A Very special Baby Dedication…Repost Nancy Leigh Demoss 12-18-2007

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With all the babies I know of about to be born....4 within the next month at my church alone, 4 possibly within the next week of online friends.....

I thought this transcript from Nancy Leigh Demoss would be wonderful to share.  This was from December 12.

 

A Very Special Baby Dedication

Series: The King's Dedication: Simeon and Anna Welcome Christ

Monday, December 10 2007

Leslie Basham: Surrendering your will to God’s is one of the best gifts you could give to your children. Here’s Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: If you’re holding yourself back from the Lord, wanting to run and control your own life, how hypocritical is it to present your children to the Lord and say, “I want You to control this child; I want You to rule over this child’s life”?

And not only when the child is an infant, but when the child is older, if you’re trying to run your own life, resisting the will of God, how can it bother you when your children say, “I want to run my own life”? You say, “No, you need to obey God,” and they’re saying, “Show us. What does that look like?”

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It’s Monday, December 10.

When they want to read the Christmas story, a lot of people flip to Luke 2, and they usually stop after the shepherds visited Jesus. But the rest of the chapter provides a fascinating look at Jesus’ dedication at the temple, a perfect study for this time of year.

Nancy will explain why this story is so important, continuing in a series called The King’s Dedication.

Nancy: I don’t know if they do this at the church that you are a part of, but at the church I attend, they every so often have a baby dedication. They’ll have the parents who’ve had infants born to them during the last few months bring up their babies and hold them.

The parents will dedicate the children to the Lord, and the congregation will express some sense of responsibility for the influence on these families. It’s always a sweet time. I want to talk today about a very special baby dedication that took place around the time of the first Christmas.

We read about it in Luke chapter 2, starting in verse 22. We’re going to look at Jesus’ baby dedication and then make some practical applications for parents who are believers who want to dedicate their children to the Lord.

Let me first read Luke 2, verses 22-23: “When the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they [Mary and Joseph] brought him [Jesus] up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, ‘Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord’).”

Now, according to the Jewish law, when a woman had her first-born male child—her firstborn son—when he was 40 days old, she would go to the temple for her purification rite. We talked about that in the last session. She would also dedicate that firstborn son to the Lord. So here we see Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem. This would have been Jesus’ first time to be in the temple.

In this scene, two rituals or two different rites take place—possibly three, as we’ll see in just a few moments. The first we looked at in the last session, and that was the purification of the mother—a ritual purification she would go through after childbirth.

And then we have in this passage today the presentation, or the dedication, of the infant to the Lord. This presentation or dedication of the baby was based on the Law that God gave to His people in the Old Testament right after they came out of their slavery in Egypt. You read about it in Exodus chapter 13.

They had just come out of Egypt, and before they even went through the Red Sea, God said to Moses, “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine” (verse 2).

So the firstborn of every womb in the Jewish community was to be consecrated to the Lord. That word “consecrated” means to be set apart, to be sanctified, for God’s purposes.

That’s what it means to dedicate a baby to the Lord: That child is consecrated to God. It was done in remembrance of the night God delivered His people out of slavery in Egypt. You remember that last night before the children of Israel came out of Egypt?They’d been slaves of Pharaoh for 400 years, and on that last night, God smote all the firstborn sons and animals of Egypt.

The angel of death went through Egypt and killed every firstborn son. The Egyptians had rebelled against the law of God, and God sent judgment in the form of death to all the firstborn.

But the same night that the angel of death smote all the Egyptian firstborn, the angel of death passed over and spared the firstborn sons and animals of the Israelites—not because they were any more holy or righteous or deserving of God’s mercy than the Egyptians, but because they had obeyed God and had put the blood of the lambs on the doorposts and the lintels of their homes.

The angel saw the blood and said, “I’ll pass over that home.” So the firstborn Israelite sons were spared. Therefore, when the children of Israel came out of Egypt, God claimed a right to all those firstborn sons of Egypt.

God said all the firstborn sons and animals were His possession. They belonged to Him. Now, that led to another important ritual that took place with Jewish firstborn sons: not only the dedication to the Lord, but also what was known as their redemption. Parents were required not only to dedicate their children to God, but to redeem or buy back their firstborn sons by paying a redemption price.

To redeem something is to buy it back. The redemption price for every firstborn son was five shekels of silver. The five shekels was given to the priest, and that was part of the money that supported the work of the temple.

So as a firstborn male, Jesus was taken to the temple by Mary and Joseph, and He was consecrated, or presented, to the Lord. They went to present Him to the Lord. That was Mary and Joseph saying, “This child belongs to You. He is set apart for Your purposes.”

And though it’s not specifically mentioned in the Scripture, they undoubtedly would also have paid five shekels to the priest to redeem Mary’s son. Now, if that took place, they paid five shekels to redeem the One who would one day become the Great High Priest and Redeemer of the world.

Yu see here again a picture of Christ, who came to fulfill the Law. In every point, He fulfilled that which the Law pictured. He would redeem us, according to 1Peter 1, not with perishable things, such as silver or gold, but with His own precious blood (verses 18-19, paraphrased).

Now, as I’ve meditated on this passage, I want to take just a little rabbit trail. It’s not the primary point of the passage, but I think it’s an important application for believing parents.

I want to talk about this thing of parents dedicating their children to the Lord. First of all, presenting or dedicating your children to God implies the willingness to first present yourself to the Lord.

It’s significant to me that Mary presented her child to the Lord at the same time that she herself went to the temple for her purification rite that we talked about in the last session. She went through her own purification before the Lord so that she could consecrate and present her child to the Lord.

Another verse in Scripture that talks about presenting to the Lord came to mind. Do you remember where that is? Romans chapter 12, verse 1: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

We’re told to present ourselves to the Lord. As a parent, you want to raise your children up in the community of faith and to be a God-fearing, Christ-loving servant of the Lord. You want your children to come to know the Lord, so when you dedicate your children to the Lord, you’re presenting them to God for all of this to take place. But how can parents think of presenting their children to the Lord if they haven’t first presented themselves to the Lord?

If you’re holding yourself back from the Lord, wanting to run and control your own life, how hypocritical is it to present your children to the Lord and say, “I want You to control this child; I want You to rule over this child’s life”?

And not only when the child is an infant, but when the child is older, if you’re trying to run your own life, resisting the will of God, how can it bother you when your children say, “I want to run my own life”? You say, “No, you need to obey God,” and they’re saying, “Show us. What does that look like?”

The importance of parents themselves being consecrated and dedicated to the Lord—if you’ve never done that consciously, just say, “Lord, I am Yours. I present myself to You. I am Your child. I belong to You.”

