Day #201 - Humbled Us

The Presence - A Devotional for living in Thanksgiving, Worship and Wonder

“But now you have rejected and humbled us; you no longer go out with our armies.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭44‬:‭9‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Photo by E. Vitka on Unsplash

Have you ever been humbled?

I’m trying to think of a time where I have been humbled and to be honest, it’s hard to pick which time to share because there have been so many. I’ve been humbled in sports, in leadership, in friendship, in school and at work. No one likes to eat humble pie, but the results of humility are wonderful. Pride so easily creeps into our motivation and it makes us feel good about ourselves until the faulty foundation we are on is exposed. Being humbled for me usually comes with realizing that I am wrong and that I need to correct course. Humility often comes when another person is used by God to show me I wrong or God Himself makes Himself clear to me in prayer, His Word or circumstances that I have been caught in pride.

In Psalms 44, the psalmist of the Son’s of Korah is mourning that God has rejected His people and humbled them. How does he see the evidence of God’s judgement upon them? How does he know they have been humbled? Because “you no longer go our with our armies.” In one sense, the psalmist is saying that God isn’t with them so they lose their battles. But in another sense, it’s about “the Presence” being lost which causes them to lose.

The cry of Moses when God called him to lead Israel to the promised land and he encountered God’s glory was “if You don’t go with us, we don’t want to go.” Moses longed for “the Presence” to be with them or nothing else mattered. Now in this Psalm, they are mourning because God doesn’t go with them any longer. This is the most humbling thing for the people of God, Israel, because they were to be the people of “the Presence.”

We can easily focus on obedience to God out of fear that we will get in trouble for breaking the rules. It is not completely wrong to be motivated by wanting to avoid punishment. But if our focus was that we didn’t want to lose the preciousness of God’s presence and therefore we stay humble.

Our greatest reward, delight and prize is that God is with us. He goes with us. Don’t miss out on what matters most: Him. The most humbling thing God can do to us is to stop going with us and withdraw His presence. The greatest thing we can do is stay in a posture of humility to attract His presence.

Lord God, I humble myself before You. I turn from pride and selfishness. I turn from every false way. I don’t want to get to a place where you withdraw Your presence. Keep going out with me. If I have lost Your prescience in anyway, I repent and return to You. I treasure Your presence in my life above all else. In Jesus name, amen.