The Power of a Humble Life

By Richard E. Simmons III

---

Chapter 1: Our Greatest Dilemma

Pride has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.

Why do you feel so compelled to impress other people? Why are you always comparing yourself with others? Why can’t you just be content with who you are and what you have? And then there is the big question—the one you are always asking yourself, the one that haunts many people’s lives: What will people think about me?

There is a simple answer: the pride of life.

C.S. Lewis observed that there is one vice of which no person in the world is free, which everyone loathes when they see it in someone else, and of which hardly anyone ever imagines they are guilty. People will freely admit to being bad-tempered, unable to resist certain vices, or even being cowards—but almost no one will accuse themselves of pride. At the same time, no fault makes a person more unpopular, and no fault are we more unconscious of in ourselves. The more we have it, the more we dislike it in others.

Lewis described pride as a spiritual cancer that destroys our ability to genuinely love others and prevents us from being content. It grows and develops slowly in our lives, becoming well-established without our knowledge. And its nature is essentially competitive: pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more than the next person. We say people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking—but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others.

Ecclesiastes 4:4 confirms this: “I have seen that every labor and every skill which is done is the result of rivalry between a man and his neighbor.” Most of us are rarely satisfied and content in our own work and achievements. We constantly compare ourselves with other people and desire to be more successful than they are because we have a great desire to impress others. Despite our many achievements, we don’t feel successful unless other people are aware of them. We seek more than just success—we long for proper recognition of our achievements.

You have to wear a certain kind of clothes, drive a certain car, speak a certain way, live in a certain neighborhood—all of it so you can be higher on an invisible hierarchy. It’s an obsession. You are trying to feel right by comparing yourself to others. Who told you there was anything wrong with you in the first place?

Pop icon Madonna described this drive vividly: “I have an iron will, and all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy… My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre. And that’s always pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I’ve become Somebody, I still have to prove that I’m Somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.”

You travel through life on an unending quest to prove to the world that your life matters and that you are important. What better way to do that than to prove you are better or superior to those around you? This striving lies at the heart of pride and arrogance. But even if you do find the success and fame that make you feel significant, you still have to deal with the reality that these will eventually fade. They will not last because you are disintegrating. You yearn for a glory that is permanent, but your life is slowly passing away. You will never find peace and contentment until you come to terms with this conundrum.

Chapter 2: The Devastation of Pride

We must prepare for pride and kill it early—or it will kill what we aspire to.

Victor Hugo remarked, “Pride is the fortress of evil in a man.” G.K. Chesterton said, “Pride is a poison so very poisonous that it not only poisons the virtues, it even poisons the other vices.” Pride is often the sin that lies beneath so many of our flaws. Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway once observed that the corruption on Wall Street that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis was not primarily driven by greed. So many traders were driven to unethical behavior when they learned a colleague several doors down was making a million dollars a year more than they were. They were controlled by pride and jealousy, not greed.

Even extraordinary wealth cannot insulate a person from the comparison trap. Larry Ellison, despite his immense fortune, fixated his life on Bill Gates—comparing his company, his life, and especially his wealth to Gates and Microsoft. Those who worked for him said his greatest desire was to dethrone Gates and be recognized as America’s richest person. You would think he could find contentment with all his wealth and accomplishments, but the comparison never stopped.

Blaise Pascal captured this dynamic powerfully: a person wants to be great but finds that he is small. He wants to be happy and finds that he is unhappy. He wants to be the object of others’ affection and esteem and sees that his faults deserve only their dislike and contempt. The embarrassing position he finds himself in produces the most unjust passion imaginable. He conceives a mortal hatred of the truth which brings him down to earth and convinces him of his faults. He would like to be able to annihilate it, and not being able to destroy it in himself, he destroys it in the minds of other people. He concentrates all his efforts on concealing his faults, both from others and from himself.

Over time, your life becomes riddled with imperfections—weaknesses, inadequacies, and many types of fears. What do you do? You hide your true self from the outside world. You fake it. You hide behind smiling, pretty faces put on to impress the public. But in hiding your true self, you fail to realize that you become an imposter. Pride has so impacted us that outward appearance is much more important than inward character. Image rules over substance.