Today would be a good time for you to do that. It’s never too late, as long as you have breath. God is still extending mercy to you for you to say, “Lord, today I present myself to You. I am Yours. I want You to run my life and be in control of my life.”

So presenting or dedicating your children to the Lord first implies the willingness to present yourself to the Lord. And then, dedicating your children to God—whether it’s in a formal service that takes place or in a less formal way—dedicating your children to the Lord is a recognition that conception and birth and life are all gifts from the Lord.

Your child is a gift from the Lord. Now, I think every parent of a newborn—certainly every mother of a newborn—recognizes as she holds that newborn baby, “This is an incredible gift.”

But if you stop to recognize that your child is a gift from God—not only when that child is six days old and hasn’t yet done anything to offend you, but when the child is 16 years old and is getting on your nerves—do you remind yourself, “This child is a gift from God?”

Psalm 127 tells us, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward” (verse 3). In Isaiah chapter 8, there’s that one little phrase where the prophet Isaiah says, “I and the children whom the LORD has given me” (verse 18).

What a way to live for a parent, to always be saying, “Lord, here am I and the children that You have given me. We are all dedicated to You, consecrated to You, to be used for Your purposes.”

To dedicate your children to God is to recognize that your children are a gift from God. Now, I want you right now—those of you who are mothers—to think of your children, from the littlest ones to the oldest ones. Some of you are grandmothers, maybe great-grandmothers, but think of the children God has given you.

In different seasons of life, for better or for worse, they have strengths and weaknesses. By the way, they got most of those from their parents—and you say, “Yes they got them from their dad.” But think of those children. Think of each name, each child. Picture that child in your mind and heart.

Say, “Yes, Lord, that child is a gift from You.” Now, that child may not be acting like a well-wrapped gift at the moment. That child may be causing you fits. That child may be grieving your heart, but that child is a gift from the Lord.

Dedicating that child to the Lord is a recognition of that. And then dedicating your children to the Lord is an acknowledgment that those children belong to God. It’s a sign of relinquishing ownership. This child is not mine. This child is just on loan to me to care for on behalf of the Lord. This child belongs to God.

Now, as you acknowledge that that child belongs to God, you accept your responsibility on behalf of God to bring that child up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord.

You’re accepting your responsibility under God to care for that child, to steward that child who is on loan to your from God. So when you dedicate the baby to the Lord, you’re acknowledging that this child belongs to God, but you’re also accepting your responsibility as a parent to nurture that child according to the Word of God.

And then, when you dedicate that child to God, you are presenting, releasing that child to God for His service and for God’s purposes. You’re opening your hands.You’re saying, “This child is not mine to cling to or to hold on to or to use for my purposes. This child is to be used for God’s purposes. God has a purpose for this child’s life on this earth, and I am releasing this child to that purpose, whatever it may be.”

Little did Mary know at the moment that she dedicated the infant Jesus to the Lord, how she would be required to open her hands and release that Son to God’s holy purposes, which would cause her great pain and suffering.

Sometimes God’s purposes for your child will make your heart sad. Sometimes there will be separation. You’d like to have all your children forever, right around you, like a little mother hen, right? But God calls your child to serve Him somewhere else. When you dedicate your child to God, you’re saying, “I release this child to God’s purpose for as long as he lives.”

It’s so important for parents, I think, to be intentional about releasing and dedicating their children to the Lord. Your children, as you dedicate them to God, become your greatest legacy.

They are the means of your life being a blessing to the world, long after you are gone. That is such a privilege, as a parent, to say, “Lord, I give this child to You to be used for Your purposes.”

Now, dedicating your children to God has some practical implications that extend far beyond that church service when the child is a few weeks or months old—implications that go with you and your child as long as you both live.

Let’s talk about some of those implications. First of all, if you’ve dedicated your child to God, that releases you from fear because your children belong to God. You can release them to His care.

I have a friend who, with her husband, for several years after they got married, prayed that God would bless them with a child. She couldn’t get pregnant, and she couldn’t get pregnant.

Finally, she conceived. God gave her a child. She had a difficult pregnancy, but the child was born just a few weeks ago—a son that God gave to them. And after the baby was born, they discovered that the child, at some point in the womb, had had a stroke.

The child spent the first two weeks of his life in intensive care. They’ve now taken the child home. The child looks and seems normal in every way, but the doctors have said, “We won’t know for six months to a year whether there has been damage, and if so, how great the damage has been.”

They say the damage could be severe, but the parents have this child at home now, not knowing what they have to face. This young woman said to her dad as they were taking the baby home from the hospital, “Dad, I know we may face difficulties in the future, but we have our son. He’s God’s gift, and God knows exactly what He has planned for him.”

She’s a woman who has all the natural emotions that a mom would have under these circumstances. I know she’s cried a lot, and she’s been tempted to have fears, but she’s counseling her heart that this child belongs to God.

God will do what is best for this child, so she does not have to live—as she waits these next months to find out what are the implications for all this—she doesn’t have to live in fear because the child belongs to God. She has released him to God’s care.

Now, another implication of dedicating your children to the Lord is that that places huge responsibility on your shoulders as a parent, because your children belong to God. Not only does it release you from fear because they belong to Him, but it makes you heavily responsible. You’re taking care of something that belongs to God.

You will give an account to God for the example of your life to your children, for your faithfulness in training your children, for anything you may have put in their life or their path that will cause them to stumble in their spiritual life.

God takes that seriously, we read in the Scripture. So the fact that you’ve dedicated your children to God means it’s a huge responsibility to parent them according to the ways of God.

And then, the fact that you’ve dedicated your children to God—and you let your children know this as they grow up—will give your children a huge sense of responsibility to recognize, “Mom and Dad aren’t the ultimate ones in my life. I belong to God.”

My parents dedicated me to the Lord when I was a little baby at the Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Dr. Lee Roberson was the pastor at that time, and I have no recollection of this event. I was very, very little. But my parents told me about this as I was growing up.

By the way, I had the chance before Dr. Roberson went to be with the Lord—he was probably in his 90s when he went home to heaven—late in his life, I had the chance to go and meet him and thank him for his part in dedicating me to the Lord as a baby.

It has marked my life, throughout my life, to know that my parents presented and dedicated me to the Lord to be used for God’s purposes. And throughout the nearly 50 years of my life, I have had this sense of, “I belong to God. My life is set apart for His use.” That’s an important thing for your children to know.

And then the fact that your dedicate your children to God may mean that you come to a point where you have to completely release that child to the direct oversight and maybe even discipline of the Lord.

Your child may be in his teens or 20s or 30s or older, and you’re finding you still have to recognize the implications of having dedicated that child to God.

