Secrets of the Secret Place Chapter 12: The Secret of Humility

We’ve reached the end of Week 4 now on our deliberately steady march through Sorge’s devotional. Reaching this marker might suggest the “dog days are over” and you can skip today’s Scripture reading, maybe take a break from sitting somewhere that’s dead quiet and waiting in that dead quiet to hear Him answer your prayers. I encourage you to keep going and fight back the spiritual lactic acid.
 
I don’t believe it is mere coincidence then that today we are reading about humility, that is, the secret of humility. And rather than like last week give a dictionary’s definition I will show you instead what Sorge thinks. “Humility says, ‘Lord, I am empty without Your fullness; I am broken without Your wholeness; I am helpless without Your strength; I am clueless without Your wisdom. Apart from You I am nothing.’”

The opposite of humility is pride. It is what Sorge believes causes us to stop praying, essentially stop relying on God. “We begin to trim back on our secret time with God when we’re feeling great about ourselves, energetic and optimistic about our future, and confident about the path we’re taking. It’s the first sign that we’re getting full of ourselves.”

Now usually in each chapter there is a particular sentence that goes “The secret to x is y.” However Sorge has not done this here and I think there is a reason why. To say “Be humble” is like saying “Love one another”: great tattoo, impossible concept. Instead of one sentence then Sorge mentions a guy from Proverbs named Agur, a psalm of David, and twenty-four elders from Revelation. I myself would also recommend you also read Job 38-41. These admirable men knew no comparison could possibly bring them closer in greatness to God.

People, particularly Christians, tend to misinterpret how to apply humility to their lives. For some of us, including myself, when we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior we took with Him into our hearts the belief how terrible we still were...like we’re bastards. Out of the kindness of the Father’s heart and to glorify His own name, He let us eat the crumbs off His plate after dinner, got to sleep in the hallway, and to wash the pigs covered in mud and what else for fun, and we were grateful. Which explains our false humility: having little to no self-worth, self-deprecating, afraid to make initiative, a people pleaser. Another word to define all this is over-humble, where you have no pride in yourself and no clue what Jesus did means for you.

It is not prideful to say “I am a Son/Daughter and Prince/Princess of the King of the Universe”. You are not boasting when you sing “I am a child of God”. God did indeed lower a crown onto your head. Sorge writes, “He gave it to us that we might give it all back to Him. He is everything, and as we are joined to Him the poverty of our personal identity is lost in the fullness of His eternal greatness.” You didn’t earn that crown by your victorious battles but you received it as a trophy for His victorious battle. True humility is knowing what an honor it is “to lay all our life attainments at His feet in profound awareness at His feet in profound awareness of His all-surpassing greatness!”

Author | Sam Darby