Derek Prince - Humbling Yourself Will Be A Priceless Blessing
This is an excerpt from: The Secret Power Of Fasting
But I want to speak about humility as an essential condition for effective prayer and I want to take a number of statements to this effect. Let's look, first of all, before we do that, in James 4:10. There are just two other passages that we'll look at. James 4:10: Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up.
Notice, humble yourselves. Don't ask God to do it, you do it. God will do the lifting up if you do the humbling. And then a very similar passage in 1 Peter 5. Actually, Ruth and I proclaimed this before the previous message. Verse 6: Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. And the previous verse says: God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. So, if you are coming to God in prayer with your pride, God is resisting you. And guess who can push harder? You cannot get close to God in pride. The book of Psalms says the Lord knows the proud afar off and that's where He keeps them. There is no access to God with pride.
And so, anything that enables us to humble ourselves is a priceless blessing even if it isn't always enjoyable at the time. And one of the Biblically appointed ways to humble ourselves is by fasting. I'm going to show you this right through the Bible. I'm going to start with a statement by David, a very simple statement, in Psalm 35:13 where he says: I humbled my soul with fasting. I think the modern translations mostly say: I humbled myself, but the Hebrew says: I humbled my soul. Why do you need to humble your soul? Well, your soul is the arrogant part of you, it's the self-assertive part, it's the egoistic part. Your soul has got three main functions: the will, the intellect and emotions.
And it expresses itself in these phrases: I want, I think, I feel. And God says what you want isn't important, what you think isn't important, what you feel isn't important. What's important is my will. And if you're going to align yourself with my will you've got to deal with your soul. And one way to deal with your soul is to humble your soul with fasting. I remember years ago I preached this kind of message in Washington D.C. and there was a Christian lawyer there, and he got the message and said, I'm going to do it, so, tomorrow I'm going to fast. He did, he had a miserable day. Every time he walked past a restaurant he could smell the food, every time he walked past a confectionery he'd stop and look in the window. It was just a miserable day.
So, at the end of the day he gave his stomach a lecture and he said: Now stomach, you've made a lot of trouble for me today. You've caused me a lot of unnecessary discomfort. So, for that I'm going to punish you, I'm going to fast tomorrow as well! See, that is humbling your soul, it's bringing it into subjection. Let me say this. The stomach is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. Who's the master in your life? You or your stomach? It's a good question, it's question we all have to face. Believe me, people in the ministry are not exempted from that question. I've fought the battle in my stomach many times, but when I get the victory, I get blessed. Not always immediately, not always dramatically but in one way or another I come under the blessing of God.
And then if I become arrogant God withdraws His blessing. I say, God, what's happened? And He gently indicates some way or other you've become proud and self-assertive again. You want your way. You're letting your will and your soul talk and it's got to be brought into subjection to my will and my word and my ways.