One last thing......

Today is the last day of the year...and the last day that I will be specifically focusing on my word, humility as I move on to a new word for the new year, This isn't the first time I have chosen this word to focus on for a whole year, I chose it in 2010. I've read a lot about humility and learned a lot about it but i still feel like I did when I started: an inchworm on the one yard line inching down the football field with 99 yards to go.  Humility is a trait that I'll always be trying to live into...it is not that easy to accomplish and say "Ok, I've got that one under my belt, time to move on." Once you think you've become humble is the exact moment you are not.

Because I'm a 2 on the Enneagram and a 2's signature sin is pride, I will always need to keep the desire for humility in front of me. But hopefully, I have a better understanding of how to do that now that it has been my focus for 12 months.  Thankfully I have Jesus to look towards to show me what it looks like and as I fix my attention on Him, I can keep that fruit of the Spirit in the forefront of my mind and heart. And what we gaze on is what we become.

I have a confession to make. I had every good intention of reading Andrew Murray's classic book, Humility, this year but never did.  I would like to read it in 2015, kind of as a "refresher" and maybe that is how God intended it to be, so that I continue to live into my way home.

The deepest humility is the secret of the truest happiness, of a joy that nothing can destroy. 
Andrew Murray

Soul Rest

Humility, which involves losing our self-sufficiency, is a secret of soul rest because it does not presume to secure outcomes. On the other hand, pride is the root of disobedience. We think we are "big enough" to take our lives into our own hands and so we disobey what we know to be right. This distances us from God and forces us to live on our own. Soul rest becomes impossible. When living in the cradle of humility, we understand that God has a plan for our lives that goes far beyond anything we can work out. We simply rest in His life as He gives it to us. While resting in God, we can be free from all anxiety, which means deep soul rest.
Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart Daily Devotional pg 145

Humility frees us to live lightly and freely

To walk in My Light requires you pay more attention to your failure to love than to the pain you feel when others fail to love you. If you understand relational sin, confession will become a daily exercise. (because we are always sinning and it's easy to sin in this area, put my wants and needs first, not God's or others). When you confess your sins, I will not only forgive the relational failures you see, but I will also clean up everything you have yet to see that keeps you feeling at a distance from Me. Discouragement, when it drives you to Me in broken confession rather than away from Me in wounded pride, brings the realism of humility. You are never without sin. Whether you recognize it or not, there is never a moment when you relate as perfectly as My Son. One day you will! Until then, humility will free you to live in awe of my endless supply of grace. And then the worship that awe inspires, will release more of My Son''s life to flow out of you into others, even into those who have hurt you though never as badly as you have hurt Me.  
excerpt from 66 Love Letters by Larry Crabb   I John 1:10, 2:1-12

St Benedict's Ladder of Humility

"Humility" - the willingness to be known for who we are.

Step #8 - Transformation into the Love of God  Deut 6:5

Step #7 - Speaking Less  Psalms 46:10

Step #6 - Deeply Aware of Being "Chief of All Sinners" Isaiah 64:6

Step #5 - Radical Honesty to Others About Your Weaknesses/Faults James 5:16

Step #4 - Patience to Accept the Difficulty of Others 1 Thess 5:14

Step #3 - Willing to Subject Ourselves to the Direction of Others Heb 13:17

Step #2 - Doing God's Will (Not Your Own or Other People's) 2 Cor 5:9

Step #1 - Fear of God and Mindfulness of Him Eccl 12:13

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Prov 22:4 Humility and the fear of the LORD bring wealth and honor and life. 

Matt 11:29-30 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and 

humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my

burden is light.

Phil 2:3-4 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others 

better than yourselves.  Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but 

also to the interests of others. 

1 Peter 5:5 Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of 

you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, God opposes the 

proud but gives grace to the humble.

True Humility

True Humility doesn't consist of thinking ill of yourself but of not thinking of yourself much differently from the way you'd be apt to think of anybody else. It is the capacity for being no more and no less pleased when you play your own hand well than when your opponents do.

from last year's journal:  author unknown

Humility is Shy

"I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves one above the other, and that the taller we grew in Christian character the easier we should reach them. I find now that God's gifts are on shelves one beneath the other, and that it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower, and that we have to go down, always down, to get His best gifts."  G. B. F. Hallock

"Humility isn't burden or humiliation of oppressive wight, but the only posture that can receive the wondrous grace-gifts of God - God who humbled Himself and came to the feed trough . .  The moment I try to grasp for humility, she's gone, Speak of humility, shine a light shaft on her, and she's shadow-gone in the dark. 'Humility is so shy,' writes Tim Keller. If I focus on humility, I look inward to assess if I'm sufficiently humble and in the very act, humility darts and I'm proud, self-focused. It doesn't work...The quiet song of gratitude, eucharisteo, lures humility out of the shadows because to receive a gift, the knees must bend humble and the hand must lie vulnerably open and the will must bow to accept whatever the Giver chooses to give. "

excerpt from  one thousand gifts devotional by Ann Voskamp