Hallelujah.  The Lord is good and His mercies endure forever.  We’ve been looking at humility and just the hunger and thirst that we’re believing Father for to put into our hearts, our lives, to live more humbly before our God, “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly before our God.”  “The whole duty of man…Fear God and keep his commandments.”  So, it’s a pretty simplistic requirement that has been put forth for us.  Of course, it’s very, very difficult on a daily basis to achieve that daily crucifixion, that ability to deny self, to put down what so many of us have been taught all our lives, and that is to achieve self-confidence, to reach a place of confidence in our ability to achieve, to survive, if you please.  Others of us that are more driven to be successful, and all of these things that are in natural man that are fulfilling the world’s system of “lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.”

Frankly, beloved, their treasures are not our treasures; amen?  What they delight in and the methodology that they use to achieve their goals, their idols, their apparent successes, they’re not the goals, they’re not the wisdom, the system by which we live.  We are a people that are seeking to become servants because it is natural for us to want to be lords.  It’s a difficult thing in the natural to come to grips with who we really are in the light of things.  It is also difficult to see what we can really be in Jesus Christ.  “For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”  That is not just our heavenly abode, that is our earthly victorious life; amen?  That is our ability to live above sin’s lordship.  That is our ability to lay down ambition and serve.  Are you ever at greater peace than when you know you’re in the service of God and hearing, “Well done, good and faithful servant”?  What a rest there is to the people of God.  What a rest there is when we lay aside all that ambition.  What a rest to be able to be yourself.  That’s humility, the ability to be who you really are, not concerned with what you are in the eyes of men, only concerned with what you are in the eyes of God.

I had two very influential men at our home on Friday.  I won’t say a lot about what they were doing.  They were here visiting our State Department and are involved in having to make some very, very serious recommendations to their president that relate to the church and its position and how it is perceived by the government.  The one thing that I would say is, that as these men were getting ready to leave our home, besides the fact that one of them said, “That is the best steak that I’ve ever eaten in my life.”  What these men sensed and what they were able to do in relating to us and having ears to hear what the Spirit of God said to them—we didn’t invite them, they asked to come.  They came to a place of such rest and peace that one remarked to the other, “your openness, the sharing of your heart” was surprising this other man.  Part of the reason was, and I’ll just share this with you: “By humility and fear of the Lord are riches, and honour, and life.”  Amen?  What was happening was, these men were sitting there, very famous men, very powerful men, they’re not used to fellowshipping with somebody that doesn’t want something from them, and they sensed it in their spirit.  This is part of that humility that I am talking about when you’re not trying to work people, you’re not trying to put yourself forward.

I made some comments to these men that nobody that surrounds them would ever make, and they received it with gladness.  I said, “I am not here to be your instructor but here are some things to think about.  Here is what the Bible says.  How are you going to apply this?  It has to be applied, how are you going to represent this to a heathen government as it relates to the Church of Jesus Christ?”  I won’t go into any of the other specifics on that, but the point that I wanted to make is that environment of humility.  You see, as I’m relating to these men—these are great men of God.  These are men whom God has gifted, whom God has raised up, whom God has placed in great positions of authority.  They’re the greater, I’m the lesser, but humility will speak the truth at all times to anybody; amen?  I know who I am in relationship to what they have accomplished in their lives and what we have accomplished in our lives.