Category Archives: Humility

Live From The Heart: Dane

*** UPDATE: Sorry folks, the issue still exists with this video (the sound drops out half way through) – we are working on rectifying it! I’ll let you know when the video is reloaded properly. Thanks for your patience. M

AJ & I had never met Dane when he completed the following interview with the God’s Way of Love Communications Team.

I found his story both interesting and inspiring. Thanks Dane for sharing your journey.

Bound

We are planting trees. 
Some have sat in the nursery a long time, waiting for us to prepare good earth. 
My breath catches as I ease this one out of its pot. Its roots are bound. 
I have to break up them up otherwise they’ll stay growing in circles and the tree never grow tall. 
It will live like it’s still got the limits of a 4×6 pot – when in fact all around is fertile soil. 
My hand is tentative as I work the roots. You see, I know what it’s like – this sudden shock. To have every part of where you thought you were going and growing to, suddenly exposed to naked air. Everything you thought to be truth abruptly in question. Sudden blank space where you thought there would be solid ground. 
It stuns you. It winds you. It’s scary and hurts more than a little. 
It can feel lonely and lost. 
It causes you to question: ‘What is right?’ ‘What is good?’ “What do I really want anyway?’ 
Nothing feels certain for a while. 
But in the end, I’ve come to give thanks for this process. In fact, I know that to grow I’m sure to repeat it. 
Just like this tree, we each of us have things in our roots that would keep us bound and small. We don’t always see them, these patterns of growth that keep leading us toward pain and restriction.
Life has led us to view some errors as truth, some truth as error. There is a great challenge in coming to understand that in at times what seems like comfort and goodness, is actually a limit and drain. There are threads of truth amongst the weave of error and humility is the only way I know to grow in discernment between the two, to grow this soul in love.
photo source with thanks
And this is it – I don’t know of a seamless, sedate and calm way to reassess who you are, and to truly make change. 
It takes a shake up to break out of the mould. 
Some roots are bound to error and breaking that away, breathing into new ways feels foreign and flawed sometimes. It takes faith in things higher to shift forward and expand.

At times, it takes bowing in deepest humility to discomfort and uncertainty, before the greatest truth can come.

So I steady my hands and make them firm as I pull away roots from their inward spiraling course. 
I know the joy that comes out of this kind of struggle and shock. 
I make a good bed for this tree to rest in. 
Don’t worry little one, this shock and upheaval will pass. And you will find yourself in a place to be nurtured; a new world of possibilities surrounds you. 
All this shaking loose is just you shaking free.
I smile and sigh. 
Go well little plant, find new earth, become something you cannot even yet dream. 

  We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein

Live From The Heart: Humility In Action

What I love about this speech is that Robert Kennedy is basically saying that each of us have a choice. We can choose to be humble to our pain and loss or to retaliate in hate and revenge, in avoidance of that pain.

I believe that humble hearts are the foundations of true and lasting peace on this planet.

Frankly though a problem I see at times is this:

People hear us say that humility involves an openness to every emotion within them.

People tryto focus on their emotions without a clear desire to change themselves, see their errors or their embrace their lives. This creates self-absorption. This is not humble.

In fact these people are overlooking the fact that humility also involves openness to every situation and person they encounter. Someone who is self- centered, self-absorbed is the opposite of this. They are actually self-interested. They resist life and those around them in favour of focus on their own emotions.

A humble person allows their own emotional experience without resistance, and without valuing it over another person’s experience.

Humility also involves honouring the truth that each of us are of equal value, as brother and sister, all children of God. A person spending all of their time and energy trying to manufacture humility is valuing their own pointless endeavour over the feelings and experiences of others.

The fact that a person must try to embody humility means that they are resistive to simply putting it into action. When we want a thing, we engage it. When we can’t, we find out why and take steps to change these blocks. But we never have to push or force ourselves into it.

Trying, as I have often said before, is lying*.