I have a friend who dedicated her daughter to the Lord when her daughter was just a little girl. Now the daughter’s a young adult, and the daughter is making some wrong choices. They’re very foolish and very dangerous.

This is a mother who has pleaded. She’s wept. She’s appealed. She’s prayed. She’s appealed to her child, but now she’s having to live out the implications of having dedicated that child to God years ago.

She and her husband have had to communicate to that daughter, “We are releasing you to God. You answer to Him.” Through tears, that mother told me on the phone this past week, “I’ve reminded God, ‘She is Your child. She’s Your responsibility. She’s not under my roof any longer. I’m not there physically. I can’t make her do what is right, but I trust the Lord.’” And she’s told her child, “We’re trusting and committing you to the Lord.”

This past week I came across, in my church bulletin, a letter that William Carey—he was a British missionary in India—wrote to his father in 1793. It shows the heartbeat of a son who recognizes that he belongs to the Lord, but also the implications that has for parents.

William Carey said, “To be devoted like a sacrifice to the holy uses is the great business of a Christian. I therefore consider myself devoted to the sole service of God.” He’s writing his dad and telling him this. He says, “Now I am appointed to go to Bengal in the East Indies—a missionary to the Hindus.”

These are the days before email and jet service where they could go back and forth. When you went to the mission field in those days, you may never have been seen the rest of your life by your family.

He says,

I hope, dear father, you may be enabled to surrender me up to the Lord for the most arduous, honorable, and important work that ever any of the sons of men were called to engage in. I have many sacrifices to make. I must part with my beloved family and a number of most affectionate friends, but I have set my hand to the plow.

Let me ask you, have you dedicated your children to the Lord? Not just, did you participate in a church service that was called a baby dedication, but from your heart, have you presented each of your children to the Lord?

Whatever that means—whatever the Lord wants for them, however He wants to use them, however God needs to deal with them to win and conquer their hearts—have you opened up your hands and lifted up those children to the Lord and said, “Lord, they’re Yours. I present them to You for Your purposes, for Your glory.”

Leslie: Nancy Leigh DeMoss with important words for every parent. She’ll be right back to pray.

Did you ever realize a Christmas message could lead you to consider dedicating your children to the Lord? Nancy has a way of pulling out practical implications from God’s Word and helping women see how Scripture intersects with life in the 21st century.

Thank you to all who give and allow us to bring you Nancy’s practical messages. If you’ve never donated to the ministry Revive Our Hearts, would you consider it this month?

Friends of the ministry know how important the end of the year is for Revive Our Hearts, and they’ve offered to match every gift up to $450,000. Would you help us meet and exceed this year-end goal? You’ll be hearing your donation at work throughout 2008 on Revive Our Hearts. If you’d like to find out how your donation will forward our mission, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com,or call 1-800-569-5959.

When the shepherds heard about Jesus, they immediately left the fields and found Him. But another character in the Bible who encountered Jesus had a much different experience. He knew the Messiah was coming but had to wait years before seeing Him. Hear about this biblical hero tomorrow. Now, Nancy’s back to pray with us.

Nancy: Lord, thank You for my parents, who presented me to the Lord—not just in a service there in Chattanooga, Tennessee, nearly 50 years ago, but for parents who did that from the heart.

Thank You for the privilege of being a child who’s been dedicated to You. And I pray for mothers who are listening today who need to walk through that heart exercise of saying, “Lord, I give my children up to You. I release them to You.”

I pray that there will be a huge sense of responsibility, and yet the release from fear as we acknowledge that these children belong to You. Lord, we pray that they would be consecrated for Your purposes and would bring You glory. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

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Think Before You React...Meekness Revive Our Hearts

Pin It This is the transcript from June 23rd on Revive Our Hearts in the series on Meekness.  Wow, this was so wonderful for ME to hear today, I hope it has an impact on you as well.

To hear the broadcast you can go to this link: http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/roh/today.php?pid=10247

Think Before You React

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Series: The Beauty of Meekness

Tuesday, June 23 2009

Leslie Basham: Do you want to learn meekness? Nancy Leigh DeMoss says get ready for some challenging relationships.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: God uses those people who offend us, who wound us, who challenge us, who get in our face, who bug us, who annoy us and irritate us. God uses those people, or He wants to, to shape and mold and correct us.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Tuesday, June 23.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been showing us the beauty of meekness. We’ve been exploring what an attitude of meekness looks like before God. But for some people, meekness gets more difficult when other people become involved. Let’s join Nancy.

Nancy: We live in an era when it’s nothing at all for people to just slap lawsuits on other people for little reason or no reason at all.

I read about a few of those recently in the Associated Press in a Detroit paper. There was a headline, “Detroit Employee Sues City Over Co-Worker’s Perfume, Saying Strong Fragrance Stops Her Work.”¹ Now, I know that some people are sensitive to fragrances, but, seriously, suing the city of Detroit? That seems like a little much to me.

LA Times, this headline appeared: “Woman Sues Over Lack of Avocado in Dip.”² This was a particular kind of dip that was advertised as an avocado dip, and then she realized that it yes, verily had almost no avocado in it. It didn’t claim to be avocados, just was an avocado-flavored dip, but it didn’t have the word flavored on the advertising, so she’s suing the company.

Pittsburg Associated Press had a piece, a woman has sued Kmart for allegedly collecting a 7% state sales tax on a non-taxable item—a 12-pack of toilet tissue. “Mary [so-and-so . . . I won’t say her last name] alleges a Kmart department store in the Pittsburg suburb of Monroeville improperly collected the tax on a $3.99 item, charging her $4.27—or 28 cents too much,”³ so she’s suing K-Mart.

It’s not just in the matter of lawsuits. We see this kind of angry expression that people have toward one another in all kinds of situations day after day.

Here’s another headline from a Georgia paper. The headline was “Angry Woman Gets Revenge at McDonald’s.” Here’s how that story started:

Police have been looking for a disgruntled McDonald's customer who ran into two other customers with her car after a dispute over who was next in line.

Melinda Ann Thomas, 34, and Linda Ann Thomas, 51, were standing in a crowded line around 8:30 a.m. as they waited to order breakfast, the police said. A cashier opened the new line and they stepped to the front of it—a move that angered another customer who was waiting to order.

According to the report, the unidentified woman started yelling at them and threatened to kill them. The woman then left the restaurant before the Thomases and stayed in the parking lot, sitting in her dark blue Jeep Cherokee, witnesses told police. As the Thomases made their way to their car, witnesses said the woman pulled out of her parking space and sped it toward the women, striking them both with the passenger side of the Jeep.⁴

As I read an account like that, it makes me wonder how many of us are doing similar sorts of things in our hearts toward people who get in our line or get in our way?