Fear of failure is one of our greatest fears—a kind of psychological death. Bernie Madoff, perpetrator of the largest financial fraud in U.S. history, said in his first interview from prison that he was motivated to pull off his grand Ponzi scheme because he feared failure: “I did not want to lose the honor and esteem of men.” David Sokol, once considered Warren Buffett’s heir as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, was forced to resign because of unethical conduct. It seems that most of us are not driven to succeed—we are driven not to fail. We are not running toward something positive; we are sprinting away from failure.

Pride and arrogance manifest most frequently in the workplace. Your work is clearly visible and easily measurable; for many, it is the part of life that signals whether you are successful. Yet what many do not recognize is how pride impairs your ability to learn, grow, and thrive in your career—particularly if you are in a leadership role. Every organization seems to have a “Proud Peter”: the person who is moderately talented and charming but whose years in the business have created an inflexibility when it comes to learning from others or implementing changes. His natural wit quickly points out the smallest difficulty with a new idea, convincing himself and sometimes others that the old way—his way—is probably best.

By contrast, it is the humble leader who has a learning predisposition, recognizing there is so much that they and those who lead the company do not know. No matter how successful they become, humble leaders remain students of their work, relentlessly asking questions and always seeking continuous improvement.

In American society, individual achievement is supremely important. That is neither good nor bad in itself. The trouble is that it becomes difficult to assess achievement and monitor happiness without surrendering to the impulse to adopt comparison as a prime measure of individual worth. Some comparisons are harmless enough—standardized tests, admissions, promotions. But there is a darker side. It’s the dirty little secret of our society, and we all share in the effort to keep it under wraps. We all know the dark conversations in our hearts, even if only intermittently, and most of us choose to keep them to ourselves.

You will never know how many children have had their lives made miserable by being pushed to achievements that make their parents look good. Children who are driven to psychological exhaustion for academic achievement often know that their labor is primarily to enhance the status of their parents. Consider Palo Alto, one of the wealthiest cities in the country—home to Stanford University and headquarters to numerous high-tech companies. In its two high-achieving high schools, the ten-year suicide rate among students is four to five times the national average. It is not uncommon for children in affluent families to experience high rates of anxiety and depression. These children feel immense pressure to excel at multiple academic and extracurricular pursuits. They see themselves as catastrophically flawed if they don’t meet the highest standards of success.

A great shift has taken place. If you go back one hundred years, parents focused on their children’s character development. Today the emphasis is placed on their performance—and look at what it is doing to them.

Chapter 3: The Modern Age of Arrogance

We live in an age where people would rather be envied for their material success than respected for their character. This is what pride has done to us, and it also explains why humility is not of great value in our modern world.

Sociologist Donna Freitas explored this phenomenon in her book The Happiness Effect: How Social Media Is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost. Through interviews with 200 college students at 13 universities, she found that their core problem is the same one that afflicts all people full of pride and arrogance: they cannot be transparent and vulnerable with anyone. They cannot discuss their inadequacies, struggles, and fears, because if they did, they would no longer appear to be someone who is happy and who has their act together.

Chapter 4: A Modern Parable

Pride emanates from a multitude of sources: wealth, achievement, power, beauty, and knowledge. However, Reinhold Niebuhr believed the most dangerous form is the pride of virtue—or what the Bible calls self-righteousness. In the four Gospels, Jesus’ most searing words are aimed at the Pharisees and their self-righteousness. It is the one sin that quickly brings forth His anger.

Chapter 5: Understanding the Humble Life

In the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Of course, meekness rhymes with weakness, so who would possibly want to be meek? No father has ever said, “I want my son to grow up and be meek.”

Humility begins with a foundational recognition: there is a great and awesome God who created the heavens and the earth—and you are not Him. There is a God who knows all, understands all, and is in control of all—and you are not Him. You are not in control. You are a weak creature; your body is wasting away, which in itself should cause you to see your great need for God. Only when you understand your need for Him does true humility begin. As Andrew Murray puts it, “Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is the first duty of the creature and is the root of every good human quality.”

The prideful heart causes you to believe, “I do not need God.” You think you can accomplish great things, achieve prosperity, and find a purpose big enough to discover meaning in life—all without God.

God has such high regard for the humble and such great contempt against the proud. In Isaiah 2:12–17 we are told: “The pride of man will be humbled, and the loftiness of men will be abased, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.” In Proverbs 16:5: “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord; assuredly, he will not go unpunished.”

