The Word of God is essential for your walk. We cannot live without it. It’s a lamp unto our feet that we may see the way and walk in it. Leviathan is the reward of the proud. Everything we do and have, there will be recompense, there will be a reward. Good or bad! There is an effect to everything we do. Pride has its effects. This should give us the Fear of the Lord because everything we do has consequences or reward. The things we have in our hearts, the issues of life, produce rivers. We have issues in our mind because it’s coming out of the murky river of our heart. You want peace in your mind, peace of mind; what is coming out of your heart? That’s what may be coming into your mind. The reward of a kingdom heart is joy, peace, and righteousness in The Holy Ghost! To have a sound mind, we need this one character trait: Humility! Humility moves God! Humility brings completion to the character of Christ in you. Humility makes it His good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. To be clothed in humility is to be clothed in His glory. When we take off our glory and put on humility, the Bible says He exalts the humble. How does He do this? By clothing us in His Glory, why? Because He knows when you’re humble, you won’t use His glory for your own glory because humility does not exalt itself. God brings transformation to the humble and brings them from Glory to Glory.
There are so many promises to the humble. As we see, there are some in Proverbs 22:4: “By Humility and the Fear of the Lord comes riches, honor, and life.” This is everything that a prideful man seeks! The high things! But the Lord says I’ll give it to you if you go after the low things. If you stop seeking those things. If you stop climbing high for those things. Climb low for it! This is the Wisdom that confounds the wise. You have to be foolish to man, but you will be wise to God. It’s an upside-down Kingdom. It is the opposite of the world. You must go low to go high! Humility has its benefits, just as pride has its payback. Humility makes you irresistible to God. When He said He resists the proud, He was talking to the church, His own people, not the unbelievers. In a house, there are always vessels of gold and silver and vessels of wood and of earth. Vessels of honor and of dishonor, of pride and humility! We have in one example, Abel, who was humble, and Cain, who was prideful, and we saw this later on when Cain manifested with jealousy and envy, which turned into strife and murder. Humility repents; pride kills its brother.
Out of humility, comes love, joy, peace, temperance, faith, all the fruits of the Spirit because God gives grace to the humble, and He gives you grace that you may give others grace. Some have no grace to give because they have no Humility! They have no grace from God to give others because He gives grace to the humble. The problem is pride and lack of humility. God empowers us to live for Him. Though some of us have no empowerment because we have no humility! We can do nothing on our own, but we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. When we walk in pride, we have no empowerment, no grace. He starts to resist you not as a son or daughter, but He starts to not give you what pleases Him, which is the Kingdom of God. It’s His good pleasure to give us the Kingdom, but when there’s pride, it becomes His displeasure because we make the Kingdom of no effect because it’s about us and not about Him. He will never trust a prideful man with His Kingdom. We say Glory to God, but we really desire our own glory. If you’re chasing greatness, you’re chasing pride. If God gives you that, then great, but if you are chasing that, you are chasing after the lust of the Flesh. The lust of being seen and known.
If you have a struggle with submission and subjecting yourself to another or to a leader, you have issues with pride. Only a humble person can bring himself under something or someone else besides himself. A prideful person is always looking for the top position and covets after it. If you covet high things like leadership, you’re always going to struggle with submitting to that leader or leaders because you want to be The Leader. Then we get jealous and envious, and we may not want to be jealous or compare ourselves, but it’s our heart that creates these issues. And we need to deal with the root of it. Pride will have you come against the people that you love. It makes you envious of others, and envy turns into anger. Find out the things that make you jealous of people, and you will find out the covetousness you have in your heart for what they have. You won’t be able to submit to or honor that person until you stop going after what they have. The lust that you have for things will make you jealous when other people have those things. You may not want to be jealous, but this is the fruit of covetousness which all stems from pride.