We’re talking about the whole issue of meekness. It's something that is not in great supply in our culture or in this era. We’ve looked at the fact that meekness affects our attitude toward God, our submission to His Word—we receive His Word with meekness—and our attitude toward the circumstances He brings into our lives over which we have no control.

Meekness says, “I receive my circumstances. I don’t resent them or resist them or kick against them. If it’s something that can’t be changed, then I assume that God has a purpose for it, and I receive it.” That’s meekness toward God.

Now we want to turn the corner and talk about meekness as it affects our relationships with others.

One Bible reference that I used looking at this subject of meekness said that,

Meekness is shown towards our fellow man who mistreats us, insults us, treats us with injustice, in that the one who is being injured endures patiently and without any spirit of retaliation the provocations that are imposed upon him.

Now, you cannot live in this world without having people provoke you. That’s just a way of life. It’s a fact of life.

The question isn’t: Do other people provoke you? Do other people get in your line? Do other people get in your way? Do other people do wrong things to you?

The question is: How do you respond?

The child of God has the capacity . . . Because of Christ living in him and the requirement to respond in a spirit of meekness, meekness enables the one who is being wronged to endure the wrong patiently and without any spirit of retaliation in the face of those provocations.

I have been quoting throughout this series from a book by an old-time friend of mine, Matthew Henry. I look forward to meeting him when I get to heaven. He was a Puritan pastor and commentator. He’s written this fabulous book which my friend, Kim Wagner, says is one of the best books she’s ever read. I would say it’s one of the best I’ve ever read. It’s called, The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit, and I’m walking through some of his outline in this series. I’m trying to get us a handle on what is meekness.

Meekness, according to Matthew Henry, deals with and relates to our feelings of anger. Meekness has to do with how we handle those feelings of anger. He says it doesn’t totally eradicate anger because sometimes there is justified biblical occasion for anger, but the function of meekness is to direct and control our anger so that we may be angry and sin not, as we’re told in Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians 4:26: “Be angry and sin not.”

So it’s meekness that puts a bridle on our anger and helps us to be angry in appropriate ways without it turning to sin.

Henry points out in his book that meekness enables us to govern or control our anger when we are provoked by others. In that sense, meekness is like a bridle.

How does this work?

A spirit of meekness causes us to stop and think before we react.

Now the problem with many of us, and I’m certainly wired this way, is I tend to react before I stop and think. That’s where we get in trouble. That’s where we hurt and wound so many people and so many relationships, but meekness causes us to stop and think before we react. It slows us down.

Matthew Henry says,

Let meekness stand sentinel [let it be a guard over your heart and your tongue in your responses], and upon the advance of a provocation [when we are provoked] let us examine who it is that we are about to be angry with, and for what. What are the merits of the cause . . . what are likely to be the consequences of our resentments, and what harm will it be if we stifle them, and let them go no further?

So he’s saying meekness stands like a guard. Before you let out all this stuff, before you spew, before you say the words to your husband or your kids: “Why did you . . . Why can’t you . . . I can’t believe you . . .” Before any of that comes out, you stop and you think: “Who am I talking to? This is my husband. He is not my enemy. This is my child that God gave to me. I love this child.” Or, “This is a person who was created in the image of God.” You just stop and think, “Who am I going to talk to?” And you think, “What did that person do?”

Now, in the heat of the moment that may seem utterly intolerable. But many times if we’ll just stop and think and put things in perspective, we realize, “You know, it really isn’t that big of a deal. Is it worth me losing my joy, my peace, and my relationship with this person in order to tell them I’m upset that they tracked on my kitchen floor?”

I mean, is it worth it?

• Is it worth getting riled up?
• Is it worth sending words like daggers into the heart of that child or that friend in order to just vent my anger or my reaction at the moment?
• What is some of the damage that is caused if I let those words go like zingers into that person’s heart? What damage could I do?
• Is there any great harm that would be done if I don’t say what I’m thinking, if I just stuff it?

Now, there’s balance in all of this because there are things we stuff that we need to say, and there are things we say that we ought to stuff. Discernment and the control of the Spirit helps us to know the difference. There are some things we should be saying that we’re not, and there are some things we shouldn’t be saying that we are. That’s where we need meekness that causes us to stop and think.

Matthew Henry goes on to say that:

The work of meekness is to calm the spirit so that the inward peace may not be disturbed by any outward provocation.

I want to tell you, most of us are very reactionary people. Maybe I’m just speaking out of my own experience here. I know this is true of me. You touch me, and I jump. We have very quick reflexive reactions. It’s like the doctor tapping you with that gavel on the knee and your leg kicks up. That’s kind of the way we live life. Somebody taps us, and we kick.

He says that meekness puts a lid on that. It puts a bridle on that, and we realize that our inward peace does not have to be disturbed by these outward provocations. There’s a place where Christ dwells within us where we can be free from being disturbed by these things that other people do.

Henry goes on to say,

Don’t let your displeasure against the [injustices] of another cause you to put your own soul into a hurry. Meekness is the grace which preserves a man master of himself.

That’s what keeps you in control under the control of the Holy Spirit of God.

When somebody disturbs your peace, they do something that annoys you, that irritates you, that irks you, and you just react. You just say what you’re thinking. You just spout off. Now, we’re more careful with guests and with friends we don’t know so well. It’s the people that we know well that we just take advantage of. We let down our hair.

Often with the ones who live in our own homes we just spout off. We say those things, and we end up being controlled by other people’s behavior rather than letting the Holy Spirit control our responses, thinking, “I don’t know if he meant that or not—he probably didn’t—but even if he did, I’m not going to let it wreck my day. I’m not going to let it turn me into a shrew. I’m not going to let it disturb my peace.”

So meekness causes us to stop and think before reacting.

Then Matthew Henry points out that, “Meekness will curb the tongue and keep the mouth as with a bridle when the heart is hot.” When our heart is enflamed within us, and that doesn’t mean spiritually hot-hearted. It means when we’re angry, when we’ve been ticked off, when we’ve been annoyed and things are . . . we’re steamed inside. Meekness serves as a bridle to keep our tongue and our mouth from sinning, from letting that come out and speaking that into the situation.

He says, “Even when we are called to rebuke others sharply"—and sometimes we are called to do that. We’ll look at that later in this series. Even when we’re called to rebuke someone for wrong doing, "yet meekness forbids all fury and indecency of language, and everything that sounds like 'clamor and evil speaking.'"

