If ever we’re going to do something that costs us the presence of God and the power of God and its manifestation, it’s going to be thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think or thinking that somehow, because of our righteousness, our own ability, our own efforts we’re doing something that makes God big through our own ability.

Are you heavy laden?  Are you tired of trying to do it in your own strength?  “Come unto Me and I’ll give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me.  Find out how I did this.  Look at how I pleased Father in everything that I did, coming to do His will, to speak His Word.”  Oh, what a confidence to be able to say, “Father, I know that when I pray, You hear me”; amen?  Why?  No agenda, no trust in anything innate but in the sovereignty of God, in the indwelling presence of God we are able to become those vessels, those vehicles, through which He can glorify Himself.  “You’ll find rest for your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  Rest for your souls.  That torment that so often hinders each and every one of us, the rest for your souls.  That ability to stop trusting in self.  Humility is to stop trusting in yourself.  There’s nothing in you that you can trust in.  When we will finally humble ourselves and believe that and cast our care upon Him, it will manifest that He cares for us, praise God.  Rest your souls.  There is a rest unto the people of God.  Cease from your own labors.  Enter into that rest, that humility.

I think we can look at a couple of men, here, some of the great men of God and the different areas in their lives.  I was wanting to focus on a couple of God’s vessels and instruments that He used, and I think, for each and every one of us, we can learn some principles.  I think of Jeremiah.  Turn over to Jeremiah for just a moment.  God is dealing with men.  I think for us, it would be good for us to see that having started out with humility in our young lives, is a pretty natural thing.  But we’ve got to finish this race; amen?  Many of us talk about this desire to be more humble.  We’ve shared this before.  All of us desire to be humble but none of us want to be humiliated.  Amen?  But sometimes the process requires that.  Sometimes God, through His great goodness to us, will bring us into that place where we’re undone before Him.  Each and every one of us has an image of self.  There is how we see ourselves and there is how we really are.  We’ve talked about that many times in the past that none of us knows our own heart and yet we all believe we do.  If it wasn’t for reading the Bible, you wouldn’t believe it even if you were told that.  In fact, we have to read the Bible over and over to remind ourselves of that; amen?  Because each and every one of us has that propensity to go back and think, “I really know.”  “You can’t—how can you know what’s in my heart?”  I don’t know what’s in your heart.  I can only see the fruit that you’re producing.  But one thing I do know is this.  You don’t know what’s in your heart.  That heart of yours is desperately wicked (amen?) and who can know it?