Humility 101

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Begin 

Silence, Stillness, and Centering before God (2 minutes)    Try reading through the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6)  slowly personalizing it to your day ahead.  This will help you focus during your period of silence.

Scripture Reading

"the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?”  Jesus called a little child to him and put the child among them.  Then he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven.  So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”                Matthew 18:1-4 (NLT)
    

Reflect  

Listen as senior devil Screwtape mentors junior devil Wormwood on how to lure his “Patient” away from humility and from God.

Screwtape examines the virtue of Humility:
“Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact?  All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility.  Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, ‘By jove!  I’m being humble.’ And almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear.  If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.
But there are other profitable ways of fixing his attention on the virtue of Humility.  By this virtue, as by all the others, our Enemy wants to turn the man’s attention away from self to Him, and to the man’s neighbours.  All the abjection and self-hatred are designed, in the long run, solely for this end; unless they attain this end they do us little harm; and they may even do us good if they keep the man concerned with himself, and, above all, if self-contempt can be made the starting point for contempt of other selves, and thus for gloom, cynicism, and cruelty.”                        From “The Screwtape Letters”  - C.S. Lewis

Question to Consider

Both pride and self-contempt are fostered by the Devil because they render you useless and steal your joy.   A self-focused person is useless to himself, to the Kingdom and to others.   When are you most likely to be self-absorbed?  When are you most likely to be self-forgetful?   What do the answers to those two questions teach you?

Prayer

"Lord, when I get down on myself I will remember that I am your child, forgiven, loved and delighted in.   Lord when I find myself proud of having had a humble moment, I will simply laugh it off knowing I’m forgiven for such a silly thought.  Thank you Lord.  Amen"

Conclude with Silence   (2 minutes)

 
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