Sometimes we do need to speak into the situation. Sometimes you do need to say to your child, “That is unacceptable behavior. That was wrong.” It can be appropriate at times to speak a truth like that into your mate. But he’s saying that when you speak the truth, as you’re called to do it by the Lord, meekness will help you do it without an angry heart and without saying degrading things, without indecent speech, without profanity, without things that you will surely regret later.

So meekness helps you stop and think about it before it comes out and keeps you from getting into clamor and evil speaking when you’ve been provoked.

He says that,

Meekness is to the tongue as the helm is to the ship, not to silence it, but to guide it, steer it wisely, especially when the wind is high.

When we are provoked, meekness helps us to remember that we, too, are sinners and in need of God’s mercy. That’s why meekness and humility go hand-in-hand with each other. The humble heart is a meek heart; the meek heart is a humble heart. When we’re being provoked, we’re much more inclined to be conscious of other people’s sins than we are of our own. In fact, that’s just human nature.

We just tend to see each other’s failures through a microscope and our own through a telescope. Right? Meekness causes us to realize that we, too, are sinners, and that we are desperately in need of God’s mercy.

One Bible reference book says that, “He that is meek indeed will know himself a sinner among sinners.”

Listen, it’s harder to spout off and mouth off and be angry in our speech toward other sinners if we’ll stop and remember what sinners we are.

He that is meek indeed will know himself a sinner among sinners, and this knowledge of his own sin will teach him to endure meekly the provocations with which they may provoke him.

It’s easier to respond in compassion and tenderness and gentleness to a person if we realize that they’re not the only sinner in this room. I may not have sinned in this situation, but I am a sinner who desperately needs God’s grace and mercy and forgiveness every day of my life.

In fact, in this book, The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit, Matthew Henry challenges us to think about this: He says, “Think then, if God should be as angry with me for every provocation as I am with those about me what would become of me?” Something to think about, isn’t it?

If God should be as angry with me for every provocation [every time I sin against Him, every time I provoke Him] as I am with those about me, what would become of me? We have need that others should bear with us, and why should we not bear with them?

It’s the meekness of spirit that enables us to think that way. It’s meekness of spirit that enables us to see God’s hand in the provocation and to see that those who provoke us are instruments in God’s hand. You see, we think we’re being angry at the person who’s provoking us, but we’re not realizing that that person is an instrument in God’s hand to mold and shape and sanctify my life. So if I’m angry, I’m really angry at the one who’s holding the instrument—who is God. It’s meekness that causes me to think that through.

Matthew Henry says,

Men’s reproaches are God’s rebukes, and whoever he be that affronts me, I must see and say that therein my Father corrects me.

God’s trying to deal with my life. That’s why your children are God’s heavenly sandpaper. You say, “Yes, it’s a really high-grade sandpaper He’s using here.” You know what that means? It means that there are sharper edges, rougher edges that need that higher grade. God knows exactly what is needed in your life and mine, and God uses those people who offend us, who wound us, who challenge us, who get in our face, who bug us, who annoy us and irritate us. God uses those people, or He wants to, to shape and mold and correct us.

One commentator said, “Meekness toward evil people means knowing God is permitting the injuries they inflict, that He is using them to purify His elect, and that He will deliver His elect in His time.”

What does that mean? If you’re a child of God, you can know that God is using even evil people, and that God is permitting their injuries. He’s permitting them to inflict those injuries, and He’s using them to purify believers, and that in God’s time, He will deliver us from that affliction.

Then we need to be reminded that any provocation can be used by God for our good if we are willing to receive it and learn from it.

• How do you respond when provoked by others?
• How do you respond when they misunderstand you? When someone criticizes you unfairly?
• How do you respond when someone insults or misunderstands your child or your mate?

It may be a teacher at school or another parent, and they say, “Your child did this, and your child did that,” and you know in this case, for once, that it wasn’t your child who did this or that. How do you respond? The provocation may have been intentional, or it may have been unintentional, but how do you respond? Do you quickly blurt out words of anger or annoyance or frustration? Do you quickly defend? “Well, you ought to see what your kid did. Your kid’s no angel either.”

Now, maybe you just think those things. Remember, meekness is first a matter of the heart, and then it comes out in our words and in our actions.

• How do you respond when your plans are blown by someone else’s insensitivity? They didn’t plan, and their lack of planning or their changing plans threw your plans into total disarray. How do you respond?
• How do you respond when your authority is challenged?
• How do you respond when, as one woman wrote us recently at Revive Our Hearts, her husband forgot her birthday?

She was feeling just a little self-pity about that, but she counseled herself in a spirit of meekness, reminded herself what a great guy he is, how much he loved her, how many years they’d weathered together, and she just made the conscious decision, “I am not going to make a federal case out of this. I am not going to let this wreck my birthday.” She made that decision as she responded in meekness. How do you respond?

• How do you respond when your 14-year-old remembers at 10 o’clock at night that she’s supposed to take brownies for the school bake sale tomorrow, and you don’t have anything in the house to do that with, so it’s a trip out to the grocery store. How do you respond?

“If you’d just thought ahead . . . if you’d just planned. . . .” Now, you may need to coach that child on how to think ahead and plan. The question isn’t: “Is this a time to instruct?” The question is: “What is your spirit in doing it?” Is it because your plans got messed up, your evening got messed up? You were ready to head to bed. You had no intention of making brownies that night, and you could have done it in the afternoon. You would have been glad to do it if . . . You see the spirit there? Anybody besides me ever react this way?

• How do you respond when your boss corrects you for a mistake that someone else made? Do you feel like you’ve got to point it out, that you’ve got to defend yourself?
• How do you respond when someone else gets credit for a great idea that you had?
• How do you respond when someone makes a mistake that costs you.

I have a dear friend who is dealing with a house situation right now, a very costly situation. They paid a lot of money, and they’re probably going to lose about $150,000 to a builder who has defaulted in a big, messed up situation. It has been a really neat thing to watch this friend who’s been very . . . Obviously, their whole family has been affected by this. It’s been a huge hit. It’s not over yet. I don’t know how it’s going to end up, but I’ve watched their spirit of meekness in responding.

Now, they’re going through the process of trying to get this addressed. The house is built, but they can’t get into it, through this whole situation. We went and sat at that house and prayed about the situation, and I heard this friend say to her kids, “We need to thank the Lord that we do have a house that we live in right now. We have a roof over our heads, and if God never gives us this house, that’s okay.” Now, they’re not just being passive about it, but they’re being meek in their spirit toward that provocation, that insult, that injury.

• How do you respond when somebody cuts you off in traffic? Road rage.

Or the person in the express grocery lane that has 37 items in their buggy. How do you respond? Whew. We can respond just with sighing, the way we do our eyes, our manner. We know how to do the not meek response. We’re pretty seasoned at that, most of us, but what about the meek response?

