Quotes About Humility

All I have learned through trial and error is to stay alert and aware, especially God smiling @ our silliness.

When a man or woman is truly honest (not just working at it) it is virtually impossible to insult them personally. There is nothing there to insult. Those who were truly ready for the kingdom were just such people. Their inner poverty of spirit and rigorous honesty had set them free. They were people who had nothing to be proud of.

Stop comparing or boast at your victories. He was referring to enormous vitality and strength of God of Jesus seeking union with us. The living acts of a Christian become somehow the acts of Christ.

Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace. Our approach to the Christian life is as absurd as the enthusiastic young man who had just received his plumber's license and was taken to see Niagara Falls. He studied it for a minute and then said, "I think I can fix this."2

Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don't have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.

If the church remains self-righteously aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God's kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.9

The kingdom belongs to people who aren't trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves. They are not plotting how they can call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior.

When "doing" becomes divorced from "being", pious thoughts become a poor substitute for washing dirty feet.

To live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness is to humbly acknowledge the limitations of the rational, scientific, finite mind and to freely embrace mystery.

May all that I know apart from You be nothing more than a chance traveling companion on the journey toward You.

Getting honest with ourselves does not make us unacceptable to God. It does not distance us from God, but draws us to Him—as nothing else can—and opens us anew to the flow of grace. While Jesus calls each of us to a more perfect life, we cannot achieve it on our own. To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace. It is only through grace that any of us could dare to hope that we could become more like Christ.

It is interesting that whenever the evangelists Mark, Luke, or John mention the apostles, they call the author of the first Gospel either Levi or Matthew. But in his own Gospel, he always refers to himself as "Matthew the publican," never wanting to forget who he was and always wanting to remember how low Jesus stooped to pick him up. We are publicans just like Matthew.

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." —Micah 6:8

Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense," she remembers. "Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it" (Colossians 3:13–14, The Message).

How readily we push Jesus Christ off his judgment seat and take our place there to pronounce on others (though we've neither the knowledge nor the authority to judge anyone.) None of us has ever seen a motive. Therefore, we don't know, we can't do anything more than suspect what inspires the action of another.

The poor man and woman of the gospel have made peace with their flawed existence. They are aware of their lack of wholeness, their brokenness, the simple fact that they don't have it all together. While they do not excuse their sin, they are humbly aware that sin is precisely what has caused them to throw themselves at the mercy of the Father. They do not pretend to be anything but what they are: sinners saved by grace.

When I am divided within myself, when I am so preoccupied with my own sins, egocentricity, and moral failures that I cannot hear the anguished cry of others, then I have subtly reestablished self as the center of my focus and concern.

No one, it seems to me, who has fully grasped the Crucifixion can ever again take seriously any expression or instrument of worldly power, however venerable, glittering, or seemingly formidable. MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE

The deeper we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become—the more we realize that everything in life is a gift.

The mature Christians I have met along the way are those who have failed and have learned to live gracefully with their failure.

The spiritual future of ragamuffins consists not in disavowing that we are sinners but in accepting that truth with growing clarity, rejoicing in God's incredible longing to rescue us in spite of everything

For the disciple of Jesus, being like a child means accepting oneself as being of little account, unimportant.

The Christian with depth is the person who has failed and who has learned to live with it.

Our approach to the Christian life is as absurd as the enthusiastic young man who had just received his plumber's license and was taken to see Niagara Falls. He studied it for a minute and then said, "I think I can fix this."2