Paul says, “I am what I am by God’s grace.”
That is authentic humility. Getting to that condition requiring humility, and maintaining that life requires increased humility. The Greek word means “low-lying.” The English word comes from a root word for dirt with the working definition of “earthy” or “grounded.”
Humble deals with a position and posture of the heart produced by failure and defeat to live under the circumstances that brought a person low or consciously and intentionally by choice to appropriate grace from God. You humble yourself or be humbled.
One condition means you have pride and God resists you. One state means you humble yourself and God gives you grace.
I Am
I am not worthless in my existence, but I am not superior because of who I am. Humility is not a denial of who I am or what I am called to do. Humility cannot dump responsibility to appear “less than.”
Humility is never a denial of reality. I am. And, I should exist. I am by God’s intentions, so I represent a God idea and purpose. The “I am” part is so basic that humility begins with identity.
Jesus identifies with me so I can identify with Jesus. He is the I Am. God is comfortable being God. In no sense, at no time, in no circumstance can God be anything “less than.” Jesus humbled Himself to be human and to die. He humbled Himself to death.
In position and posture, Jesus remains humble, and everyone in Heaven knows it. The “I am” of my life is definable by what I claim the right to be and do. Humility empties me of authorizations that arise from myself so grasp hold of authorizations that come from my Creator, Redeemer, and Restorer.
Paul can say, “I am an apostle. I am the greatest apostle. I am a father. I am a leader. I am authorized to represent Jesus” without breaching his position and posture because in each statement he speaks of his authorization, not claiming his right to be and do.
What I Am
We are knee jerk in our opposition to titles because we have developed aggression against entitlement. We think that denying title will fix entitlement when the very opposite is true. Targeting some proud people by removing all titles just makes everybody more likely to be proud.
It leads to disorder and lawlessness. It justifies rebellion against God’s order.
We suddenly say, “No one is my father. I have no parents.” As if anyone who claims to have the title of “father” or “mother” is a usurper of our direct fathering and mothering connection to God: “God is My father, so just shut up.” We have rebelled against God. We removed the identification from someone authorized by God with an identity. We messed up the “what I am” they have from God.
We can do the same in the kingdom, and we have. I mention this because having done so opened the door to identity issues in ourselves. We cannot get the “what I am” right erasing God’s identification methods.
The orphan spirit cannot be cured in a lawless person. All the teaching in the world won’t scratch the surface of the problem. It is a misidentification issue. It is an empty place that all mapping and discovery more accurately without pumping anything into the void. It operates in a person incapable of humility because they lack the capacity to discover the “what I am” that receives a grace flow for their “I am.”
God tells us He is I Am. He defines our I am. He reveals our I am. He graces our I am. We understand something of our I am when we experience His I Am.
This is no existential experience! This is Truth that preexisted us, enters into us and reveals eternity within us. We do not become God when we experience God. We experience Truth, and it sets us free of an eclipsing existence of non-truth.
Talking people into something is not experiencing Truth. They do not know Truth because they know about Truth. The truth about the Truth is not the Truth! They must experience Truth. When they do, freedom comes.
If I have a father that I never know, the truth that I have a father fills no void that experiencing a father would fill. I know about a father without knowing a father. I am fatherless with a father I do not experience.
I am by God’s grace, so I am what I am by God’s grace.
The Great Grace Rip-off
Grace flows to the humble. God resists the proud. Read that twice and make the connection between resistance and flow. God is providing and opening access to the humble. God is withholding and shutting down to the proud.
Grace produces someone who has the authorized capacity to do something. God will not enable deception. Pride is a deception. God resists it as His enemy, for it opposes His intentions and destroys His purpose in the person. Pride authorizes the person to operate in human wisdom and strength to do something the person authorizes himself to do because it fits a false identity.
The Great Grace Rip-off takes pride to the bank, makes a deposit, lives off the interest, and expands the limitations of grace. It is not grace at all.
Notice how the cheap grace begins with a definition of grace that is actually mercy. It enables nothing but more sin, excuses everything but God’s purpose, and entitles people to believe the lies of their deceptions.
Cheap grace does not produce the “I am what I am” of God’s grace. It is not grace at all.
God resists people who use cheap grace because they use it to enable a false identity and live a fraudulent lifestyle. If your definition of grace has no transformational result, it is not God’s grace.
“Give me some grace,” is a silly statement. You can give people mercy and obtain mercy. You cannot give anyone grace and obtain grace. You mean to say, “Give me some mercy” since mercy is time as an opportunity to get it right.” If you mean, “grant me some grace, so my wrongs do not look wrong anymore, so I can finally find my identity in Christ,” you are a part of the flea-market stall version of a redemptive black market of smuggled-in pocketbooks with fake labels.
God’s Grace
The “what I am” by God’s grace is a reality in the “I am” of that same flow of grace. Humility is my position and posture to receive that flow of grace.
Anything in my life that is not by God’s grace needs to go!
Grace enables me to be and do what I am created to be and called to do.
Notice Paul has a ministry. He calls it “this grace.” He carries God’s grace, and he can release God’s grace flow through his position and posture to the extent he lives in that position and posture.
Humility gauges the supernatural results of lasting life change and empowerment for leadership in a kingdom leader’s life. We write success stories about what human wisdom and strength can do when saints engage in life as God’s people. We should see none of these stories as examples of grace flow without the plumbline of humility.
Once we render the outcomes through this gauge of “I am what I am by God’s grace,” we recognize the authentic kingdom matrix, a spiritual ecosystem of generational lineage, and the flow of history from Eden to Everlasting.