• How do you respond when somebody takes advantage of you, rips you off financially.

You don’t get a raise you feel you deserve. An authority makes what you consider a poor or unwise decision, and it impacts you and your family. Or someone makes a decision that affects you, and they don’t ever ask your opinion; they don’t consult you about it. Or someone borrows something from you and returns it broken.

I mean, all kinds of real-life circumstances and situations, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, probably before this day is over, and over these next days, you’re going to be seeing situations and circumstances like this.

I want you to be asking the Lord to show you, “What kind of response do I have? Is my response meek? Or is my response angry? Am I receiving these provocations that others bring into my life as being from the hand of the Lord for my good and for His glory? Or am I reacting in a way that is resentful or retaliatory? Is there meekness in my spirit?”

Leslie: The next time someone annoys you, I hope you’ll remember this message from Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It’s part of a series called, The Beauty of Meekness.

If meekness toward the aggravating people in your life seems impossible, keep listening to this series. I hope you’ll also get a copy of the book Nancy mentioned today. She called it one of the best she’s read. The Puritan writer Matthew Henry will stretch your mind and cause you think about the purpose of meekness and inspire you to ask God to develop it in your life. His book is called, The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit.

We’ll send you a copy when you donate any amount to Revive Our Hearts. You’ll also get a set of Nancy’s pamphlets called, “Cultivating the Garden of Your Heart.” It will show you how to develop a life that remains peaceful day after day. You can study one and pass the rest of the set on to your friends.

Ask for “Cultivating the Garden of Your Heart” and The Quest for Meekness when you call with your donation. The number is 1-800-569-5959, or donate online at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Do you exhibit meekness while sending email? Tomorrow’s program is very practical, and I hope you’ll join us for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version.

¹ http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3346995

² Article by Jerry Hirsch: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003454425_guacamole30.html

³ http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8S3CVOG0&show_article=1

⁴ Aug 14 10:05 PM US/Eastern; http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8JGINJG1&show_article=1 

 

Meekness and Trust....Revive Our hearts....

Pin It This is the transcript from June 19th:  here is the link if you would like to go listen to it: http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/roh/today.php?pid=10246

Oh this really spoke to me about what a meek person is not when you see it listed out below....definitely some areas for prayer and guidance from the Lord to improve in this area for me!!!

Meekness and Trust

11

Series: The Beauty of Meekness

Friday, June 19 2009

 

Leslie Basham: Nancy Leigh DeMoss says our ability to display meekness depends on trusting God.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: That’s what makes us meek—it’s the confidence that God is in charge, that He knows what He’s doing, that He is at work, that we are working in union with Him, and that He is going to get the final word. He’s going to right this world that is turned upside down. He’s going to set it right side up.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Friday, June 19.

What comes to mind when you hear the word meekness? If a negative image comes to mind, stick with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for the next few minutes. You’ll be challenged with the beauty of meekness.

Nancy: We’re talking in this series about a subject that will probably never be the matter for a best-selling book because people don’t generally walk into a bookstore and say, “Can you give me some information on how to become more meek?” The world is not pursuing meekness, but God tells us that His children are to pursue meekness.

I mentioned yesterday a book. It may not be a best seller, but it has been around for a long time. It’s a classic on the subject of meekness. Of course, in Revive Our Hearts, the first thing we want to do is go to God’s Word to get our instruction, but thankfully there are people who have written on some of these subjects over the years to help us understand God’s Word.

The book I’m referring to is by Matthew Henry, who was a Puritan pastor and commentator. He lived in the second part of the 1600s and into the early 1700s. This book is called, The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit. It was written, as I said in the last session, in 1698, over 300 years ago. It is a classic, and I want to encourage you to get a hold of this book.

I’ll just tell you, it’s not easy reading. It’s not real long, as you can see. It’s about 150 pages, but it’s written in Puritan style, which, if you’ve not read that kind of writing, it’s heavy. You can’t read it quickly, and it takes time and effort to digest, but it’s worth the effort. In fact, I’ve been through this book now multiple times. In fact, I think this is my second copy. I make notes. I meditate on it. I take just bite-sized portions. I re-read parts. I try to study the different Scriptures that he references.

So in this series, I’m going to be teaching from Matthew Henry’s book. I figure most people will never read Puritan literature, so I’m going to try and make some of this digestible. I’ll use quotes from Matthew Henry and others as well. So much of the outline and the teaching I’m going to do is coming from this book.

I think back to the first time I read this book. It was, I don’t know, ten or so years ago. I was into it, but had not finished it yet, and I got called for jury duty in Michigan. It was, as I recall, a cold, snowy, blustery day. I took this book with me to the courthouse, figuring I’d have some time to wait there, which I did. I never got called for the jury that day—I never got called for anything—except the Lord called me into His courtroom.

As I sat there in this crowded room with all kinds of people in just a waiting mode, it was like the Lord came and singled me out in that very crowded room as I read this book. I remember thinking, “I should be on my knees right now, right here.” Now, I didn’t get on my knees right there, but in my heart I did. I found myself under such intense conviction of the lack of meekness in my life. It almost took my breath away as God singled me out there.

So I remember reading this Matthew Henry book there in that courthouse. I’ve read it since, and the Lord continues to speak to me about this subject of meekness because I found this is not something that you read a book and you’ve got it, or you pray a prayer, “Lord, make me meek. Oh, I’m meek now.” As soon as you think you are meek, you are no longer meek. It’s like humility. It’s a life-long pursuit of meekness. Seek meekness as a way of life.

Now, as we start into this, we want to ask the question, “What is meekness?”

That’s not an easy question to answer because there are so many aspects of it, and you don’t see it modeled much in our world. You see the opposite of meekness. We could come up with many, many illustrations, particularly as you look at women today. Meekness is in short supply. Women are trained to be independent, to be assertive, to be mouthy, to be opinionated, to be dogmatic, to be so many things that are the opposite of meekness.

So where do we look to find out what meekness looks like or what it is?

Of course, we’re going to go to God’s Word, and then others who can help us understand that, but I want to remind us that meekness does not necessary equal just having a shy or a quiet personality. You can be a very quiet person but not have a meek spirit. In fact, there are some quiet people, maybe some sitting here today, and people would look at you and they’d say, “She seems meek to me.” But what they don’t know is what goes on in your heart.

There are quiet people who have an underlying streak of stubbornness or pride or control issues or resentment in their hearts or simmering anger or a resistant spirit. “I’ll do it my way.” They’re not loud. They’re not blatant. They are not people you would look at and say, “Oh, she’s an outrageous woman.” But there’s not a meekness in their spirit.

