“Before honor comes humility.” (Proverbs 15:33)

How often do we read our bible and assume we know what something means or is saying? I would propose very often. We have presets inside of us that make more assumptions than we care to admit about the word of God, about people, about books we are reading, you name it, we think we know more than we really do. We are all guilty of this assumption issue when it comes to words we read or hear.

I was reading Proverbs 15 this morning and when I read “Before honor come humility”, I read it as a before someone is honored they must be humbled. I heard myself say it as I was reading it, then the Holy Spirit said, “what does humility mean?” I knew if God was asking the question I did not know the answer, so I looked up humility in the Hebrew and what I found was not what I was thinking it meant. Humility in Hebrew is gentleness, meekness, mildness. I was stunned, I thought it meant to be teachable, to be second, to put yourself last, to not think you know it all. Nope, not here, humility is about being gentle, kind, mild. Wow.

Most of us are battle worn, weather torn, emotionally and physically exhausted as life, relationships, finances, are just plain hard work. So we hear “Before honor (abundance, riches, dignity, reputation) comes humility (gentleness, mildness, meekness)” and we can wonder how will we ever measure up. But today, the Lord showed me the reason humility precedes honor is because when we are honored by God and others we must treat people with kindness, we must be gentle with them, for they are already battle worn and weather torn. I love how the word of God is so practical and life speaking. God is softening us so He can honor us. Don’t resist the softening, it is so you can access honor.