Thursday, October 17th, 2024
Two days before I left to head to D.C. for the Million Women gathering God gave me the phrase “cloak of humility”. I could sense in myself that there was some pride rising up in various situations I was encountering at home, and I knew it had to be dealt with. I began praying for God to give me a cloak of humility. 1 Peter 5:5 actually references this very phrase. In the AMPC this says:
…Clothe (apron) yourselves, all of you, with humility [as the garb of a servant, so that its covering cannot possibly be stripped from you, with freedom from pride and arrogance] toward one another. For God sets Himself against the proud (the insolent, the overbearing, the disdainful, the presumptuous, the boastful)—[and He opposes, frustrates, and defeats them], but gives grace (favor, blessing) to the humble.
Little did I know that this would be a large focus for our gathering. Another scripture that came up on multiple occasions in D.C. was 2 Chronicles 7:14 (NKJV):
14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
All day long we prayed about humbling ourselves, seeking His face and turning from our wicked ways (for ourselves and on behalf of our nation). The Body of Christ (the church) has to get rid of its own junk before it can get rid of anyone else’s. And it’s our responsibility to use the authority that God gave us when Jesus died on the cross to push back the evil spirits that are responsible for all the junk in our lives and the world. We can’t expect the world to all of a sudden start acting righteously just because we think they should. It’s a spiritual battle and we have to take up the sword and allow God to use us to show them the way.
Another common theme of the gathering was about raising up Esthers all over the world who will go before the King and ask Him to pardon her people. Esther 4:16 says, “If I perish, I perish.” In this Bible story, there was a very real chance that Esther would lose her life if the king did not raise his golden scepter to her. Esther had to choose to humble herself and not give in to self-preservation. As Mordecai pointed out, if she chose not to go before the king, she too (as a Jew) would perish under Haman’s wicked law. Have we gotten to the point in our faith that we are fully willing to lay down our lives for the cause of Christ? I will admit, I have operated much more under a self-preservation mode. This means pride is still on the throne. I too need to exchange my cloak of pride for a cloak of humility. We were not created on this Earth to fulfill our own plans; we were created to fulfill God’s plans. This is where we find our true purpose and unshakeable joy.
Final Thoughts…
We cannot go about this thinking we (as humans) are the answer to the problems, that we have it all figured out or that everybody has to listen to and obey us. It’s not about us as individual humans. It’s about God working through us as the body of Christ to complete His plan. Our every effort has to be about bringing glory to God. We must seek Him for what He wants to do in us so that He can work through us. Lord, show us any kinks in our hose that are keeping your presence and power from flowing. Our hearts desire is to seek You, hear Your voice and obey Your voice. Show us all how to be the Esthers that our families, our cities and our nations need.