Humility, the Wrong End

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Silence, Stillness, and Centering before God (2 minutes)    

Scripture Reading

"Then Jesus began his teaching by saying to them, "How happy are the humble-minded, for the kingdom of Heaven is theirs!"       Matthew 5:2 (Phillips NT)     

Reflect  

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

Humility, the Wrong End
Screwtape continues his examination of the virtue of Humility:
"You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility.  Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character.  Some talents, I gather, he really has.  Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be.  No doubt they are in fact less valuable than he believes, but that is not the point. The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue.  By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools.  And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it  and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible."
                                                           From The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis

Question to Consider
       
Have you discovered the giftedness that God has blessed you with?   Are you comfortable enough with your giftedness to humbly admit the giftings you have been given without diminishing the importance of what God has blessed you to be?  

Prayer

"Lord, thank you for making me in such a way that I can know that you have gifted me with special abilities.  Help me, Lord, to know them, to be grateful for them, to not be ashamed of them, and to use them, even in the simplest of ways, for you, for others and for your Kingdom.   Amen."


Conclude with Silence   (2 minutes)        

 
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