Humble Yourself in the Sight of the Lord

Bible Verse:
Gird yourselves with sackcloth, And lament, O priests; Wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, For the grain offering and the libation Are withheld from the house of your God. Consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly; Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, And cry out to the LORD. Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, And it will come as destruction from the Almighty. Joel 1:13-15

My thought for today is the fact that we should chose to humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord. All too often we come before God with prayer requests that almost seem demanding. We want God to fix our lives to our satisfaction. We do not want what He has for us because the pill we may have to take is too hard to swallow.

Israel sinned and was without repentance. They had chosen to move away from God and chose to serve other gods. Yet when the Babylonians invaded them they failed to humble themselves in the sight of the Lord seeking His will for their lives. I am sure that they continued to arrogantly pray for God to fix their calamity, but yet were unwilling to change themselves.

As I read these words this morning I wondered how many times God had tried to get my attention. How many times had He called my name and yet I was too busy to answer? Through my busyness though I never stopped asking for things that I wanted failing to here what He wanted for my life.

Perhaps Joel had the right idea. We might do well to gather together though in a virtual sense, perhaps fast either physically or mentally or both as we humble ourselves before a Holy God. Fasting, choosing to give up what you want to become more attentive to what God wants is a wonderful idea. When we fast, when we think of the things that we desire like food or entertainment or pleasure of any kind and substitute to for time with God in humble submission to His will we find that we are drawn closer to God rather than drawn further a part by the things of this world. Consider a holy fast from the busyness of life and humble yourself in the sight of the Lord so that He may raise you up.

Do you have time for God? Are you humbled before Him? Does He have your undivided attention or is it split? When we chose to fast from the things that we want, offering them up to God in prayer He is pleased and in our humility drawn closer to Him where He can teach us the things that we need to hear.

Bob