by James Douglas

Created on: July 29, 2008

1Peter 5:6-7, "Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you."-NKJV

Being called humble is still considered to be a compliment in today's world but the word "submission" doesn't garner the same warm and fuzzy feeling. The strange thing is; you really can't be humble without submitting to something. Even if you look at the passage above, "humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God" we can see that humbling ourselves before God, requires us to be "under" His mighty hand. Let's do a little word-study on humble.

From a biblical perspective the Greek root for humble means, "to make low". What I found to be interesting was to look at this word from the transitive verb tense as used in this passage. Merriam-Webster's defines humble this way, "to destroy the power, independence or prestige of". Wow! When you destroy something you; kill, neutralize, annihilate or vanquish a thing. The idea is to break a structure down in such a way that it can not be put back together again. Now we understand power as authority and/or force, and independence as autonomy, that is not being "dependent" on anything else to sustain itself. However, the word "prestige" is what really caught my attention. Webster defines this as the, "standing or estimation in the eyes of people". Still on the word study, "prestige" has an old French origin, which translates as, "a conjurer's trick; illusion" and of course a conjurer is a wizard or magician; one who practices magic arts (witchcraft). Now if we string the definitions together, to humble yourself is, "the act of killing the witchcraft or conjured up thought process of where you stand in the eyes of other people!"

Isn't that the crux of the matter? We have a problem with submitting because we have brought into society's definition and are worried about how we look when we submit. I watch armor-bearers in church situations. The ones who are secure in who they are just go ahead and serve. They tie the preacher's shoe and even wipe their forehead in the middle of a sermon. The ones who struggle with how "they look to others" are the ones who, despite seeing the need, wait until they are called upon by the person they are serving. If they are not afraid of how "on-lookers" perceive them, they are worried about how the preacher will respond. Do you see the conjurer's trick? While you are trying to figure out what people are saying or thinkingyou wind

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>