Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
There was once a man who was proud, haughty, arrogant, even cruel--a king whose name was Nebuchadnezzar; and Iraq was his kingdom. Like most kings of his day, he could have lived and died in hopeless proud self-deception except that a man of God prayed for him personally--Daniel the prophet.
Daniel discerned in the king a streak of honesty and reality. He did what the apostle John said we should do: "If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask, and He [God] will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death" (l John 5:16). The king's dream of Daniel 4 was God's answer to the prophet's prayer. The Lord permitted Daniel to be an "evangelist" to teach Nebuchadnezzar gospel truths.
The Lord loved the king so much that He gave him a special blessing--He humbled the man in the dust. The Lord gave him a form of insanity in which he thought he was an animal or a cow, and in seven years of gross humiliation the proud king learned a proper heart attitude of reverence for the King of kings and Lord of lords. You could hardly say that the king humbled himself; God humbled him, even humiliated him.
We too have problems with pride and arrogance. God has given each of us wonderful gifts that we can easily become proud over. But let's not be so stubborn that we wait for the Lord to humble us, like the king. To be humiliated is a very severe ministry of the Lord! It's too late for the Lord to resort to those extreme measures to "heal" us, for we are living in the great cosmic Day of Atonement; now we want to humble ourselves. Self-starters were a wonderful invention for old Ford Model T cars. Let's find a "self-starter" for humbling self, and not wait for the Lord to have to do it for us, as with Nebuchadnezzar!
"When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride." That's better--its self-humbling.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: October 23, 2004.
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