Daily Encouragement: Day 267

Adapted from: Handbook to Spiritual Growth

THE IMPORTANCE OF
A TEACHABLE, HUMBLE, AND OBEDIENT SPIRIT

In our youth, we have a problem with foolishness and lack of focus; in our middle years, we struggle with double-mindedness and entanglement; when we reach our later years, our great challenge is teachability. Those who maintain a childlike sense of wonder, surprise, and awe do not succumb to rigidity and “hardening of the categories.” Such people who continue to grow in grace “will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still yield fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap and very green” (Psalm 92:13–14).

Humility and responsive obedience is the key to maintaining a teachable spirit. Humility is the disposition in which the soul realizes that all of life is about trust in God, and that “from Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Romans 11:36). We would do well to make the following prayer, adapted from the end of Andrew Murray’s book on Humility, a part of our devotional lives:

“Lord God, I ask that out of Your great goodness You would make known to me, and take from my heart, every kind and form and degree of pride, whether it be from evil spirits, or my own corrupt nature; and that You would awaken in me the deepest depth and truth of that humility which can make me capable of Your light and Holy Spirit.”