For those of us in Christ, we have all the more reason, in our desperation, to hit our knees and plead for help in the wideness of God’s mercy. If God heard Manasseh, then how much more will he hear my self-humbling cries in Christ and send his rescue in his perfect way and time? How much more for those of us who now have the Great High Priest, able to sympathize with our weakness, bidding us “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14–16)?

Self-humbling is a grace beyond our own grasp. It’s a blessing we await, not achieve. God is the one who takes the first and decisive action in mercifully humbling his people. And yet he has not left us only to wait in silence. In fact, he wants to hear our voice. He invites us to have his ear.

Various habits of life can bend our souls toward humility and form instincts that shape us to gladly receive God’s severe mercies when they come. One is welcoming God’s word in Bible reading and meditation, and sitting attentively under faithful preaching.

However, the cycle of preparation for self-humbling lies incomplete without the counterpart to welcoming his voice — namely, appealing for his help in prayer.

Own Your Desperation

In one sense, we are accenting here the importance of prayer in all its many shades and modes — from adoration, to confession of sin, to expression of gratitude, to petitioning him for our daily bread, to interceding for others. All prayer cultivates in us a general sense of dependence on God; however, when we know ourselves especially desperate, and appeal to God for rescue in the face of some looming threat, we experience an intensity that the Scriptures connect to self-humbling.

To appeal to God for rescue moves us beyond the casual requests that pour forth from our casual lives. It’s one thing to put together a wish list; it’s quite another to beg for deliverance from life-threatening danger. We most humble ourselves in prayer when we appeal to God for what is plainly beyond our ability to produce. We feel stuck. We are desperate. We have come to the end of ourselves and our resourcefulness. And in our appeal to him is a more profound acknowledgment of his highness and our lowness, his strength and our weakness, his omnipotent ability and our human inability, his holiness and our humility.

If My People

The theme of self-humbling is a major emphasis in 2 Chronicles. This was the season of Israel’s great humbling. Often God humbled his people quite apart from their welcoming it. For instance, under Ahaz, “the Lord humbled Judah because of Ahaz king of Israel, for he had made Judah act sinfully and had been very unfaithful to the Lord” (2 Chronicles 28:19).

However, at key junctures, the people, led by a righteous king, humbled themselves by seeing and acknowledging God’s humbling work. Once God had acted to humble them, then the question came: Would they receive his humbling? Would they humble themselves? Or would they kick and squirm? Would they fight back against his humbling hand, or write it off as random or merely unfortunate?

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