Humility: True Greatness [Hardcover]

This book is fantastic. Pride is one of the biggest challenges we face, identifying it and defeating it is so important. This book is insightful, biblical and challenging, as well as to the point. I cannot recommend it enough for anyones who wishes deepen their walk with Christ.

As I picked up this beautiful little book a year ago, I did so with trepidation as to what I would read. I am not known for my quietness and submissive attitude, so I knew I was going to read things I needed to understand.

We all have different ideas about what humility is, and what constitutes a humble outlook on the life God has given us. It seemed slightly strange to write a book about such a subject, as people who write books, usually consider themselves "experts." This seemed at odds with the subject matter of the text. However, there is much to consider and learn from people who have been on the road before you and I and have traveled for longer.

The writer highlights for us, our own destitute position before God, before he in his infinity kindness, ransomed and rescued us for the slavery of this world and sin's clutches. When we read the scriptures, we are continually faced with what we are really like and the price Christ had to pay to redeem us back. This is the start for every Christian and the beginning of a life of humility.

As we walk with God, Pride is our greatest foe and humility our treasure and friend. The purpose of our lives is to weaken the enemy and strengthen the ally. The rest of this little book is to give prompts to help us do these things.

Humility thinks often of what Jesus has done and every day acknowledges a total need for God. Gratitude is the air breathed by every Christian and is strengthened by learning scripture and meditating on it's meaning and application to our life. As the day ends, We think of what God has done and transfer all glory to him and accept graciously his gift of sweet sleep.

To deepen and strengthen our spiritual lives, we need to find out more about our great God and his attributes. Nothing aids appreciation like this realization. Study and realize the doctrines of grace so that you understand more about what you own. Sin. We all need to think about sin, and the hold it has on us and how insidious and deep-seated it is in our psyche and behaviour. The Holy Spirit must work in us to produce the desire for a sensitive conscience.

Thinking about ourselves realistically is painful, but is the way to blessing as we face up and seek forgiveness and put our attitudes right. Prayer should be for the removal of the blindness we have to our own failings and faults, so that we can walk God's way better. Consequently, we can then help others along the road and be an encouragement to those who also struggle and are seeking God.

Suffering is something we don't like, but need. God calls us all to suffer or bear burdens that can cost us very dearly. Humility in suffering is perhaps the greatest witness you can have to the saving and keeping power of God. We should be thankful and seek the long term blessing of proving God in this way, and then to be the testimony to a watching society as to the power and sustaining love of God.

What sort of person do you admire? Sports heroes? Film stars? Successful businessmen or women? The scriptures exalt no such person. God chooses the weak and lowly people to put to shame the proud. He chooses those who love him truly and put themselves at the bottom of every list, so that Christ shines from their lives and his perfect will is done.

There are two ways to fight pride, one is to thrash about and lop off every branch and twig and leaf as they sprout. The other is to preach the gospel to yourself, and to cultivate humility in the soil where pride wants to grow.

This is where CJ Mahaney's book comes in. It is not so much a treatise on pride, exposing it with surgeon-like precision, although he does do that in places, rather it is about cultivating humility. This is a key distinction to remember otherwise you will look for the book to do something that it isn't seeking to do. I took me a while to realise this!

The book is divided into three sections.

In the first section he makes us stand before God and shows us how foolish pride is, and how much God detests pride. For me one of the key statements in the book was the definition that pride is contending for supremacy with God. This strikes like an arrow to the heart when you use it, as Mahaney suggests, instead of "Lord, forgive my pride", "Lord, I was contending for supremacy with you, forgive me."

In the second section on greatness, he looks at how true greatness is seen in the servant Saviour. It is here that Mahaney displays what he has shown in his other books, that the answer to our problems is to keep Jesus Christ central. We need to preach the gospel to ourselves daily.

It is however the third section that receives the most attention. Here Mahaney gets down to the nitty-gritty of practical humility. The list of suggestions range from the theological (Reflect on the wonder of the cross), to the practical (Begin your day acknowledging your need for God) to the humorous (Play golf and laugh a lot).

He has suggestions for how to begin each day, and how to end each day. One of the most challenging for me was under the heading of "Avoid Cosmic Plagiarism". In it he urges that we give God the glory for success in our lives, and throughout the day intentionally 'transfer' all glory to him.

The pursuit of humility isn't a solo effort. In fact it best grows when we water other people's plants! In other words, seek to identify and encourage graces in others. Mahaney rightly suggests that this is something we don't do enough of, within the church, within marriages, and within families.

As well as giving to others we need to receive from others, specifically, humility grows in the soil of correction. Mahaney quotes Paul Tripp, "Our own self perception is like a carnival mirror," therefore we need to invite and welcome the input of others.

These two chapters are key because they highlight a much-needed lesson that Christianity isn't a solo effort. It is a community effort. Professor Donnelly has said, "The word 'saint' does not occur anywhere in the New Testament in the singular. It is always in the plural." We have privatised our Christianity too much, and Mahaney's book is a helpful corrective because it sets this grace in the context of the church.

The two closing chapters deal with responding to trials and passing humility on to our children. This final chapter is first-class. In it Mahaney gives powerful counter-cultural lessons in teaching children what true greatness is. As a father this was something I had never thought of before as being a specific goal, and Mahaney's suggestions were timely and useful.

Mahaney strikes you as a man who writes only what he himself has found useful. These are his own practices, tried and tested by one who journeys on the road to humility. However it is more than just one man's ideas, throughout the book Mahaney grounds what he says in scripture.

Although the book is relatively short, and very easy to read, yet it will take time to read, and re-read. And it will bring profit and beauty to your Christian walk.