True Humility – Charles Spurgeon – 4.1.1876

“2 Corinthians 12:9—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.

Dear brothers and sisters, go home and never ask the Lord to make you strong in yourselves! Never ask Him to make you anybody or anything, but be content to be nothing and nobody! Next, ask that His power may have room in you and that all those who come near you may see what God can do by nothings and nobodies! Live with this desire—to glorify God! Sometimes when God honors us in His service, a great 'I' stands in the Lord’s way. Tremble when you see a poor, weak preacher made useful in converting souls—then all the papers and magazines begin to blaze his name abroad! And silly Christians—for there are plenty of them—begin to talk him up as if her were a demigod and say such great things about him and describe him as wise, eloquent and great.

Thus they do all they can to ruin the good brother! If the man is sensible, he will say, “Get you behind me, Satan, for you smell not of the things that are of God” and, if God gives him grace, he will retire more and more into the background and lie lower and lower before his God. But, if you once get a man to feel himself to be great and good, either a fall will happen, or else the power of God will withdraw from him—or in some other way the Lord will make His people feel that His Glory He will not give to another.

The best of men are flesh and blood and they have no power except as God lends them power. And He will make them know and feel this. Therefore, neither exalt others nor exalt yourselves, but beseech the Lord to make and keep you weakness itself, that in you, His power may be displayed. God grant it maybe so, for Christ’s sake.

Amen.”