Sad Fact: By tryingto focus solely on their emotions people often miss the point. They become less humble and more self-involved. 

Often people try to be humble in order to gain approval, to feel they are ‘living the path’ the ‘right’ way. These people miss the point that ‘The Way’ is a journey, undertaken with the Father. He sees us and knows us but even the attempt to manufacture a facade of humility distances His Heart from our own. It is better to be honest about who we are and where we are at, than to push ourselves towards tears or to create ‘paralysis through intellectual analysis’** of our ‘issues’.

Indeed, being real and open about who we are, without expectation or demand for approval or reward, these are the beginnings of walking in humility.

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While people focus totally on their own emotions and try to access them (thinking that this is what we mean is the basis of a relationship with God) they miss out on understanding true humility. Ironically, I have seen people living in emotional addiction, avoiding the deepest truths about themselves, and hiding it all behind the banner of ‘humility’.

Such people become isolated and separated. They use a ‘spiritual term’ to justify pushing their emotions onto others. In this, they not only distance themselves from God but they damage others’ understanding of what it means to live humbly.

In contrast, true humility automatically creates connection, not only with self, but with others.  

The qualities of service, leadership, the willingness to confront error and bring about change, all flow from this magic quality humility.

To be humble we must stop trying, and begin allowing what God is truly telling us through our life and our feelings.

Recently I completed a series of interviews (no less than five) with Jesus surrounding the quality of true humility. I am inspired, as always, by the simplicity and power of what he spoke of.

I feel though that we all must be careful that simply hearing these truths does not lead us the arrogance of believing that we live them. That endeavor will take more of our time. The process of truly becoming humble is far more engaging, and beautiful.

Humility is the gift that we would offer our Heavenly Father in order that we would come to know Him and receive His Love and Truth.

It is the vital key to our homecoming.

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* This saying was told to me many years ago by a workshop leader. As the years go by, I see again and again, how true this is.

**The saying ‘paralysis from analysis’ comes from one of our dear friends, Susan.

Sincerity or Hypocrisy?

In England we talked about sincerity in spiritual growth, and how quietly and easily hypocrisy can slide into our lives, creating facade, eroding our good deeds and causing stagnation. 
As we wake from the numb slumber of addiction and avoidance, its tempting to soothe the restless soul with ‘spiritual’ words and thoughts that we think spell progress.

As facade cracks, pain and loneliness so long covered over, begin to seep forth, we grapple for ‘control’, to understand, to feel we know and we can cope. 

And in doing so we can end up spending time talking, instead of growing, we loose sight of truth and open the way for hypocrisy.

But true joy is to be found in the other choice. 
The choice of faith in the process God has designed, to trust that His Ways will have us cope the best. 
True progress requires this choice, this trust. 
Our group was small and intimate, which made for great discussion!
The measure of our sincerity is how often we choose love and humility in our day-to-day lives. And these choices will germinate into actions, since they can do nothing else.

When we take action in sincerity:

1. We will confront all issues of love and untruth in our lives meaning that change is certain
2. Error will begin to leave us which means that pain is certain
3. We open ourselves to God and to our true selves so that joy is certain

Sincerity about spiritual growth leads to action and change in our lives automatically.

For me, this talk, this visit was good soul food. Stuff to sustain me, stuff to inspire me.

It was also great to stay with and catch up with dear people. Thank-you Mike, Fi, Luca, Angela & Peter.

Note to Self – On Teaching

  1. Its about God, not me. Let God guide me, let myself forget how I look and instead be enveloped by passion for God and the Truths.

    In truth, all wisdom flows from Him and the acknowledgement and honour belongs with Him. I can never compete with God!

    If I try to look good or knowledgeable I am insulting God, I am proud (not humble). I cannot serve Him nor others. I only serve my own ego. In this space God and my guides are bound and gagged – they cannot lead or inspire me.