We are to never lift up ourselves or glory in ourselves, lest we become a fool like Paul says. We let Jesus do the glorifying. We let Him exalt us in due time, as it says. We let Him glorify us with His Glory that “He” may be glorified. Jesus made Himself of no reputation, but his reputation was from above because God glorified Him. His glory was not from below. And when man wanted to give Him a bad reputation, God glorified Him. Jesus didn’t clothe Himself in glory. He clothed himself in humility, even being in the form of God, and He became a man and humbled Himself even to the death of the cross; therefore, God exalted Him and gave Him a name that is above every name (See Philippians 2:6-11). Even Jesus had to humble Himself just like every man, to be exalted, to be glorified. He clothed Himself in Humility, and God clothed in Glory. Humility brings Glory. Some are fighting the devil. Some are still trying to overcome the same sin, and they have no grace to fight it. Though God cannot give grace to a prideful man. Only to a humble man, even if we are His children. If we are prideful, and He gives us His glory or things of Him, it will add to our pride. If God glorifies the proud, it will make them prouder. And we will become so proud that we will start to resist God because we will think we have it all together, even on our own. We look at the most prideful men and look down on their arrogance, but if we don’t look at the little bit of pride we have now, we will end up just like them. Take heed lest you fall. Saul was clothed in humility at one point. He saw himself as small in his own eyes, but it was one seed of pride after another. I want them to see this; I want them to see me this way; so much pride to the point that he was so worried about what man thought about him that he started to resist God and not obey Him because he loved the praises of man more than pleasing God. If you are a man-pleaser, it’s more pride than you think because you want their praises, and you want them to like you. You don’t want them to be mad at you or hate you. This is pride because it’s all about you! It’s actually humility when you are willing to put yourself out of the way and willing to be hated and not liked so that they may hear the truth and be set free. This is humility because you are willing to put your reputation with man aside to save a soul. Those people that you think are mean and you don’t like are actually more humble than you think. Because they are more willing for you to be mad at them so that you may have reconciliation with God. That’s humble.
Have I now become your enemy because I tell you the truth? It takes humility to know that if I tell you the truth, you’ll be mad at me and see me as an enemy. Only humility can endure it. Pride wants to be nice. I don’t want to hurt them. No! You want them to like you. You know the truth doesn’t hurt unless someone takes it and stabs themselves with it. The truth sets them free if they allow it to free them, rather than condemn them. The Truth is a sword that you can kill the enemy with it or kill yourself with it. There’s wisdom in delivering the truth, but it’s foolish and prideful to hold back The Truth because you want to be liked. If you’re willing to be liked more than set someone free, even if they become your enemy, then your God is you!
Grace is not a free pass for your sin. It’s God’s patience in the process of transformation. There is grace when we fall. A righteous man falls 7 times but rises again. And Grace is there to pick him up. But we also have the grace of His empowerment. In time of trouble, when we can’t do it, when it becomes difficult, we go boldly to the throne of grace in time of need because it’s not by our strength but His. Yet some aren’t going boldly to the throne of grace. Some are going pridefully to the throne of grace, and God doesn’t give you the grace because God resists the proud. Some are coming back from the throne empty-handed because God resists the proud. How come the Bible’s not working? I went, and I asked for empowerment, I asked for help in time of need, I asked for grace, but it’s only for the Humble! “I give grace to the Humble!” He saying to you now that He’s not going to give His empowerment so that He can empower your pride! You have to be humble! In the lowest place is abundant grace! Sometimes when He does not give you what you want, He’s actually humbling you, but it’s better to be humble rather than to be humbled. A prideful man struggles with resisting the devil because God resists the proud. That means you are not under the grace of the first step, which is to submit to God, because you are still submitted to yourself and your own glory. Without humility, you cannot submit to God. You come to God and say, “God, I submit.” But what heart are you coming in? God doesn’t respond to your works or stature. He even sees past your words. He looks at the heart. He responds to your heart. The heart speaks! Your mouth moves, but your heart speaks! He gives grace, He gives empowerment, but to the humble, and the humble can resist the devil with all grace. I want to fight the devil with all grace and empowerment from above. Humility opens the windows of heaven. It opens up God’s exaltation, promotion, extension, and expansion. Humility is the key, and it’s a key to the Kingdom. We know of the keys to bind and loose, but humility is the key to grace, glory, power, exaltation, riches, life, honor, and more, according to the Bible! It’s the key to manifest His Glory and to wear His Glory because He desires us to be clothed in Glory, and that Glory is Christ. God clothes us in the outer garment, but we to have on the undergarments: Humility. As it says, we must be clothed in humility in 1 Peter 5:5.