So meekness is something that God knows whether it’s in our hearts. As He is speaking to us through this session, He is searching our hearts. He’s examining our hearts and showing us where there may be a lack of meekness.

Now we need to also realize that meekness is not the same as having a mousy spirit, being spineless. Meekness does not mean having no opinions or being a weak, fragile, wimpy, brainless, pitiful creature. Sometimes I think that’s the caricature of meekness. If you were to ask somebody in the world what they think meekness is, I think that’s what they perhaps picture as meekness—it’s somebody who doesn’t think for themselves, never has an opinion, a doormat, somebody that people just walk over, self-deprecating.

Let me say it requires just the opposite of that weak, spineless, mousy personality to have true biblical meekness.

Holly and I were talking just a little bit ago before this session, and she was reminding me of the pioneer women who forged so much of this country with their husbands. She said, “They weren’t mousy and wimpy and weak. They were women with backbone and spine and courage and faith, but many of them knew also a spirit of meekness.” It takes courage. It takes enormous strength and grace and faith to be a meek woman, and a meek woman is one who has great power and influence in our world and in the world around her.

Meekness is a rich concept. It has many different applications, and I’m still exploring it. It’s a many faceted jewel, but let me just read to you some definitions and some quotes I’ve come across that have helped me get a better grasp of what’s involved in meekness.

One Bible dictionary says, “Meekness is an attitude of humility toward God and gentleness toward people, springing from a recognition that God is in control.”¹

Merriam-Webster Dictionary says, “Meekness is enduring injury with patience and without resentment.”

Now both of those are important because there are people who endure injuries, people wronging them. They do it for a long time, but they carry resentment in their hearts. So the fact that you’ve endured doesn’t necessary mean there’s a meek spirit. Have you endured without letting it turn to resentment?

Another Bible dictionary says, “Meekness is a calm temper of mind, not easily provoked.”²

Matthew Henry in this book The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit says, “Meekness is a gracious, easiness of spirit. It accommodates the soul to every occurrence and so makes a man easy to himself and to all about him.”

If you’re the kind of person who makes others uptight because you’re uptight, then there’s a lack of meekness. If you’re the kind of person who’s always stressed and panicked and in a hurry, and you come across as always being in a hurry; that makes people around you uncomfortable or feel hurried or feel panicked, that’s not a meekness of spirit.

He says that meekness is a gracious, easiness of spirit that accommodates my soul to everything that’s going on around me so that I become easy to be myself and to those about me.

The Latin word for meek or gentle or tame is a word, I won’t try and pronounce it here, but it comes from two words that mean "accustomed to the hand." It refers to the taming of wild animals—breaking a horse, breaking a stallion until it is meek and it becomes accustomed to the hand. It is responsive to the hand of its owner or its rider.

That accustomed to the hand—that pliable, that responsive, that submissive responsiveness to God’s leadership in my life.

Accustomed to the hand—where God just puts His hand on my spirit, and I say, “Yes, Lord.” I’m touch sensitive to His hand and responsive to it. That’s an aspect of meekness.

I came across recently a book I had read a long time ago by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies on the Sermon on the Mount. He has a wonderful chapter on meekness. Let me read to you just a portion of what he says:

Meekness is essentially a true view of one’s self, expressing itself in attitude and conduct with respect to others.

A meek person recognizes and mourns his own sinfulness [this is going in the Beatitudes, the poor in spirit, those who mourn]. Therefore, this meek person has an absence of pride. He does not assert himself, does not demand anything for himself. He’s not even sensitive about himself. He’s not always watching himself and his own interests. He’s not always on the defensive. He no longer worries about himself and what other people say.

The man who is truly meek never pities himself, is never sorry for himself, never talks to himself and says, "you are having a hard time. How unkind these people are not to understand you." [That would be the opposite of meekness.]

To be meek means that you have finished with yourself altogether. [It’s a freedom from self, the God-consciousness rather than a self-consciousness.] You have finished with yourself altogether, and you come to see that you have no rights or desserts at all.”

The man who is truly meek is the one who is amazed that God and man can think of him as well as they do and treat him as well as they do.

You see, when we’re not meek, we think others should treat us better, but when we’re meek, we think, “It’s amazing that people would treat me as well as they do.” It’s the mercy of God that He would be as kind and gracious to me as He has been.

Now, as you listen to these definitions, these thoughts about meekness, you can see that there are three closely related qualities, and it’s true in Scripture. In fact, one of the things that makes the study of meekness a difficult one in the Scripture, a challenging one, is that there are different translations to come of the same words, and that reflects the fact that these three qualities are so closely related.

The three qualities are: humility, meekness, and gentleness—humility, meekness, and gentleness.

Humility has to do with our view of ourselves. We esteem ourselves small because we are small. That’s what it means to be lowly minded, to have an accurate assessment of ourselves, not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. Humility—you can’t have meekness without humility, and if you’re humble, you will be meek. They’re not identical, but they’re certainly related.

So humility is our view of ourselves.

Meekness, which is sometimes translated gentleness in some of our modern translations, meekness is an attitude toward the dealings of God and others as they affect us. It’s our attitude toward God in His dealings with us and our attitude of others in their dealings with us. It’s an inward heart attitude. Meekness.

So humility is how we view ourselves; meekness is how we view God and others in their dealings with us—it’s an inward heart attitude—and then the third quality is gentleness.

Gentleness has to do with our treatment of others. Meekness is our attitude about others. Gentleness is the outward action, how we treat those people. So, if you have a meek spirit toward people, you will treat them with gentleness. Our treatment of others is rooted in how we view them.

So humility is how we view ourselves; meekness is our attitude about God’s dealings with us and others’ dealings with us; and gentleness is the expression in outward action of that attitude of meekness. Does that make sense?

There are lots of phrases and terms that we could use to describe meek people, and sometimes that helps us understand more about what meekness is. As I read this last time through Matthew Henry’s book, The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit, I made a list of some of the terms, the phrases, the words that he uses to describe meek people and then some of the terms he uses to describe people who are not meek. I want to read to you just some of the words on these lists. I think it will give a greater sense of what we’re talking about when we talk about meekness.

First of all: the lack of meekness. Here’s some of the phrases that show up in Matthew Henry’s book, descriptive of the lack of meekness:

Exorbitant passion: A person who is (now keep in mind, this is 300 years ago this was written) "unhinged by provocation"—someone who comes apart when they’re provoked.

Ungoverned anger: Someone who is enflamed; someone who takes offense; someone whose heart is hot within—he gets heated; the heat of passion.

He talked about people who are ruffled.

He talks about hurry and haste as the opposite of meekness.

