December 4, 2013

December: Learn: Humility

Humility is one of the crowning characteristics of our Savior Jesus Christ.   From His desire to be our Savior in the pre-mortal world and give the Glory to His Father, to his humble birth in a manger in Bethlehem, throughout His mortal ministry as He spent much of His time with the meek, poor, and lowly, to His suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane and His ultimate Atoning Sacrifice, He surely exemplified what it means to be humble.

To be humble means to be teachable, willing to submit, to be meek.  It means to be confident, while at the same time you recognize the need for the Savior in your life.  Humility does not mean that we think less of ourselves, but that we think about ourselves less and reach out to others.

Pride is the opposite of humility and is manifest in many ways.  Faultfinding, gossiping, murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude and praise that might lift another are all forms of pride.  Disobedience, selfishness, and contention are also fruits of pride.  It takes a conscious effort to develop humility in our lives.   President Hinckley gives suggestions on how we can choose to be humble:


In Mosiah 3:19 we read, "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."