On the other hand, God has special regard and honor for the humble: “Oh, Lord, You have heard the desire of the humble. You will strengthen their heart” (Psalm 10:17). “He leads the humble in justice. He teaches the humble His way” (Psalm 25:9). “When pride comes, then comes dishonor, but with the humble there is wisdom” (Proverbs 11:2). “A man’s pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honor” (Proverbs 29:23). “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and He will exalt you” (James 4:10). “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time” (1 Peter 5:6).

Pride looks at life and takes credit for all the good things. It says, “I accomplished it; I worked harder than everyone else; I deserve it, and therefore I should receive all the glory.” It is like the saying, “He was born on third base but somehow thinks he hit a triple.” Tim Keller says pride claims to be the author of everything good we do and accomplish—a form of cosmic plagiarism, where you have been given something as a gift but then take all the credit. In the Old Testament, Moses said that arrogance is looking at your life, your abilities, and your achievements and thinking in your heart that it is your strength, your power, and your ability that has led to all your success. Humility helps you recognize that all you are and all you have is a gift from God and a result of other people contributing to your life.

Consider a tailback who wins the Heisman Trophy. He gets his name in the paper and his face on ESPN. But where did he get the DNA that created the strong body? The great coordination? How many of the one hundred trillion cells in his body did he create? For each of those cells there is a bank of instructions more detailed than the thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together. “But I worked so hard,” the tailback might say. “I went to the weight room. I practiced harder than anyone else on the team.” To which you could reply: “But who taught you to work that hard? Who built the weight room? Who bought the equipment? Who built the university, including the stadium you played in? Who cut the grass there and laid out the lines? Did you hire your coaches? Did you recruit your teammates? Did you open up those holes in the line that you ran through?” If this tailback has humility, he will express nothing but overflowing gratitude when he wins the Heisman—to his parents, his teachers, his coaches, all his teammates, everyone who helped him along the way. Most of all, time and time again, he will express gratitude to God.

Chapter 6: The Essence of Humility and Its Power

A man’s pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honor.

Jim Collins, a faculty member at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, wrote the best-selling book Built to Last based on a study of companies that sustained greatness over time. Collins gave his research team explicit instructions to downplay the role of top executives—he did not believe the business community needed another book on leadership. But the team kept pushing back. They recognized something very unusual about the executives in these good-to-great companies. The debate went back and forth until, as Collins put it, “the data won.”

Tim Keller makes a similar observation: “The humble are kind and gentle, but also brave and fearless. If you are to be humble, you cannot have one without the other.” This duality is visible in great leaders throughout the Bible. John the Baptist, when his disciples complained that people were leaving him to follow Jesus, made it clear that Jesus must increase and he must decrease. Yet the same John courageously confronted King Herod about how corrupt he was to take his brother’s wife—a confrontation that landed him in jail and eventually cost him his life. The Apostle Paul considered himself the chief of all sinners and openly shared his struggles, yet boldly went into the streets of Athens and Rome to proclaim the gospel.

One of the most striking examples of true humility is Moses, described in Numbers 12:3 as the most humble man on the face of the earth. Yet Moses went before the most powerful man alive at the time—Pharaoh, king of Egypt—and essentially said: “I want you to let my people go. I want you to give up your entire slave labor force, the key to your entire economic and military superiority. I want you to do it without payment. And I don’t want you to mess around; I want you to do it quickly.”

C.S. Lewis matured as a Christian and became more alert to the presence of pride in his own life. Twelve years before he died, he wrote in a letter: “I am now in my fiftieth year. I feel my zeal for writing, and whatever talent I originally possessed, to be decreasing … Perhaps it will be the most wholesome thing for my soul that I lose both fame and skill lest I were to fall into that evil disease, vainglory.” What is ironic is that Lewis produced some of his greatest books over those next twelve years.

ESPN and Sports Illustrated call Coach John Wooden the greatest coach of the 20th century. In 40 years of coaching, he compiled an 885–203 record—a winning percentage of .813. His tenure at UCLA included four 30-0 seasons, an 88-game winning streak, and ten national championships—seven in a row. He is one of only two people enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. Every source points to his humility as the key to his success. Wooden was wary of recognition and fame because he understood that pride was dangerous and could easily ruin a player or a team. Dr. Ronald Riggio, a psychologist specializing in leadership, wrote in Psychology Today that the first lesson to be learned from Coach Wooden is to be humble.