    Remember humility is the only doorway to Divine Love and Divine Truth.

  2. Be myself, but don’t push my own barrow. i.e. offer my true self, my passion, my personality and my heart to the group, be fully present, but don’t be invested in where we ‘need to go’ emotionally, intellectually or spiritually.

    Allow everyone to go at their own pace, be guided by people’s curiosity, start where they are at.

  3. Champion Truth – both God’s Truth and personal honesty.

    While I won’t be invested in what people get out of the session/ group, I can ensure that our topics, themes and discussions remain focussed around principles of Divine Truth and Love.

    I can maintain an atmosphere of honesty (starting with my own) and challenge error if spoken, displayed or enacted in the group.

  4. If I begin to think I need to have all of the answers I have forgotten point number 1 (its about God, not me).

    I am the child, not the Parent/ Creator. There will always be more to learn. Remember how much I used to love that!

  5. When I model humility, I teach. I also have the most capacity to reach others at a heart level.

    This may be the only thing I do in a session.

    This is not insignificant.

  6. Remember to breathe. Trust that I don’t have to share inspiration all in a rush.

    Lean on God in this place, rather than playing ‘relay’ with Him. i.e. stop connecting to God briefly, receiving inspiration, then rushing away from Him to share the Truth with the group. The reason I do this is because I am afraid to be emotional in front of others.

    Its OK to let grief or gratitude pass through me and be expressed as tears.

    People don’t need to know every emotion I am going through. I need only share my emotional experience if it is an example that adds to the point of the lessons being currently taught.

  7. Encounter fear and embrace it. This is the only way it will leave me. Trust that truth will prevail when fear is not honoured nor believed.

    It is good to have structure and flow but beware of the desire for control. This is a flag for fear and endangers point 2 (don’t push your own barrow).

  8. Remember I don’t have to be perfect.
  9. When I am truly humble I won’t need this list.

When Anger Stops Us Seeing A Friend

When we begin to open our eyes and hearts to the level of addiction that has existed in our lives sometimes its tempting to declare “Well no one has ever loved me! True friendship is a fallacy.”

Even if we don’t admit it, deep down, many of us feel cynical about love and friendship. All the little hurts have added up and while we may not say it out loud a part of us has become hard.

But for most of us there have been people – amongst the comings and goings, the growing and learning phases in our lives – who have extended the hand of friendship our way. 

Its true, we may not have noticed.

These special people can pass us by if we want to hold onto our grief and pain, if we want to blame and be victims.


It happens because we get angry instead of sad.

We get angry because we hurt and don’t want to know it. We don’t want to open up again, to feel how alone and sad and friendless we felt before, when our feet were small and hearts tender.

I know this because I have been there. 

Sometimes the hurt of feeling friendless, abandoned, unloved and unimportant feels too much and I just want to hold onto angry disillusionment instead. 
And if you are like me, then when we do this, when we shut down in this way, we not only miss the chance to receive the gifts and gratitude of true friendship but we also prevent ourselves becoming true friends to others.

When we are willing to be humble to the pain we feel, we will stop trying to have those around us alleviate it, and begin to have something to give.
Before this can happen however we will need to stop blaming others, we will stop waiting for the world to make things fair and safe for us to share and speak and be ourselves.
We will have to ask –
Do I want to be true even if others aren’t?
Do I want to give more than I want to justice?
How much do I want to love?
The story of ‘Through the Mists’ shows us many beautiful examples of friendship in action, not the least of which is Fred’s own life. Fred was a lonely man while on earth, he lacked love and support from almost everyone in his society yet he lived his life in service and friendship to those less fortunate. His humility made him not full of self but of compassion; his integrity made him willing to risk ridicule in order to live by the principle of love he aspired to. 
I have learnt that to be a true friend I will require humility. It may mean taking steps that feel risky. 
But mostly to be your friend I will have integrity. I will honour love and truth above my image or comfort. 
And in thisI will serve as a matter of course.
Who has been a friend to you in your childhood or life today? What did they teach you about life and love?
 

