Humility
"Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up." - James 4:10
Last week I shared about integrity and the fully integrated life, how a Christ-centered leader must be the same person in every room, with Christ at the center of everything. This week I want to go one layer deeper because I am convinced that integrity without humility is unsustainable over the long haul. Pride is one of the greatest threats to a leader's integrity, and humility is its most powerful protector. And for driven, achievement-oriented leaders like most of us in the Abide and Lead community, humility may be the most important and most challenging quality we will ever pursue.
Let me be honest. Outside of my walk with the Lord, humility does not come naturally to me. I was trained from an early age to pull up my bootstraps, take charge, and make things happen. But as I have grown in my walk with Jesus, I have come to understand that this approach, left unchecked, is deeply flawed and incompatible with true Kingdom leadership. God is our provider and has given us everything we possess. The moment we start believing we are calling the shots and forget that God is our source, we have lost our humility, and we are headed for a fall.
Humility is not a weakness. Jesus was meek, but He was never weak. He had all the power of the universe at His disposal, and yet He chose to live in complete surrender and total dependence on the Father. He is the ultimate model of what true humility looks like in a leader.
Three Principles of Godly Humility
Humility Is Surrender and Dependence, Not Weakness: Biblical humility is strength under surrender. It is the posture of a leader who has access to significant power, influence, and resources and yet chooses to hold all of it with an open hand before God. Jesus demonstrated this perfectly. He entered Jerusalem on a donkey when He could have commanded legions of angels. He washed His disciples' feet when He could have demanded their service. He went to the cross as a lamb led to the slaughter when He could have called down fire from heaven. And yet there were moments, like when He overturned the money changers' tables in the temple, when He demonstrated unmistakable strength and holy boldness. Humility is not the absence of that strength. It is knowing when and how to use it for God's purposes rather than our own agenda. Humility comes when we are truly surrendered, when we have come to terms with the fact that we are not in control. And it deepens when we move out of self-reliance and into genuine dependence on God as our source. That is a daily discipline for me, and some days I do it better than others. "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths and keep them straight" Proverbs 3:5-6.
Humble Yourself or God Will Humble You: Here is one of the most sobering truths I have come to believe about humility; it is not optional for the follower of Christ. I am fully convinced that if we stay the course in our walk with the Lord, we will either choose to humble ourselves or God will humble us. It is part of the sanctification process and how God shapes us from the inside out. The Bible is full of great men of God who were humbled along the way. King David was humbled through catastrophic moral failure. Peter was humbled by a charcoal fire and the tears of his own betrayal. And yet both men emerged from their humbling more fruitful, more tender, and more powerfully used by God than before. The humbling was not the end of their story. It was the making of it. God loves us too much to let us stay proud. In His mercy, He will use whatever is necessary, a business setback, a relationship breakdown, a season of failure, to bring us back to the posture of dependence that positions us to receive His best. The wisest response is always to get there voluntarily before He must take us there another way. "God opposes the proud but shows grace to the humble" 1 Peter 5:5.
Humility Is a Daily Practice, Not a Destination: None of us fully arrives at humility on this side of heaven. What matters is not that we have perfected it but that we are actively and intentionally pursuing it every day. Over the years, I have learned that humility looks like some very practical and often uncomfortable things in daily life. It looks like sharing my weaknesses honestly rather than projecting a polished image. It looks like obeying God out of love rather than obligation. It looks like looking to the Lord to fulfill me rather than chasing fulfillment through performance or the approval of others. It looks like receiving my trials as God's instrument to perfect me. It looks like being willing to not be defensive or justify myself. And it looks like relinquishing control and being genuinely comfortable with others leading and directing even when I think I know better. None of those things come naturally to me. Every single one requires a daily choice to die to self and trust God with the outcome. But every time I make that choice, I find exactly what James promises: when we humble ourselves before the Lord, He lifts us up. Not always immediately. Not always in the way we expected. But always in His perfect time and always better than anything we could have engineered on our own. "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others" Philippians 2:3-4.
Integrity tells us who we must be on the inside. Humility tells us the posture from which we must lead. A leader of genuine humility creates an environment where people feel safe, valued, and empowered to bring their best. They attract trust because they do not demand it. They build loyalty because they give it first. That is the kind of leader I am still striving to become, and I am grateful every day for God and those close to me who are patient with me in this sanctifying process.
Challenge Question: Where in your leadership or personal life is God inviting you to choose humility right now, to surrender control, release defensiveness, or move from self-reliance to genuine dependence on Him? Is there an area where He may be asking you to humble yourself before He has to do it another way?
Prayer: Father, thank You for the perfect example of humility in Jesus, who had all power and yet chose surrender, service, and sacrifice on our behalf. Forgive us for the times we have led from pride and self-reliance rather than genuine dependence on You. Humble our hearts. Teach us to hold our influence, our platforms, and our accomplishments with open hands before You. Give us the courage to be transparent about our weaknesses, the grace to receive correction without defensiveness, and the faith to trust Your lifting in Your timing. May our humility create space for Your power to be made perfect in our weakness. In Jesus name, Amen.
The most powerful leaders are not the ones who never bend. They are the ones who know when to kneel. Humble yourself before the Lord this week and watch what He does. Have a blessed week!