The Bible says one sows, one waters, but God gives the increase, but who are you that you can think that you can add one cubit to your stature or one hair to your head? It’s God who gives the increase. The key to increasing in the stature of Christ is humility. Humility is miracle-grow. God gives the increase, and the key to increase is decrease. Going low to go high. Though God also told me this, God gives the increase, but God also gives the decrease! For we cannot humble ourselves by ourselves but under the mighty hand of God. We need to submit to the mighty hand of God and let Him crush us so that out may come the oil of Glory. The same hand that brings us low is the same hand that we’re seated with Christ high above in heavenly places. This suffering will turn into glory, and this mourning will turn into joy, for He said that He will give us joy for mourning and that the sufferings of this present world are nothing to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed in us. These sufferings are humblings. Whatever He uses to keep us low, let it be! Even Paul said he had a messenger of satan that He asked God to remove three times, but He would not remove it because His grace was sufficient in Paul’s weakness. Why was grace found in Paul’s weakness? Because humility was found in Paul when he was weak, and He gives grace to the humble. Grace is sufficient in the humble. Again, He gives grace to the humble! For the pride of my revelations, there was a messenger of satan sent to buffet me! To what? To keep Him humble! That he may be kept from glorying and being glorified above measure. That the power of Christ may rest upon him! This is why he gloried in his infirmities, reproaches, and persecutions; that more of Christ’s glory, more of Christ’s strength, may be upon him because when he was humble, he was strong! Even your weakness will make you strong because it makes you humble, and God exalts, gives grace, strengthens, and empowers the humble! “For though I would desire to glory, I shall not be a fool!” But rather “Glory in my infirmities.” It’s all right there in 2 Corinthians 12. This is how He keeps us low! These infirmities were increasing the Glory on Paul’s life. The power, grace, and humility will do the same for your life! It’s no mystery. It’s the Kingdom! And it’s higher than our ways. They are foolish to man but they are wisdom in heaven.
Clothe yourself in humility, humility is the undergarment, and Christ is the outer garment. People may see Christ on your life, but they don’t know underneath what they see, that the key to that success is: Humility. It’s God, but it’s Humility that makes the ground fertile for God. It’s not what you’re wearing on the outside because only He can clothe you in His glory in front of man. It’s what you’re wearing on the inside. God sees what you’re wearing underneath. It’s what the person is wearing under what you see. False humility is in front of man, but real humility is in secret in front of God. If humility was not in secret and it was public, it would be too easy to turn your humility into pride because when humility is seen, and you know it’s being seen, the Bible says to not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. When you are focused on what people see you doing, you are already turning your humility into pride. You are not doing your humility for them. You’re doing your humility for Him. Pride is focused on the eyes of man; humility is conscious of the eyes of God.
Humility doesn’t think on high things. It thinks on lowly things, for God has chosen the lowly things of this world to nullify the things that are. A lowly man thinks on the oppressed, on the sick, on the possessed, the widow, the orphan, and the needy. On the things of others. The Bible says to condescend to men of low estate, and to prefer one another above your own self, and to give honor to the least part. And to not think of yourself more highly than you ought to but according to the measure of faith that God has dealt to each man. This takes humility! Jesus even said that He’s lowly at heart. He’s not even prideful towards you, who He is Lord over. Even though He is Lord over you, He still doesn’t lord over you. He is still humble and meek towards you. He lets it be your choice to pick up your cross and follow Him. He doesn’t make you follow Him or force you to do his will, and that’s the scariest thing about God. Because I’d rather be forced because I want to make it. I want to be with Him in Heavenly Glory. I want to walk in His stature. I don’t want to be left behind. Your choices can cause you to walk on the broad path. Everything in the kingdom is a choice. That’s why it’s all about the heart because the heart chooses. You’re not measured by your stature. You’re measured by your choices. The measure of a man is the measure of His heart. Many are called, but few are chosen. Even though you’re saved, and you’re a child of God, there are still consequences to your choices. This gives us the fear of the Lord to make the right choice. What we choose today will be the consequences of tomorrow or the rewards of tomorrow. It’s up to you, not God. He releases the rewards, He releases the Glory, yes, but His promise to clothe you in Glory is dependent on your choice for Humility.
The humble shall have heavenly glory and be exalted. You have to be humble. The river flows to the lowest place, and you have to go so low that you make yourself a grave that you may become a seed in the ground that brings forth much fruit! You are the fertilizer for the ground. Your death will bring forth much life! Your decrease will bring much increase. And your humility will give God more ability to move and to do as He pleases.
By Joe Pinto
Other scriptures. James 4:5-10, Philippians 2:1-9, Colossians 3:12, 1 Peter 5:1-8
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