Humility – Like Learning to Breathe

In this life I never learnt to breathe. I learnt to please and all the pleasing crushed the air out of me instead of letting it in. I had bronchitis and asthma often as a child and still there are many days when a stifling lack of breath, a wheeze, has me reaching for an inhaler.
I understand it now, this not having learnt breath. It’s about the moments I couldn’t bear. I could never stop to be in the moments of my life. I was always scurrying to the next one, I was always afraid to stop moving, to stop pleasing and appeasing. My joyous instants were fraught with the fear of the one that may follow it. I never grew up learning to just inhale, exhale through the painful times, the scary instants and as I grew I learnt to chase them down with booze or anger or running away into the next ‘adventure’.
Humility, to me, feels like learning to breathe. It is finding space to feel, to allow the entire me to be present. And in this allowing me, it suddenly seems like there is room to breathe, to breathe into the moments that hurt. This new breathing makes space for me, in spite of the pressures to conform to others. It is breathing in and out through the put- downs and the push-arounds that once made me shrink myself. And as I do this there is a growing softness that feels like the rigidity is gradually draining out of me through a slow leak in my shoe.
God knows how hard this place has been for me to find. Like a caged animal I have fought myself, fought to keep running, to keep from feeling. I have screamed a silent scream of anguish caused only by my rebellion. How could I have known that this space, this living humbly, is the most precious and expansive awakening? I could not have guessed that it feels so gently nurturing and beautifully consuming.
Humility to me is not bashing a pillow, or sobbing my heart out. It is a state, a way of living, that I may embody.

Humility commences with my willingness to feel and results in me embracing everything and somewhere in the vital space in between there comes a birthing of true love and compassion.

This new filling of my lungs has also expanded how I see myself, how I see others. God has shown me our brokenness and our beauty simultaneously. There is new space in my heart; the dust covers are being tossed off disused and neglected furnishings, such as patience, giving and kindness.

I find myself surrounded suddenly by brothers and sisters, not strangers or friends. I feel a tender (and still tentative) unfurling of innocent desire towards my mate. I catch myself crying at the bright blue sky bursting with pure white cotton ball clouds. I find joy in the little things and am overwhelmed by gratitude for the great gifts God showers on my every day. I know now that humility is the soil in which our connection to all others must germinate. It is the fertile ground to which God may come and cultivate a place in our hearts.

And while I know I am still so imperfectly proud so often, this yielding to humility is like a new trend in my heart that I never want to go out of fashion.

In my stutters and starts, in this learning to breathe, I have glimpsed God. And I find myself laughing, because He’s been here all along. He’s there at every breath – it’s only me that kept running, running, running from myself, the labour of it crushing my chest and stifling every gasp for air. I left no space to know Him, to let Him fill me up, to have Him patch up all those gaping wounds I smothered and stifled and suffocated, denying them air to breathe.

All that trying to live in the ‘now’ was wasted while I, myself, stifled the very intake of air that would ground me in it. And all the old meditation, the reframing, the “its all good”s seem cheap in the face of what I feel now. The minutes are longer and richer. I am present for the first time in so long. My gratitude grows not through making the best of things, or minimising the pains of my life. It springs forth as I begin to welcome all emotions, resting in the knowledge that they help me remember my own story, my own self once squashed and discarded. My heart swells in thankfulness as I see that God is teaching me Truth and Love again. How can I not be grateful to a God who has designed laws that engineer every experience, so that I may have an opportunity in each moment to grow towards Him, to become whole again? How can I not appreciate a universe designed to teach me everything about Love once I submit to the simplest thing – my fully feeling self – something so vital and simple that once I stop fighting it seems just like breathing.
As I learn again to breathe and I make space for God to fill my lungs, to enter deep into me. And often now, as I exhale, a sweet new scent, that whispers something of love, liberation and contentment, wafts under my nostrils. Possibility and promise smell like nectar from an exotic fruit.
I give thanks for all things; I give thanks for every God gifted breath.

