Humility Is Grown in the Desert - One Year Devotions for Women

“Are you really the Messiah we’ve been waiting for, or should we keep looking for someone else?” Jesus told them, “Go back to John and tell him about what you have heard and seen.” - Matthew 11:3-4

Humility is grown in the desert. John the Baptist cultivated a wilderness lifestyle. He would rather have done without “things” than without God. Humility is modeled after other godly people.

John’s model was Elijah. John came in the spirit and power of the great Old Testament prophet! Elijah lived in the desert, too. He was conscious of his own shortcomings. When his faith faltered, he cried out to God, “I am no better than my ancestors” (1 Kings 19:4).

John had his shortcomings as well. At one point in his life, when he had been put in prison, he had horrible doubts about Jesus. He was tortured with thoughts that perhaps he had made a terrible mistake. Maybe Jesus was not the Messiah after all. Had he baptized the wrong person? Perhaps he had said all the wrong things in his sermons!

Humility can ask questions; humility is not afraid to send a message to Jesus and ask him to help with doubts. That’s what John did, and Jesus gave him assurance and encouragement at once.

If we have humility, we know we can tell Jesus when we’re weak. Humility helps us to be strong, even when we are in a prison of death, doubt, or despair.

Prideful people won’t ask. They try to figure it all out for themselves. But then, pride doesn’t live in the desert with God. Do you have questions, doubts, fears? Take them to Jesus.

For Further Study: Matthew 11:1-19

Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Women, Copyright ©2000 by Jill Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

For more from Jill Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.

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