Of course, anger, a tempestuous spirit, someone who is easily provoked.

The word contention or contentious comes up a lot when you think of the absence of meekness.

Someone who is restless, peevish, impetuous, violent, passionate, litigious—that’s a word we don’t use a lot, but it means prone to lawsuits, and isn’t that true in our culture? People throwing lawsuits on each other; it’s a litigious culture. Someone who is quick to sue others is not a meek person.

He talks about:

• rash anger
• fretting
• revenge
• finding fault
• mean spirited
• murmuring
• disputing
• quarrelsome
• striving
• vexatious—easily vexed
• tumultuous
• resentment
• strife
• bitterness
• brawling
• impulsive
• clamor

He says, “The person who is lacking meekness passes judgment quickly on others”—quick to jump to conclusions, quick to write others off.

Being easily disturbed, being turbulent like the troubled sea—this is a person who is not meek.

Now let me give you the list that I wrote down as I read through his book of words that relate to meekness, words that describe a person who is meek:

• holds their peace
• obliging
• a cool spirit
• calm
• unperturbed (I need a big dose of that. I am easily perturbed—that is not meek. To be unperturbed is to be meek.)
• to pacify
• yielding
• soft answer
• sweet
• peaceable
• rest
• forgiving
• gentle
• evenness
• peaceful
• composed
• rest of soul
• serene
• tolerable
• amiable
• quiet
• undisturbed
• restrained
• easiness of spirit
• patient
• gracious easiness
• unruffled (A person who is meek has a spirit that’s been tamed. He’s able to rule over his own spirit.)
• accommodating
• passions are subdued
• tractable—Now, that’s not a word we use in modern-day English, but I think that means he is easy to be approached. He can hear reason; he can respond to reason. He doesn’t dig his heels in and say, “That’s the way I’ve always been; that’s the way I think, and I’m not going to change my mind.” He’s willing to change when needed.
• submissive
• soft or receptive
• self-governing
• bridled
• swift to hear, slow to speak

A person who curbs the tongue is a meek person. A person who considers before passing judgment and before speaking. He thinks before speaking. He doesn’t just blurt out the negative or critical things that come to his mind. He considers first and lets God curb and bridle his tongue.

Then he uses animals to picture to us what a meek person is like, and the animals he uses are the dove, the lamb, and sacrificial animals. Of course, we know that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, a picture of an animal who does not put up resistance. Jesus went as a lamb that is led to the slaughter as dumb, He opened not His mouth—not resistant, not retaliatory, not resentful. This is a picture of meekness.

Now, meekness flows out of the confidence that God is in control, and therefore we don’t have to be. God is in control. It’s a confidence that God is at work in this world, fulfilling His eternal and His holy purposes; that God will get the final word; that He will right all wrongs. That’s what makes us meek – it’s that confidence in the Lord.

It’s not that we just say, “Oh, I’m going to let all the evil doers in the world push me over and run over me.” No, it’s a confidence that God is in charge; that He knows what He’s doing; that He is at work; that we are working in union with Him; and that He is going to get the final word. He’s going to right this world that is turned upside down. He’s going to set it right side up.

One Bible dictionary says,

The meek do not resent adversity because they accept everything as being the effect of God’s wise and loving purpose for them so that they accept injuries from men also, knowing that these are permitted by God for their ultimate good.³

A meek spirit comes from centering our lives in God’s power, His sovereignty, and His awesome eternal purposes.

Now meekness has application in our relationship to God and in our relationships to others, and that’s what we’re going to look at over these next couple of days, but it affects everything. To have a meek spirit affects:

• the way we respond to people
• the way we respond to pressures
• the way we respond to problems
• the way we respond to the providence of God, His choices in our lives
• the way we respond when men praise us or when they pillory us
• the way we respond to poverty or to prosperity

Our response to everything in life is determined in some measure by whether we have meekness of spirit.

So, is that something you want to pursue? Is that something you want to have? If you’re a child of God, you do want that. You may, like me, say, “Oh, I blow it a whole lot more often than I succeed at it.” But you don’t want to stay in that position of not being meek. It’s one thing to fall into a lack of meekness; it’s another thing to love being there.

If you’re a child of God, you don’t love it when you’re not being meek. God convicts your heart. You want to be meek. You want to have a spirit of Christ. You want to respond to people and circumstances in ways that are meek.

So, as we jump into this series, I want to encourage you to make it your prayer: Lord, I want to be meek. I want to be meek in spirit.

Would you give God freedom to show you where you’re not meek? Now God has that freedom anyway, but would you say, “Lord, I want You to show me. I want You to convict me by Your Spirit of areas where I maybe didn’t even realize that I am not meek. Please show me that, and, Lord, grant me the gift of repentance. Change my heart. Change me. Help me to turn from the pride that would cause me to fail to be meek.”

Then ask the Holy Spirit, “Would You produce this fruit in my life?”

It’s the life of Jesus. It’s the character of Jesus. I want more of Jesus and less of me.

So, even as we start out, and we look over these next days what does meekness look like in our relationship with God, our relationships with others, our responses to pressures, we start out by saying, “Lord, I need You. I want You to show me where I’m not meek. I want You to change me, change my heart; give me repentance, and conform me to the image of Jesus. Make me a meek-spirited woman of God. And, Lord, that is our prayer, and we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.

Leslie: Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been showing us how beautiful and attractive it is to have a meek spirit. She quoted quite a bit from a very helpful book by Matthew Henry called The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit.

We’d like to send you a copy of this book. You’ll find it a valuable resource in a world that does not promote meekness. Like Nancy said earlier, the book isn’t long, but it will challenge you. When you make a donation of any amount, we’ll say, “Thanks,” by sending Matthew Henry’s book, The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit.

You’ll also receive a set of five pamphlets called “Cultivating the Garden of Your Heart.” Nancy describes the peace that you’ll receive when connecting with God daily. Keep one of these helpful pamphlets for yourself and pass four others on.

Just ask for The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit and “Cultivating the Garden of Your Heart” when you call us with a donation of any amount. The number is 800-569-5959, or you can visit us at ReviveOurHearts.com.

I know many listeners will be spreading peace this weekend by honoring fathers, so I hope you have a great weekend before joining us again Monday to learn more about the beauty of meekness. That’s next week on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

¹Youngblood, R. F., Bruce, F. F., Harrison, R. K., & Thomas Nelson Publishers. (1995). Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Rev. ed. of: Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary.; Includes index. Nashville: T. Nelson.

²Easton, M. (1996, c1897). Easton's Bible Dictionary. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

³Wood, D. R. W. (1996, c1982, c1962). New Bible Dictionary (747). InterVarsity Press.

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