A Note to Those Reading:

I still have so much to learn and I know that sometime soon, I will realise that where I am now, this new type of breath, is only a glimmer of the humility I will need to truly know my Father.  This offering stems only from my desire to share with you the deeper peace I am finding through staying with my emotions, through desiring to know myself and see myself, not through the eyes of the world, but through the eyes of the One who loves the most. He loves me, its true, and in the light of His Grace I am so humbled by how much I still have to learn and grow. Thank-you today for reading my simple words. I am blessed to share this journey with you.

Welcoming Sorrow, Honouring Self

About a week ago I had a series of realisations. Like a mini power point presentation in my soul, every couple of hours ponderings in my heart, snippets of discussions with Jesus or pages I had read or written would coalesce and God would download another whopping ‘Truth Slide’ for my soul to tremble at.

Below is the list of my ‘Truth Slides’. I can’t programme html to save myself so they appear as numbered points but if you can imagine God gave them to me in this really cool cascading flow chart, every couple of hours the next slide would appear and I could feel how it snugly related to the previous one.

1. I have never really loved anyone. I have always been in addictions in close relationships.

(Do you sort of get to feel why I needed a couple of hours before the next slide?)

2. I am in almost complete denial of my true self. I have squashed my true self and all of my feelings into   a tiny ball in a dark corner of my soul. Every now and then when she tries to appear I (judge) stamp on her to make her more squished and tiny. My true self is full of sorrow

3. My inauthentic self, created to get approval and avoid my sadness is not content, confident or able to love authentically because she is created through addiction. She is needy by nature.

4. If I want to know and accept my true self I must be willing to accept her sorrow. She is full of pain. I want to reject pain but now I realise that pain is a large part of the real me. I can’t know me unless I let my grief be present and tell its story. In order to know myself I must open my arms and welcome pain.

5. Allowing my sorrow will not only connect me with my true self but it will bring about my healing. Even in my sorrow I will be able to love and give authentically because I will have reached an authentic place within myself.

6. My authentic self knows and desires her Soulmate (my inauthentic self stresses about not desiring or knowing – this is just an effect emotion) My authentic self knows what she wants and what is good for her.

In the wake of the God engineered slide show in my soul I have this to say.

We tell ourselves that the adult, invented self is strong and the protector, that the child within is weak and needs protection. In fact it is the child within that holds the wisdom, she is the one connected with her emotions, the emotions that make us sensitive to what is good, safe and wise for our well-being and happiness. Our denial of the painful feelings, created when we were harmed, suppressed, bullied or disrespected as children, desensitizes us to the passion, creativity, surety, desire and heart-trust that is innate to our fully feeling selves.

We must welcome our pains in order to know our desires. We have been taught to trust our minds and rationality (and look where it’s got us: sick, divorced, overweight, discontented, dissatisfied, unsure, cynical and mistrusting). If we can find the scrunched up part inside that holds our true self, full of pain; if we can sit with it and ask it to expand, to stretch out into the fullness of our being we will feel its pain and loneliness. We will feel its fears and losses but we also will for the first time in so long be feeling our true selves and there is so much power in a person connected to themselves. This feeling creature that we were created to be, is also aware and connected to everything around it. It feels nature, it feels others, it allows its own feelings and as a result it knows what it wants! If we desire Love and God from this space the potentials for peace, joy and fulfillment are no longer even potentials – they become realities.

The key for me is to begin to view my pain as something different to ‘bad’, ‘the unpleasant part’, the ‘please can I get it over and done with’ thing that I have to do. I want to love me and that means loving my pain because it is a part of me right now. In fact it tells my story, by allowing my pain I am honouring my story, I am coming to know the complete me. By judging and avoiding my pain I am judging the largest part of me (largest for now). I am saying to the real me ‘you are unpleasant’, ‘I wish you weren’t there’, ‘you make my life hard and miserable’.

