acknowledging your dependence upon God and your need for God.
- Begin your day expressing gratefulness to God.
- Practice the spiritual disciplines – prayer, study of God’s Word, worship. Do this consistently each day and at the day’s outset, if possible.
- Seize your commute time to memorize and meditate on Scripture.
- Cast your cares upon Him, for He cares for you.
As Each Day Ends:
- At the end of the day, transfer the glory to God. “When we have done anything praiseworthy, we must hide ourselves under the veil of humility, and transfer the glory of all we have done to God.” Thomas Watson
- Before going to sleep, receive this gift of sleep from God and acknowledge His purpose for sleep. There is only One who “will neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4), and I am not that One.
For Special Focus:
- Study the attributes of God (especially the incommunicable attributes).
- Study the doctrines of grace. “God intentionally designed salvation so that no man can boast of it. He didn’t merely arrange it so that boasting would be discouraged, or kept to a minimum – He planned it so that boasting would be absolutely excluded! Election does precisely that.” Mark Webb
- Study the doctrine of sin.
- Laugh often, and laugh often at yourself.
Throughout your days and weeks:
- Identify evidences of grace in others.
- Encourage and serve others each and every day.
- Invite and pursue correction.
- Respond humbly to trials.
The Perils of Pride
- Why does God hate pride so passionately? Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him.
- Confessing pride to God: “Lord, in that moment, with that attitude and that action, I was contending for supremacy with You. That’s what it was all about. Forgive me.”
- John Calvin in his commentary on Psalm 9:1-3: “God cannot bear with seeing his glory appropriated by the creature in even the smallest degree, so intolerable to him is the sacrilegious arrogance of those who, by praising themselves, obscure his glory as far as they can.”
As Each Day Begins
- You should have a list. You should be purposeful about this. Each day you should be planning the defeat of your greatest enemy and cultivating your greatest friend.
- “Fill your affections with the cross of Christ that there may be no room for sin.” John Owen
- “There is only one thing I know of that crushes me to the ground and humiliates me to the dust, and that is to look at the Son of God, and especially contemplate the cross…Nothing else can do it. When I see that I am a sinner…that nothing but the Son of God on the cross can save me, I’m humbled to the dust…Nothing but the cross can give us this spirit of humility.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
- “Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to be saying to us, “I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.” Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called
Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.” John Stott
- It was said of Matthew Henry that “he was an alert and thankful observer of answered prayer”; his gratitude for God’s mercies was constantly “sweetening his spirit, and he would often invite others to join him in giving thanks.”
- The very act of opening my Bible to read and turning my heart and mind to prayer makes a statement that I need God.
Identifying Evidences of Grace
- Make a practice of observing how the Spirit manifests the fruits of the Spirit in the lives you see around you (“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” Gal. 5:22-23).
- Observe the Spirit equipping believers to teach, to lead, and to serve. When you become familiar with the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit and learn to recognize their manifestation, suddenly you will be aware that God is at work everywhere.
- Called is one of Scripture’s most frequent one-word descriptions for the Christian…We must remind ourselves, This individual has been previously acted upon by God.
- Paul looks at the Corinthian church as it is in Christ Jesus before he looks at anything else that is true of the church. That disciplined statement of faith is rarely made in local churches; the warts are examined and lamented, but often there’s no vision of what God has already done in Christ.
- Memorize Eph. 4:29
