His Encouragement: Humble yourselves

Welcome! Welcome, dearest friends, to His Encouragement: Biblical Inspiration for Your Thursday. Every Thursday, a few blogging friends and I will each bring you a Bible passage and a little hope-filled discussion. We pray that these Thursday posts help you end your week strong in God’s love and purpose for you. We also welcome you to join the conversation by commenting with your thoughts. God bless!

Today’s Encouragement

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you.”
— 1 Peter 5:6, KJV

Humility.

Humility is looked down upon in many circles today. It is all about taking care of #1! Showing off your accomplishments by spending lavishly. Flooding your social media with perfectly posed and curated photos to give the impression your life is glamorous. Humility is a weakness at best and a crutch at worst in the eyes of many. As such, there is little respect for the virtue of humility.

Yet throughout the Bible it is mentioned over and over and over again. Today’s verse from the first epistle of Peter is one of those times.”Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you.“

Before we can understand what “humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God” means, we need to understand what humility is. I have seen humility define a few different ways, but I believe Wikipedia (of all places) sums it up best: “Humility is an outward expression of an appropriate inner or self regard…” (source)

Notice how it does not say that humility is a low regard of oneself but an appropriate regard. It is a proper realization and acknowledgment of where we belong in the grand scheme of life and the cosmos. We should neither become prideful — over-estimating ourselves and our importance — nor should we underestimate our worth by belittling or hating ourselves. We need to have an appropriate regard for ourselves: our strengths and our weaknesses.

But how do we know our place? How do we determine our significance? What is the stick by which we measure this? Let’s re-read what Peter wrote once more: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God…” God is our measuring stick!

This about this for a moment: God Almighty, the Creator of the vast and amazing universe, not only made you but He also died a horrible death to save you! You are that valuable to Him. Just remember that He did not redeem you (or I) because we deserve it or somehow earned it. Truth be told, no matter how good we try to live our lives, we could never be good enough to have earned salvation — not on our own. Our natural tendencies are for selfishness and sin.

No, salvation is a free gift we don’t deserve, given freely from a loving and merciful Lord. What a humbling thought!

Now it is your turn! How does today’s verse encourage you? What verse or passage is blessing you today?

Be sure to also visit my fellow bloggers and read their encouragement for your Thursday as well:

• Trisha of Joy of Reading
• Nicole of The Christian Fiction Girl
• Jessica of A Baker’s Perspective
• Becca of The Becca Files
• Jenny Lynn

Are you a blogger? If you would like to join us every Thursday, please contact Trisha or Nicole.