being humbled on Humiliation

Confession is verbal humiliation.

At eighteen, a self-assured Benjamin Franklin returned to Boston, the city he had fled just seven months earlier. Dressed in a fine new suit, with a watch on his wrist and a pocket full of coins, he p...

I am convinced that C. S. Lewis is correct in the point he makes in his remarkable speech “The Weight of Glory” that the cure for pride is not the humiliation of a person so that pride is broken. Rat...

Guests? Or Hosts? After picking up the first verse of the chapter in order to provide a setting for Jesus’ words, this week’s gospel reading contains two teachings. The first (v. 7-11) is addressed t...

Guests? Or Hosts? After picking up the first verse of the chapter in order to provide a setting for Jesus’ words, this week’s gospel reading contains two teachings. The first (v. 7-11) is addressed t...

Sometimes God takes our greatest failures and turns them into our greatest successes. Charles “Chuck” Colson had risen the ladder of national political success at breakneck speed. After a tour in the ...

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...

Hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 14:11, ESV). When we humbly confess our sins before God, we ...

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

Blessed Lord, who puts down the mighty from their seat and exalts those who have been humbled: Save us, we implore you, from pride and arrogance, from self-seeking and false ambition. Give us a humble...

Be humble because you are made of earth. Be noble, for you are made of stars.

You cannot be proud and expect to be transformed away from your sins. You need to humble yourself and have a spirit of repentance within you. Then you will see real change.

Fall on your knees and grow there. There is no burden of the spirit but is lighter by kneeling under it. Prayer means not always talking to Him, but waiting before Him till the dust settles and the st...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson points out our blind-spots with respect to pride: We rarely think of ourselves as proud. I...

The fact is there is nothing that we are doing that God could not raise up a stone in the field to do for him. The realization of this puts us in our true place. Though, lest we get too knocked down b...

Blessed Lord, who puts down the mighty from their seat and exalts those who have been humbled: Save us, we implore you, from pride and arrogance, from self-seeking and false ambition. Give us a humble...

The road to character often involves moments of moral crisis, confrontation, and recovery. When they were in a crucible moment, they suddenly had a greater ability to see their own nature. The everyda...

Merciful God, we humble ourselves in your presence, confessing our unworthiness and our sinfulness in your sight. We have broken your holy law. We have not sought first your kingdom and righteousness....

In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a handsome young man who caught sight of his reflection in a pond, fell in love with his own image, toppled into the water and drowned. So “narcissism” is an excessiv...

No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and al...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the sobering truth of what happens to many leaders when they climb the “ladder of success”: The ground at the foot of the ladde...

The Sermon on the Mount is, spiritually speaking, actually the sermon from the valley. It starts low. It starts with those who feel very unlike mountains!

Though Christ was by nature divine, Christ did not cling to equality with God, but in utter self-emptying, took the form of a slave, and was born as a human. God have mercy. Appearing in h...

There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they ...

My heart exults in the Lord; my horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation. “There is none holy like the Lord: for there is none besides you; there i...

A freshly minted lieutenant wanted to impress the first private to enter his new office, and he pretended to be on the phone with a general so that the private would know he was somebody. “Yes sir, Ge...

Gracious God, we have not been patient, nor have we been kind. We have been jealous of others and we have been quick to boast. We have denied others the dignity of being made in your image. Bring us t...

Gracious God, you are quick to show us your love. yet we soon forget. We live as if we have to earn your love, perform in order to receive your approval, and succeed in order to receive a smile. These...

As Christians, we do not need to justify who we are; Jesus took care of that. We are loved and forgiven. When I’m tempted to advertise my accomplishments, qualifications, or résumés when talking with ...

He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of sel...