Humbling Ourselves Before God

 God makes His decisions based on His perfect knowledge of all things and His perfect wisdom. God's perfect knowledge is able to see all of the circumstances in the world at once, and He knows all of the hearts of all people all at once. Therefore, His decisions are always just. When God looks at our hearts, He can tell if we are sincere or not, and He knows if we are lifted up by any amount of pride or if we are fully humble before Him, submitting fully. When He sees our humility it prompts Him to be favorable toward us. This is what happened to the very evil King Ahab. (I Kings 21:28,29) God had pronounced a disaster on his family because of all of his sin. All of Ahab's family would be wiped out. When Elijah gave Ahab God's pronouncement, Ahab humbled himself before the Lord. This moved God's heart, and He sent Elijah back to tell Ahab that the disaster would not happen during his lifetime, but during the lifetime of his son. That is amazing, but it is possible for us, as well.

We have all sinned. In fact, we commit sins each day, either by doing what is wrong or failing to do the right things. God doesn't give up on us when we sin, but He convicts us of our sins. He might even bring punishment on us to help us see our sins and turn to Him. What He is trying to do is to get us to humble ourselves before Him. He wants us to bow before Him, as Lord, and confess we have done wrong. He wants us to view Him as Lord, and when we do, we will see how great He is and how weak we are. This will lead us to humbly admit our weakness and our need for His guidance and power. When He sees that humility, God will act. Sometimes, He will choose to be merciful, as He was toward Ahab. At other times, He may still allow the punishment, but He will give us grace to bear up under it and learn our lesson. Either way, He is moved by our heart change, and we see God decide to do things differently. If that is what you need today, I urge you to humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up, even if you have done much evil, like Ahab.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read I Kings 22 and II Kings 1-2.