2 corinthians on Humiliation

The following story by professor and author A. J. Swoboda is a vivid example of how shame works in our lives, often causing us to hide and run away from the pain and embarrassment: One of the greate...

In grad school, although I was studying to become a clinical psychologist, I started working at a Baptist church. I discovered then that I loved to preach . . . until one weekend when the sermon wasn’...

Preaching Commentary Audience Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was probably intended for wider distribution and use among the various churches around Ephesus. As such, there is no particular crisis o...

The incarnation has often been described as “The Great Exchange,” whereupon God took on human form so that we might participate in God's divine life (through the Holy Spirit). In a sermon on the n...

Jesus has many who love the kingdom of God, but few who bear a cross. He has many who desire His comfort, but few who desire His suffering. All want to rejoice with him, but few are willing to suffer ...

Where there’s humility there is majesty; where there’s weakness, there’s might; where there is death, there’s life. If you want to get these things don’t disdain those.

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was mean...

Speedy Morris is the basketball coach for LaSalle University. He was shaving when his wife told him he was wanted on the phone by Sports Illustrated. He got so excited over the prospect of national re...

[God’s] greatest grace is found at the lowest place

The doctrines of grace humble a man without degrading him and exalt him without inflating him.

True humility means total dependence on God for everything.

Love to be unknown.

"At the very moment of that vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most dreadful shuddering…I looked down…I was once more Edward Hyde."

Only the poor in spirit can be humble. How often the experience, growth, and progress of a Christian become such precious matters to him that he loses his lowliness.

Nevertheless, what was shameful, even odious, to the critics of Christ, was in the eyes of his followers most glorious. They had learnt that the servant was not greater than the master, and that for t...

The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same ti...

Growth in grace is growth downward. It is the forming of a lower estimate of ourselves. It is a deepening realization of our nothingness. It is a heartfelt recognition that we are not worthy of the le...

It is true that he [Christ] has awful majesty; he is the great God, and is infinitely high above you; but there is this to encourage and embolden the poor sinner, that Christ is a man as well as God; ...

Our godlike beauty is hidden beneath curtains of shame.

Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

Nevertheless, what was shameful, even odious, to the critics of Christ, was in the eyes of his followers most glorious. They had learnt that the servant was not greater than the master, and that for t...

Henri Nouwen is a well-loved writer and theologian who taught for decades at some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, but he left behind the academy to serve among the disabled popula...

Comparison is the root of most of the misery we feel in life. Comparison makes it impossible to view ourselves from any sort of godly perspective. It is an absolute snare for the soul. Consider what c...

A truly gospel-humble person is not a self-hating person or a self-loving person, but a gospel-humble person. The truly gospel-humble person is a self-forgetful person whose ego is just like his or he...

God uses the nobodies to show himself to be somebody. God uses the nothings to show himself to be something. And maybe you feel like a nobody, a nothing. My friend, you're the one God's chosen...

Gracious God, sometimes I am so caught up in my failures, in all the ways I am not like you, that I neglect the deeper truth, the earlier truth of Genesis 1. You have made me, as a human being, in you...

In their book Friend and Foe, social psychologists Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer cite a study by Emory University scientist Frans de Waal regarding comparison. De Waal trained capuchin monkeys ...

Depression is a thief. A pickpocket. Swiping a memory here and there. An emotion, a plan for the afternoon, part of a conversation. It is a burglar. Leaving behind empty surfaces and containers that u...

Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.

C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation: We catch sight of a new key principle—the power of the Higher, just in so far as it is truly Higher, to come down, the power of the greater to include the less. . . . ...