Day 3: When Life Gets Hard, How Will You Respond?

Over and over again in the Bible, self-humbling is not something we initiate but something we receive, even embrace, even welcome, — when God does his humbling work—however direct or indirect his means. The invitation to humble ourselves does not come to us in a vacuum but through our first being humbled. First, God gets our attention with disruption, then asks for our welcoming of his mercy, however severe and painful.

Humility, like faith — and as a manifestation of faith — is not an achievement. Humility is not fundamentally a human initiative, but a proper, God-given response in us to God himself and his glory and his purposes in the world and in our lives.

We don’t teach ourselves to be humble. There’s no five-step plan for becoming more humble in the next week or month. Within measure, we might take certain steps, in faith, to cultivate a posture of humility in ourselves. But the main test (and opportunity) comes when we are confronted, unsettled, and accosted—in the moments when our semblances of control vanish and we’re taken off guard by the hard edges of life in a fallen world—and the question comes to us: How will you respond to these humbling circumstances? Will you humble yourself?

Gladly Receive the Uncomfortable God

For Christians, self-humbling is mainly responsive. We don’t initiate humility, and we don’t get the credit for it. It’s no less active, and no less difficult, but it is responsive to who God is, what he has said to us in his word, and what he is doing in the world, specifically as it comes to bear in all its inconvenience and pain and disappointment in our own lives. Self-humbling is, in essence, gladly receiving God’s person, words, and acts when doing so is not easy or comfortable. 

First comes the disruptive words or circumstances, in God’s hand and plan, that humble us—as it happened for King Hezekiah seven centuries before Christ. God healed him from his deathbed, and yet the king “did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud.” The king’s enduring pride invited divine intervention and necessitated its severity. In righteous wrath, though not without mercy, God took action against Hezekiah’s pride. He humbled him. In whatever form it took, we’re told that “wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem” (2 Chronicles 32:25).

Then comes the question that presses against our souls in our humbling providences, as it did for the king: Will I receive God’s humbling or resist it? Will I try to explain it away or push back against it, or will it lead me to genuine repentance? If I do not humble myself, then further divine humbling will follow in time. God’s initial humbling leads unavoidably to a further humbling. The question is whether it will be our self-humbling or further (and often more severe) humbling from him.