In Wooden’s own words: “Confidence must be monitored so that it does not spoil or rot and turn into arrogance. I have never gone into a game assuming victory. All opponents have been respected, none feared. I taught those under my supervision to do the same. This reflects confidence, not arrogance. Arrogance will bring you down by your own hands.” Pat Williams summed up the outcome of Wooden’s life with a simple equation: “Confidence plus humility is the simple formula to greatness.”

Dwight Eisenhower demonstrated the same pattern. As a staff officer—never a coveted or glamorous role—he learned to master procedure, process, teamwork, and organization. He said, “When I go to a new station I look to see who is the strongest and ablest man on the post. I forget my own ideas and do everything in my power to promote what he says is right.” He lived by the maxim: “Always take your job seriously, never yourself.” Eisenhower later wrote that a sense of humility is a quality he observed in every leader he deeply admired: “My own conviction is that every leader should have enough humility to accept, publicly, the responsibility for the mistakes of the subordinates he has himself selected and, likewise, to give them credit, publicly, for their triumphs.” He was also prepared to take all the blame on D-Day if the invasion had failed. The memo he prepared but never had to release read: “Our landings … have failed … and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

In The 9 Virtues of Exceptional Leaders, Rob Jenkins writes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s exceptional leadership. He refers to the famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” regarded as one of the most significant documents of the Civil Rights Movement. So many of the changes King championed came to pass rather quickly after this letter was written. King closed the letter by writing: “If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.” This letter demonstrates how King was humble and meek, yet quite forceful—challenging the white clergy on their moral responsibility without acting condescending or morally superior.

King also said: “If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.” He added that this definition of greatness means everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. “You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve … You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”

Ronald Reagan had a winsome personality and was incredibly humble. His son Michael wrote: “My father wasn’t hungry for praise and applause. He just wanted to achieve the goal.” Reagan let Gorbachev take credit for easing restrictions on East Germans because he knew Gorbachev needed to look like a hero to his own people. Throughout his eight years as president, Reagan kept a brass plaque on the Resolute desk that read: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” In his farewell address, Reagan said: “I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: it was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation… My friends: We did it.”

C.S. Lewis wrote an essay entitled “The Necessity of Chivalry,” pointing out how in medieval times the ideal hero was both humble and kind, yet bold and strong. In Sir Thomas Mallory’s legends of King Arthur, Sir Ector describes Lancelot: “Thou were the meekest man that ever ate in the hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.” Lewis saw that this medieval ideal required a “double demand”: “The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maiden-like, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man.” The chivalrous knight is fierce to the nth degree but meek and humble as well—qualities that, as Lewis noted, “have no natural tendency to gravitate towards one another.”

Katharine Graham, considered one of the most influential women of the 20th century, was the daughter of Eugene Meyer who bought The Washington Post out of bankruptcy in 1933. Her parties and banquets were renowned for their stellar guest lists because she knew so many presidents, kings, and leaders from around the world. When Dr. Sheila Bethel once asked her what the single most important trait of all great leaders was, Graham answered without hesitation: “The absence of arrogance.” Those who observed her in person were struck by the same conclusion—this woman was one of the most powerful in the world, yet it was her humility that defined her.

In a 2014 New York Times article by Thomas Friedman, Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president in charge of hiring at Google, said: “GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring and test scores are worthless; we found they don’t predict anything.” One of the primary attributes Google looks for in prospective hires is humility. They want courageous leaders who, at the appropriate time, will step up and lead—but also, at appropriate times, be willing to relinquish power. They need to be humble enough to step back and embrace the better ideas of others. Bock also stressed the importance of intellectual humility, because without it, you will be unable to learn even from failure. Too many proud people believe they are a genius when something good happens; but when something bad happens, it is someone else’s fault.

Chapter 7: The Most Humble Person That Ever Lived

If I were to boil down all the characteristics of greatness to a single word, it would be humility.

To be truly humble you have to be kind and gentle but also brave and fearless. You cannot have one without the other. This polarity of characteristics is most clearly seen in the life of Jesus. In Revelation 5:5–6, He is referred to as both a lion and a lamb. In Matthew 11, He refers to Himself as gentle and meek. He is, after all, the God of the universe who has restrained His power to become one of us.