The starker truth I have come to face is that I, the manufactured me, have made my life unpleasant and miserable and the more I fight the real me, the more miserable I become. I have blamed ‘real me – full of pain’ for unhappiness only to realise now that allowing ‘real me – full of pain’ unlocks my joy and even during the feeling of my pain she, the real me, has the capacity to love, to make decisions, to create and connect with others.

We must change our attitudes to pain. We must desire not only God but ourselves – and if our true selves come clad in pain, abuse, loss or fear we must welcome them and let their grief tell our story, for ultimately they will become our greatest teachers, they will instruct us in love. They have lived so long without it, they have felt the absence of it so acutely that, when we allow them, our darker feelings will give us knowing and make us hyper-aware of what it loving and what is not.

God, of course, will be our constant companion but at present so many of us invite Him from our inauthentic selves. We say “God, come sit for a while, come for tea and I’ll show you my best self, we won’t talk about that scrunched up part of me in the distant, dark corner down the hall because, frankly, she bothers me. I wish you would just clear her out of here, take her off my hands.”

And all God can do is smile gently and try to have us hear His response “But my beloved, this part is you and I love her so much. My Arms of Love long to embrace her – if only you would embrace her yourself.”

Humility Study Notes

Many of you who have spoken to me recently would know that I am really working at the moment with willingness towards true humility. I am praying constantly for ‘the awakening’ of my true soul condition that allows our God connection. I feel passionate about it. The reason being that, as I step into this process I have found that, what I thought would feel humiliating actually feels wholly liberating and what I thought would make me unlovable to everyone (i.e. owning and sharing all my imperfections) has actually opened me to feeling more authentic and I have received the most awesome gift – the beginning of a connection with God. 

As I began to pray and desire this process I found a book (which I also mentioned in my last post) called Brokenness: The Heart God Revives by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. The list I have pasted below has been adapted by me from a chapter in the book. I have it printed out and incorporate into my daily prayer time most days now.  Some of the words in the prayer that I have written that follows the list use a concept that Nancy refers to in the book i.e. (my paraphrase here) in order to be truly ‘broken’ or humble we must learn to become humble with others, walls down, as well as with God, roof off.

For those who attend the Wednesday group at the Wilkesdale Learning Centre we agreed yesterday to discuss the list at next weeks meeting. I’m posting it here so that everyone may have the chance to read it before then.
By the way if you have never attended this group everyone is welcome. It starts at 10.30am.

I’ve enjoyed being present with you all the past couple of weeks and I’m excited to think that we all may grow and share in humility.

Love to all,
Mary

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The following list has been adapted from the book:
Brokenness: The Heart God Revives

Humility & Pride
Proud people focus on the failures of others.
Humble people are overwhelmed with a sense of their own spiritual need.
Proud people have a critical, fault-finding spirit; they look at everyone else’s faults with a microscope but their own with a telescope.
Humble people are compassionate; they forgive much because they know how much they have been forgiven.
Proud people are self-righteous; they look down on others.
Humble people esteem all others. They have faith in the potential for good in others.
Proud people have an independent, self-sufficient spirit.
*Humble people have a dependent spirit; they recognize their need for God. They value gifts from God and from others. They do not resist giving God or others credit for the wisdom or gifts they have given them.
Proud people have to prove that they are right.
Humble people are willing to yield the right to be right.
Proud people claim rights; they have a demanding spirit.
Humble people yield their rights; they have a meek spirit.
Proud people are self-protective of their time, their rights, and their reputation.
*Humble people are able to love themselves. They do not DEMAND attention or love out of lack or fear. They do not value themselves above others.
Proud people desire to be served.
Humble people are motivated to serve others.
Proud people desire to be a success.
Humble people are motivated to be faithful and to make others a success.
Proud people desire self-advancement.
*Humble people desire to promote love and God.
Proud people have a drive to be recognized and appreciated.
*Humble people recognise their relationship with God is their primary relationship. They are humble to feelings of unworthiness and sensitive to when they may be becoming arrogant.
Proud people are wounded when others are promoted and they are overlooked.
*Humble people are eager for others to get the credit; they rejoice when others are lifted up. They are humble to their feelings if overlooked and turn to God with these feelings.
                                          
