“Meekness”

“The meek will inherit the earth.”

Maybe you are like me and you look at that word and think, “there’s nothing about me that’s meek.  I can be outspoken, far from quiet and sometimes too much for some people.  So I’ll just ignore that verse.”  But as you may know, anything that we think we can ignore when it comes to God working on us (sanctification), we can’t.  So now it’s come to that time in my walk with Jesus that He won’t let me blissfully believe that meekness isn’t meant for me.

First, let’s start here. How do we know when God is working on us in a specific area? Well, God has a way. For example, (with this topic of meekness) now when I start to raise my voice at my kids or husband it suddenly sounds like nails on a chalk board, where before I didn’t hear it at all.  And like when I sit down to read my Bible or do a study the last couple weeks, the same verses keep popping up again and again. He won’t let me ignore it. It comes to a point when you kind of just surrender and say “ok, ok I get it God! I need to do something about this!” It’s the Holy Spirit working on us, pruning us like a tree to produce more fruit. At first it can be painful but eventually it becomes beautiful.

So let’s dig into this whole “meekness” thing.

Psalm 37:11- “But the meek will inherit the land and will enjoy abundant prosperity.”  Sounds pretty awesome right?

Psalm 149:4- “For the Lord takes pleasure in his people, he adorns the humble (another word for meek) with salvation.”  Ok, so the meek will be saved and in heaven! I need to get this figured out! WE need to get this figured out.

How do we do this and what does it mean to be meek/humble?  I looked up one meaning for meek and it said that the meek are “the brokenhearted before the Lord.” So when we come to God in prayer, we don’t come proud, like we are doing it all right.  We are coming to him knowing how broken we really are and how much work we really need.

Next, it said God “crowns” or “adorns” the meek, meaning that he will give them the glory and they don’t need to seek glory for themselves! Ouch. I know first hand how hard it is not to do that one.  We live in a world where accolades and “likes” and Selfies are a way of life. It’s a self seeking world.  But that’s not God’s way.

Then I looked up humble and it said that the humble are those who “trust in God and surrender to His authority even when it doesn’t make sense.”  How many times have you been faced with something that seems like the logical thing to do, yet God tells you that it isn’t the right thing for you personally?  Do you ignore God or do what “makes logical sense?”  These are those moments in life when we should humble ourselves and listen to God. And typically when we don’t, it seems we are humbled anyway. And man does it hurt!

At the end of the day, our unwillingness to be meek and humble is really just our selfish pride.  We think too much of ourselves.  Pride is a great sin and being humble is a virtue.  God resists proud people but he gives grace to those that can humble themselves.

Just like anything else God wants to do within us, we have to trust Him and then let Him do the work. It’s not in our own effort. We simply obey and let Him lead the way.