A Dwelling Place for the Almighty
In the Kingdom, there are no great men or women of God, just humble people whom God has chosen to use greatly. How do we know when we are humble? When God speaks, we tremble. God is looking for men and women who tremble at His word. Such people will find the Spirit of God resting on them; they will become a dwelling place for the Almighty.
Relationship with God Begins with Humility
The divine pursuit begins with the humbling of self. Fleshly desires, soulish fears, and human ambitions try to rule us. Thus, when true meekness emerges in our hearts, it silences the clamor of our fleshly minds. The voice of our fears and inadequacies becomes a whisper.
To humble our earthly perspectives and opinions, we must relegate them to a lower priority; they become mere background noise as our focus turns increasingly toward God. No pretense prevails; we come humbling ourselves. We bow on our faces before the holy gaze of God. And in His light, we finally perceive the darkness of our souls.
Thus humility, at its root, starts with honesty. The humbled heart is truly and deeply acquainted with its need, and in the beginning the awareness of one's need becomes the voice of prayer. This confession, "I have sinned," puts us on the side of God concerning it. We agree with our Father that our behavior is wrong. Thus the process of healing begins during this moment of self-discovery. We are working with God to defeat sin in our lives; and in this process of humbling ourselves, the Lord grants us peace, covering, and transforming grace.
Yet with humility, we not only acknowledge our need but also take full responsibility for it. We offer no defense to God for our fallen condition. We've come not to explain ourselves but to be cleansed.
The Word says, "Humble yourselves." This means we are choosing it rather than God doing it for us.
"Humble yourselves [with an attitude of repentance and insignificance] in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you [He will lift you up, He will give you purpose]." (James 4:10 AMP)
Humble Ourselves or Be Led Through the Wilderness
There are two ways to enter meekness: humble ourselves or be led through the wilderness. Either path is designed to ultimately lead to a condition of our hearts that will allow us to hear God.
Most of us have gone through times when life's circumstances humbled us. When faced with a difficult situation, we may be humbled, but like a cork in water, we rise back up to the surface, our pride returning when the issue resolves. God doesn't want our lives filled with pride that dissipates during intermittent periods of shame due to external circumstances or even sometimes painful experiences. He wants us to be humble by choice, humble because we want to be like Jesus.
Jesus said, "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me. For I am meek and lowly in heart..." (Matthew 11:28–29 MEV). If we want to know the essence of Jesus, we must recognize that He is meek and lowly of heart. He identifies with the lowly. Jesus Christ is humble by choice, by nature. If we will be shaped and conformed to His image, then we too must choose the way of humility and meekness.
The Wilderness: The Process of Spiritual Training
In this process of spiritual training, God desires to create within us the necessary attitudes that will shape us and condition us to experience the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in our lives. As we become humble of heart, this step will qualify and prepare us to reach a purity of heart that enables us to see God, have fellowship with Him, and interact spiritually with Him. Then, when He speaks, we will be ready to change, "...for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight" (Philippians 2:13 AMPC). (Photo via Pexels)
God explained this process to the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 8:2–3 (NIV), where He says, "Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."
The purpose of the wilderness is not merely to adjust us to living in a place of oppression and scarcity; the purpose of the wilderness is to teach us that man does not live by bread alone. In other words, we don't live by our own efforts; the people of God live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
The goal of this stage of training, this development of the work of humility and meekness in us, is not to make us timid or fearful; it is to give us a humble spirit that can hear the voice of God and follow His leading. The sign of true humility is obedience, trying to live out every utterance, every whisper that comes from God's heart.
The successive stages of spiritual training—recognizing our need, coming through godly sorrow to deep repentance—bring us to true humility of heart and hearing the voice of God speaking to us. The process of God humbling us in the wilderness enables us to hear His voice and be genuinely led by Him.
The Israelites heard the audible voice of God speaking to them from Mount Horeb. The sound of His voice caused great fear in them, and they begged Moses: "...Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die" (Exodus 20:19 NIV).
Fear is not an aspect of the process of humility that God is working in us in this stage of training. If fear has awakened in your heart like the Israelites, you might need more time in the wilderness. Fear or shyness might look like humility, but they are not. How do you know the difference? Fear trembles before men. Humility trembles before God. The process of meekness and humility will prepare you to hear and receive the word of God with joy and obedience.
The Voice of the Holy Spirit
God speaks to His followers through the Holy Spirit, and our ability to hear His voice is evidence of our humility. Don't miss that important truth: Our humility is measured by our capacity to hear His voice. And the way to hear God's voice—the process of coming into that—is acknowledging our need, repenting, and becoming pure in heart. As you continue to embrace that cleansing process, you will become more and more sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
True humility brings joy when we listen to His voice. His voice may not be audible. The fruit of meekness and humility allows a greater ability to hear the Spirit speaking.
Jesus told His followers, "My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me" (John 10:27 NIV). In Psalm 95:7–8 (NIV), David warned the people, "...Today, if only you would hear His voice, 'Do not harden your hearts as you did... in the wilderness.'" He is speaking the same words to us: "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts." A person characterized by humility hears and responds to the voice of the Holy Spirit. (Photo via Unsplash)
The opposite is also true: If we don't hear the voice of God, it is evidence that we have not embraced the changes God has called us into. Eventually, we become hypocrites or phony Christians. If we're not changing and going on in the things of God, then we're living with two faces. God wants us to have one face—the face of Christ. He wants us to have one heart—the heart of Christ. He doesn't want us to have duplicity. He wants us to have sincerity of heart, which is one focus, one heart.
A Matter of the Heart
The work of God in this stage of training is to break down areas of resistance. The end of that breaking will result in the characteristic of humility wherein we tremble when God speaks. Through Isaiah the Lord says this, "...These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at My word" (Isaiah 66:2 NIV).
