Today’s Scripture: James 4:6

“God . . . gives grace to the humble.”

It’s not enough to see God’s mighty hand behind our adversities, nor to view him as a loving Father disciplining his children. I’ve seen the doctrine of God’s sovereignty in the Scriptures for so many years that I instinctively see his hand behind every circumstance. I regularly acknowledge, almost reluctantly sometimes, that all hardship is God’s discipline, either corrective or remedial. The rub comes in submitting to it. Sometimes we resist it. But if we’re to appropriate God’s grace in our trial, we must first submit to his hand, which brought the trial.

God gives grace only to the humble, to those who are not only humble toward other people, but are humble, or submissive, under his mighty hand. John Lillie expressed this idea well: “?umble yourselves, therefore,’ receiving in silent, meek submission whatever humiliation it [God’s hand] may now lay upon you. For this is your time of trial, and, when paternal rod meets thus with the child-like spirit, will be surely followed by another time of healing and joy.” Then Dr. Lillie added this word of exhortation: “see that you do not frustrate the gracious purpose of God and lose the blessing of sorrow. Rather make that purpose yours also.”

After the death of my first wife, a friend sent me a sympathy card on which she had copied the following verse, apparently from an ancient hymn, which I’ve now put in my notebook to meditate on frequently when I pray: “Lord, I am willing to receive what you give, to lack what you withhold, to relinquish what you take, to suffer what you inflict, to be what you require.”

We must have that spirit if we are to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand and receive the grace he has promised to give.

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