Humble

Verse: James 4:6 GNB
6 But the grace that God gives is even stronger. As the scripture says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Devotion
Humbleness…everyone’s favorite description, right? Not powerful, or well spoken, or charismatic, or captivating or talented – humble. You know when you “know” what a word means, but you’ve never REALLY looked up the definition, well that’s me and humble. So, then I did, and it goes like this: having or showing a modest or low estimate of one’s own importance. 

There have been times in ministry areas that people have asked how I do the things that I do or have the confidence to get up in front of people or whatever. I’ve found that the best way to do this, is to be humble, it’s actually not in my own power that I work for God, it’s in His. The second that I forget that, it’s going to fail. So, youth ministry, not for everyone, right?! Middle school youth ministry, oftentimes for even fewer people. (I love your middle schoolers quite a bit of the time!) But so much of that is because God loves them, I think in my human self I would have less patience, less grace, less mercy, less kindness, less compassion, less of everything that is needed to walk along side of pre-teens and all of their amazing and strange stage of life. I have no ability to do any of this without God, so I can sit in my humble spot, (maybe eating some delicious humble pie – we don’t actually know that it’s bad) and rely on God to do the hard things through me. 

I’m sure many of you might think that I’m an extrovert by seeing me at church – well you would be wrong; I am a raging introvert who needs a ton of alone time. But you see, God gives me so much grace when it comes to the areas in which He has called me to serve so that I can do it and get life from it. The things that are draining for me normally, give me life, and that’s because again, none of this is me. It’s God and me together, and I get to be along for the ride of what He is doing in my life and in the lives of the kids of this church, and I can say that is a privilege that I am very humbled to get to be even a small part of. In my place of low importance, God uses me, gives me a ton of grace to do it, and the He gets the glory in the end because I know I’m not capable of this work by myself. Do you see how cool that is?! 

Is there something you have been resisting God in because you don’t think you have enough to do it on your own power? Is there something that has stalled because you’ve been doing it all by yourself and pushing through without God? In either situation, I urge you to ask God today what He has for you to walk into with humility and His power instead of your own.

Prayer
God, I pray that You will show us the areas that we have been trying to force by ourselves and the ones we have been too scared to step into alone, and let us see the best way for us to rely on Your power. I pray if there are places in our lives that we have been prideful that you will help us to walk in humility and Your grace.   

Author: Candice Gifford