We need hearts that tremble when God speaks, where, when He shows us an area of need, we don't attempt to fight with Him about it or turn away from His voice. In the example of Job, we see a godly man who feared the Lord and was turning away from evil. Of him the Lord said, "...Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil..." (Job 2:3 NASB).
Just as surely as Job turned away from evil, we can turn away from the voice of the Lord. When the Lord shows us an area of need, our carnal inner man can still turn away, move out of direct communication with God, and choose to do something that prevents us from responding. That's called "hardening the heart." Solomon counseled us, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life" (Proverbs 4:23 AMP).
God wants to purify our hearts so we can see Him and hear Him speaking to us. He seeks to get to our hearts so that the reality of His presence within can lead us, and He can be the eternal I Am through us.
When God's glory returned to the temple in the day of Ezekiel, God spoke to the prophet and said, "...Son of man, this is the place of My throne and the place for the soles of My feet..." (Ezekiel 43:7 NIV).
Since the completed work of His Son, Jesus, God is able to dwell within the hearts and souls of man. But just as the Israelites hardened their hearts and turned away from His presence in the temple, we can harden our hearts toward God's voice. When you harden your heart toward God, you soften your heart toward the enemy. When you harden your heart to the voice of God, you are softening your heart to the wicked one.
A Trembling Heart of Humility
When God speaks today, He is looking for humility that trembles at the sound of His voice. When we hear His voice, we need to "...in humility receive the Word implanted, which is able to save your souls" (James 1:21 NASB).
When the Word of God comes to us, we don't always immediately obey it... "Blessed are those who mourn" (Matthew 5:4); we learned that we are to work out what God is working in us. Remember, "...it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose" (Philippians 2:13 NIV). There's a time when the Word is working in you to will. You haven't attained the goal or fulfilled the work yet, but it's working in you now to will.
The enemy sometimes comes to condemn you because you are not fulfilling that word yet. That's when you need humility and to maintain your trembling before God. If we back up one verse, we see that the Word tells us to "...continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12 NIV). This trembling is humility before the living God, not trembling before men.
Here is where you pray, "Dear Lord, help me to love my enemies, to be pure in spirit, to live free from fear, and in other areas work in me to be willing."
Humility is the initiation of every virtue, every glory, and every increase of Christ in you. You will never get into the future of God's promises without having the humility of God's provision and preparation today. (Photo via Unsplash)
My friend, I believe with all my heart that you can be equipped. Everyone can pass through these changes to where we carry revival in our souls because God has done the work inside us. None of us [are] disqualified if we simply believe God and embrace the process of knowing our need, mourning over it, keeping those attitudes of heart, and becoming humble by choice.
Do Not Harden Your Heart in the Training Process
It is imperative that you do not harden your hearts at any point along this stairway to Christlikeness. Today, you may hear His voice, but if you respond with hardness of heart, it will be harder to hear His voice from this day forward. At first, His voice sounds like one shouting in the wilderness, but if you continue to harden your heart, that voice will be just a whisper in the night until you no longer have the capacity even to hear Him speaking.
Don't harden your heart. God wants to lead you into His presence. The process of training may seem long and daunting, but the only way to Christlikeness is to take each step, one after another.
Think for a moment about the example of David. Samuel anointed David to be the king of Israel when he was just a young shepherd boy. He knew the promise of God for his future, but he was forced to live in the wilderness for years before it came to pass.
Many Christians live in a wilderness where the predators of fear, sin, and futility keep them in caves of darkness until they can embrace their destiny in God. Each of us begins our journey to Christlikeness from a point in the wilderness. As we climb the steps of our training in spiritual maturity, we start the journey from the cave of darkness to the glory of the presence of God. We must embrace this process of change from the inside out.
But until you give yourself over to God's process of change, you will continue to live in a cave of darkness on mountains meant for the presence of God that have been inhabited by the enemy. Guard against hardening your heart so you can progress to Christlikeness. On this step of your training, God wants you to live a life of humility. You might pray, "O Lord, humble me," and He can arrange that, but you must choose an attitude of humility through which He can work.
These familiar words tell us, "If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV).
Becoming Humble by Choice
You must choose to humble yourself when the voice of God speaks, when the stirring of God is in your inner man, and when He has His finger on some sin from which He wants you to repent. Humble yourself to His voice when you sense some prayer you are supposed to pray, some prophecy you are supposed to give, some dream you are supposed to share. Choose to humble yourself whenever you are supposed to do something.
Make a transition from just humbling yourself during times of adversity and difficulty to becoming a person humble by choice, one who walks with God and hears the voice of God speaking. "Be strong and very courageous... do not turn... to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go" (Joshua 1:7 NIV).
The humility of heart that you choose now will awaken a hunger and thirst for the righteousness of Christ to be evident within you. Choose humility today.
Father God, work in me the meekness that trembles when You speak. Give me a trembling heart, a soft heart, a breaking heart. Train me to be sensitive to Your Spirit and to walk in humility before You.
(Today's post was adapted from Francis Frangipane's newest book, The Heart That Sees God.)
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Francis FrangipaneÂ
Ministries of Francis Frangipane
Email:Â info@frangipane.org
Website:Â www.frangipane.org
Francis Frangipane has traveled throughout the world ministering to thousands of pastors and intercessors from many backgrounds. Francis' heartfelt prayer is to see established in every city, Christlike pastors and intercessors, united before God, revealing the love of Christ to their communities. He is the author of several books, including The Three Battlegrounds and Holiness, Truth and the Presence of God, as well as several others. He founded an online training course called In Christ's Image Training, which has trained thousands of Believers around the world in Christlikeness, humility, prayer and unity.
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