Napoleon, at the end of his life, described the contrast between Jesus and himself: “I die before my time and my body shall be given back to the earth and devoured by worms. What an abysmal gulf between my deep miseries and the eternal Kingdom of Christ. I marvel that whereas the ambitious dreams of myself and of Alexander and of Caesar should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant—Jesus—should be able to stretch his hands across the centuries and control the destinies of men and nations.” Three of history’s most powerful men—Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon—sought to control the world through their own power. When their lives are contrasted with one man, Jesus, and His humble life as a carpenter, the world was more powerfully changed through His life of humility.

Scottish philosopher and minister James Stewart captured this paradox: “He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet He said that he would come on the clouds of heaven in the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at His coming, yet He was so genial, winsome, and approachable that children loved to play with Him. No one was ever half so kind or compassionate towards sinners, yet no one ever spoke such red hot scorching words about sin. He would not break the bruised reed and His whole life was love, yet on one occasion He demanded of the Pharisees how they expected to escape the damnation of hell. He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions yet for sheer stark naked realism He has all of our self-styled realists beaten. He was a servant of all, washing the disciples’ feet, yet masterfully He strode into the Temple, and the hucksters and traders fell over one another in their mad rush to get away from the fire they saw blazing in His eyes. There is nothing in history to compare with the life of Christ.”

Author Henry G. Bosch made this observation: Socrates taught for forty years, Plato for fifty, Aristotle for forty, and Jesus for only three. Yet the influence of Christ’s three-year ministry infinitely transcends the impact left by the combined 130 years of teaching from these great philosophers of antiquity. Jesus painted no pictures, yet some of the finest paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci received their inspiration from him. Jesus wrote no poetry, but Dante, Milton, and scores of the world’s greatest poets were inspired by him. Jesus composed no music, still Haydn, Handel, Beethoven, Bach, and Mendelssohn reached their highest perfection in the hymns, symphonies, and oratories they composed in his praise. Every sphere of human greatness has been enriched by this humble carpenter of Nazareth.

God could have given Jesus every advantage, but instead He was born and lived in the most desolate part of the Roman Empire called Palestine. He lived a very quiet life with His parents for thirty years as a carpenter. He left almost no traces of Himself on earth, never owned any belongings that could be enshrined in a museum, and never wrote anything. He allowed Himself to be taken into custody, mocked, beaten, spat upon, and stripped naked in front of a massive crowd. He was taken to the cross and crucified between two criminals for all the world to see. As Philippians 2:8 says: “And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Will and Ariel Durant, in their massive work The Story of Civilization, were not friends of the Christian faith. Yet their observation of what happened in Rome is astonishing: after Jesus’ death, the Christian religion was considered an enemy of Rome for over 280 years. In 312 A.D., the Edict of Milan legalized Christianity; in 381 A.D., under Constantine, it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Durant wrote: “There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned and oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena and Christ had won.”

Jesus chose poverty and disgrace. He spent his infancy as a refugee. He lived in a minority race under a harsh regime and died as a prisoner. From the very beginning, Jesus took the side of the underdog, the poor, the oppressed, the sick, and the marginalized.

Chapter 8: The Path to Humility, Part I

C.S. Lewis once described what a truly humble person looks like: “Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”

Lewis also said: “If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud.” John Dickson adds that humble people don’t dazzle you with their humility. Even though it is a powerful force, it is a low-key virtue. You may not initially spot a humble person because they are not at all concerned about appearing humble in the eyes of others.

Throughout Scripture, God repeatedly places the responsibility of humbling ourselves on us. Consider these commands: “If My people, who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sins and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). Moses and Aaron went before the Pharaoh and said: “How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me?” (Exodus 10:3). “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:4). Three times it is recorded in the Gospels: “Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:12; Luke 14:11; Luke 18:14). “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you” (James 4:10). “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time” (1 Peter 5:6). When God speaks of you humbling yourself, He is placing this responsibility on you. He says: we can and we must humble ourselves by a decision of our wills.

