Be humble, and then God will not need to humble you. Having to be humbled is very unpleasant (though wholesome). With wisdom, it can largely be avoided, by getting there first voluntarily. Of course, if you are not God's, He may not bother to humble you, He may just let you run out your animal course in your pride. But if you are His, humbling must come, one way or the other. Christ was humble -- "Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart." He towered infinitely above everyone on earth. How then could he be sincerely humble? Because he realized that he was nothing, and God was everything. He did not (like so many) compare himself with those around him, but with God. He knew that all he ever did or was or understood was of God: the gift of God, the love of God. He had no illusions of his own innate strength or goodness or wisdom. He emptied himself -- his own natural, fleshly self -- and filled himself totally with God: or, rather, he submitted to God totally filling him, to perfectly direct every thought, word and deed. He was the perfect vessel for the Divine use. Let us try to follow him. A word of caution: we are not to sit supinely waiting for this to happen to us -- and then assume our own fleshly thoughts are God's. We are expected to strain to the limit to prepare ourselves for divine use by study of the Word and meditation and prayer and constant self-searching. We can be sure that that is the wise and scriptural course that Christ followed. Psa. 119, and others, tells us that

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