Proud people have a subconscious feeling, “This ministry/church is privileged to have me and my gifts”; they think of what they can do for God.
*Humble people know that the true way to teach or ‘minister’ is through humility and demonstration of God’s Grace. They are not afraid to expose their true selves. They realise what God does for them in every moment, especially when teaching others. They recognise all Truth comes from God.
Proud people feel confident in how much they know.
Humble people are humbled by how very much they have to learn.
Proud people are self-conscious.
Humble people are not pre-occupied with what others think of them.
Proud people keep others at arms’ length.
Humble people are willing to risk getting close to others and to take risks of loving intimately.
Proud people are quick to blame others.
Humble people accept personal responsibility and can see where they are wrong in a situation.
Proud people are unapproachable or defensive when criticized.
Humble people receive criticism with a humble, open spirit.
Proud people become bitter and resentful when they are wronged; they have emotional temper tantrums; they hold others hostage and are easily offended; they carry grudges and keep a record of other’s wrongs
Humble people give thanks in all things; they are quick to forgive those that wrong them.
Proud people are concerned with being respectable, with what others think; they work to protect their own image and reputation.
Humble people are concerned with being real; what matters to them is not what others think but what God knows; they are willing to die to their own reputation.
Proud people find it difficult to share their spiritual need with others.
Humble people are willing to be open and transparent with others as God directs.
Proud people want to be sure that no one finds out when they have sinned; their instinct is to cover up.
Humble people, once Humble, don’t care who knows or who finds out; they are willing to be exposed because they have nothing to lose.
Proud people have a hard time saying, “I was wrong; will you please forgive me?”
*Humble people are quick to admit failure, to feel the cause of their unlovingness and to seek forgiveness when necessary.
Proud people tend to deal in generalities when confessing sin.
Humble people are able to acknowledge specifics when confessing their sin.
Proud people are concerned about the consequences of their sin.
Humble people are grieved over the cause, the root of their sin.
Proud people are remorseful over their sin, sorry that they got found out or caught.
Humble people are truly, genuinely repentant over their sin, evidenced in the fact that they forsake that sin.
Proud people wait for the other to come and ask forgiveness when there is a misunderstanding or conflict in a relationship.
*Humble people take the initiative to be reconciled when there is misunderstanding or conflict in relationships. They are loyal to the principles of love and truth first and always and do not allow pride to prevent them from admitting a transgression.
Proud people compare themselves with others and feel worthy of honour.
Humble people compare themselves to the holiness of God and feel a desperate need for His mercy.
Proud people are blind to their true heart condition.
*Humble people walk in the light – they fully face their true condition and reach out to God from that space.
Proud people don’t think they have anything to repent of.
Humble people realize they have need of a continual heart attitude of repentance.
Proud people don’t think they need revival, but they are sure that everyone else does.
Humble people continually sense their need for a fresh encounter with God and for a fresh filling of His Spirit.

List adapted from http://www.reviveourhearts.com/pdf/uploads/TheHeartGodRevives.pdf
Notes with * beside have been altered from the original text by me. The word broken and brokenness has been replaced with humble throughout.
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“God please help me to be Humble before you today and everyday. Teach me to live with the walls down and the roof off.
I desire to be near you and to bring glory to you. Help me to be humble to my failings and pain so that I may never cultivate addiction and instead live in the shadow of your love every hour and moment of my life.”