The most important way you begin to humble yourself is through thanksgiving and gratitude. In Deuteronomy 8, God warns the Israelites that if they do not remember Him and thank and praise Him, “You will say in your heart, my power and the strength of my hands have made me this wealth.” But God provides the key perspective in verse 18: “You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you the power to make wealth.” Humility begins with understanding who deserves the credit for all that you are and all that you have.

At the very end of his life, King David gathered the Jewish assembly together when Israel was at its very strongest economically, militarily, and spiritually. It would have been natural for him to gloat and take at least some of the credit. Instead, his prayer of acknowledgment included these words: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord God of Israel our Father, forever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth … Both riches and honor come from Thee and Thou dost rule over all, and in Thy hand is power and might; and it lies in Thy hand to make great, and to strengthen everyone” (1 Chronicles 29:10).

The research of Dr. Hans Selye, an Austrian-Canadian endocrinologist, supports this practice. Selye was among the first scientists to discover the impact that emotions play on a person’s health. Over his life he wrote thirty books on the subject of stress and human emotion. At the end of his life, he summarized his research and concluded that a heart of gratitude is the single most nourishing response that leads to good health. Selye believed that thanksgiving and gratitude are therapy for the soul, and that a healthy soul is beneficial to physical health. Beyond personal health, gratitude is also the foundation of satisfying relationships. There is nothing more deadly than when people in a love relationship feel taken for granted.

Chapter 9: The Path to Humility, Part 2

The self-righteous are convinced their good moral behavior puts them in good standing with God. They come to believe that only good people get into God’s kingdom while the bad people are kept out. But this is clearly not the teaching of Christianity. In reality, it is the humble who are let in, and it is the proud and self-righteous who are turned away.

Jesus illustrated this in a parable: two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed: “God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.” But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift his eyes to heaven, beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!” Jesus declared: “I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:9–14).

When a person becomes a Christian, they are adopted into God’s family, and He becomes their heavenly Father rather than their judge. When Christians sin, it affects the relationship with their heavenly Father. Confessing sins to Him serves the good of the relationship. Sin causes separation between you and God and keeps you from being close to Him. His forgiveness brings you together and reconnects you. This is “fatherly forgiveness.” You must confess your sin daily in order to have a close, growing relationship with your heavenly Father.

You feel compelled not to show any weakness because as a leader you are not supposed to struggle—you are supposed to be competent and always have your act together. But theologian Ole Hallesby said, “The word ‘helplessness’ is the single best word to describe the heart attitude we bring before God.” This principle is difficult for modern people who have been taught to be self-reliant and self-sufficient. If you are not careful, you can seal off the heart attitude that is most desirable to God. Philip Yancey says that the heart of prayer is a declaration of your dependence upon God. John Calvin believed a major component of the humble life was seeing your weaknesses and inadequacy, which then generates a strong sense of your need to depend on God. He believed you needed to be ruthlessly honest about your flaws, weaknesses, and struggles before God, recognizing that your hope for inner strength and power comes from God alone.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul speaks of a thorn in his flesh that was given to him—we do not know what it actually was, but it was quite troubling. He tells us the purpose of this thorn was to keep him from exalting himself. Paul clearly struggled with pride. He says: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:8–10).

Chapter 10: Pride, Humility and Faith

One of the great miracles in the Bible is found in the book of John, when Jesus raises His friend Lazarus who had been dead for four days. In John 12:42, it says even some of the Jewish leaders believed but did not profess their belief openly for fear of being put out of the synagogue. But verse 43 reveals the real reason: “for they loved the approval of man more than they loved the approval of God.” You may not realize how your pride causes you to arrange your life to meet the expectations and approval of others.

When it gets right down to it, whose opinion of your life counts the most? When you get to the end of your life, whose opinion will matter most? The answer to this question will ultimately determine whether pride or humility will rule in your heart.

Sadly, whether as a teenager or as an adult, you often unconsciously allow your audience to make the final verdict on the value of your life. And no matter how much applause you received yesterday, you can’t be certain you will receive it again tomorrow.

Chapter 11: How a Prideful Man Finds His Faith

For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He adorns the humble with salvation.

C.S. Lewis describes the fundamental obstacle pride creates for faith: “In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

This is why Lewis called pride a spiritual cancer: “It eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment.” As long as you are looking down on others, you are incapable of looking up to God. Humility is the prerequisite for faith—you must first see yourself clearly before you can see God at all.