The Lordship Of Christ In Our Lives Comes Through Humility

Some experiences impact us for a moment, while others leave a mark that lingers for years, and in some cases, for the rest of our lives. A couple of decades ago, I had one of those moments that define who you are and what you believe and seek after. I will share more about this experience shortly.

The voice of the Lord has always been very precious to me, and I make no apologies for desiring to experience His voice in my daily walk. There are people who do not believe in the actual voice of the Lord speaking to them, but it’s too late for me, because I’ve heard Him.

His voice is how I came into salvation and the kingdom of God. He spoke to me during a season when I was living in sin and called me out of it. His voice left me with a choice to either obey or disregard, and thankfully, I chose to listen. What a wonderful reassurance it is to hear His voice and know that the Father Himself loves you. There is nothing I would ever trade that for.

I remember sitting down at the computer in my wife’s parents’ house. At that time, the World Wide Web was barely online, and I had no computer of my own. I was trying to look up something for a sermon when, all at once, that same voice of the Lord that had come to me earlier in life spoke. He said one simple word: “Lordship.”

This was in the late nineties, and ever since that moment, I have sought after, longed for, and worked to develop a life that honors Jesus by giving Him Lordship over me. Not just as my Savior for eternity, but granting Him Lordship over my day-to-day life and experiences. For me, to give Lordship to Jesus means He has the right to speak into anything and everything. Every single detail actually belongs to Him.

The Lord Himself doesn’t just hold a title I speak about but also has a position of kingship and control over my life. Lordship means that Jesus governs how we speak, think, act, feel, and respond. You can imagine that this is indeed a process, and it takes time to learn the ways that please Him and how to respond with a heart that says, “yes” to everything He says.

I’m not perfect at it. There have been plenty of mistakes made. All too often, I have started well only to falter just before completing His command. So this message is a fervent call to embrace the need and reality of the Lordship of Christ over your life. Merriam-Webster defines “Lordship” as a rank and title, as well as the authority, dominion, and power of a lord, along with the territory under a lord's jurisdiction. All these definitions combine to give an accurate picture of what it means for Jesus to have Lordship over our lives.

The Lordship of Christ is not merely about His title. We see this from Scripture, as the Book of Luke describes the sinking feeling of finality that some will experience who regard Him as Lord in nothing more than title alone.

Luke 13:24-28 NKJV

[24] "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. [25] When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open for us,' and He will answer and say to you, 'I do not know you, where you are from,' [26] then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.' [27] But He will say, 'I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.' [28] There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out.

The reason this passage should give us great pause is this: proximity to Jesus and knowing about Jesus does not equate to having Him know you in a real relationship.

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There are those who have known all about the Lord, and even been close to Him while sitting in a church service or experiencing Him through a friend or family member, yet they never fully came under His Lordship for themselves. The Lordship of Jesus over our lives is not about acquiring more learning and knowledge, though I am not against either of those things. The Lordship of Jesus over us is about not only acknowledging who He is, but also waving the white flag of surrender to His authority, dominion, and power; and giving up the rights to our own lives in submission to Him. When Jesus is Lord of us, He has jurisdiction over the territory of our lives.

With all this being said, I have to bring this thought down to street level so that we do not miss one of the most important aspects of Christ’s Lordship over us:

True Lordship happens when humility operates fluidly in our lives.

Don’t miss this. We can say all day long, “Jesus is Lord.” But for His Lordship to be true in us personally means that we operate out of humility in all we do. Humility and Lordship are linked. These two things are inseparable. Humility produces submission, and submission results in giving Jesus true Lordship in and over our lives. This is why humility is so vital. Humility is a crucial link not only to blessing, but to our actual salvation.

We hear about people who seek to make some sort of deal with God, saying, “Me and Jesus have an understanding.” But their thought process is skewed at best. You can’t make a deal with the Lord. There is no, “I’ll do this if You will do that.” There is one singular, narrow road that leads to heaven and abundant life here and now; and Jesus is the door, the gate, the way, and the Lord. Unless we submit to His authority and Lordship out of true humility, we do not get to enter the gate.

Some people even learn enough about the Lord to think they have it all figured out. “I will wait until the very end, then I will accept Him,” they say. But, friend, don’t be misled! The Bible conveys something completely different from this idea.

John 6:44 NKJV

[44] No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.

There are seasons in our lives when the Father is actively drawing us to Himself by the Holy Spirit. It is in these moments that our hearts are open to repentance and forgiveness from God. Many will argue that the gift is free and we can come anytime we want. This is only partially true. Salvation is free and paid for by Jesus Himself, but the other side of the coin teaches us that God grants us repentance. In fact, Romans 2:4 teaches us that it is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance and a changed mind. To repent means to change our minds about our sinful nature and no longer desire to do things that hurt the heart of God. Some people change their behavior but never change their mind.

They may still enjoy the thoughts of their old ways, even if they have managed to repress their actions and stop what they once did. Hear me on this: The Lord is not only concerned with our actions and behavior; He is much more hopeful that we will repent and change our minds. Jesus desires us to accept His invitation to repent and walk in newness of mind so that our actions come from a place of grace and mercy applied to our hearts, not just self-effort.

Submitting to the Lordship of Christ is much more than doing the right thing; it is coming under Jesus as the new owner of our lives. With this understanding, we can see that humility is a foundational stone of Lordship.

Earlier, I mentioned that true Lordship occurs when humility operates fluidly in our lives. For something to be operating fluidly within us means, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary: having particles that easily move and change their relative position without separation of the mass and that yield easily to pressure.

When Jesus is truly my Lord, I easily yield to the slightest pressure applied by the Holy Spirit. Things in my life can shift at His discretion without becoming separated from the heart of who I really am. In this way, bitterness or disobedience never has a chance to take root in my heart. Only when this is true can I honestly say, “I belong to Jesus, and He is Lord of my life.”

The Apostle Peter teaches us about the humility necessary for the Lordship of Christ to develop fully in us.

1 Peter 5:5 NKJV

[5] Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for "God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble."

This verse tells us something important about humility. First, it equates humility with submission. Submission has almost become a dirty word in our culture. But submission is still a requirement of the kingdom of God. You don’t get to be part of the kingdom Jesus is building without learning to practice submission. Furthermore, Peter teaches us that it is not only submission to the Lord that is important, but also submission to one another in the body of Christ.

There are certain medical conditions we know about today that can disconnect a person’s mind from the ability to control their physical body. The same condition can occur spiritually when Jesus, the head, gives a command, yet the body will not submit. For me to submit to my brothers and sisters in Christ means that I have to understand that just as my upper and lower arm, my wrist, my hand, and my fingers all work in conjunction with each other, so too must I submit to the body of Christ and learn to work as one unit.

Second, Peter teaches us that this humility is something I must willingly “clothe” myself with. In other words, I must choose to wear humility. People are not just humble; they make the choice to walk in humility toward God and others. But there is more. Peter goes further with this thought and tells us the results of walking in humility: God resists the proud but gives grace (favor) to the humble. It’s one thing for the devil to resist you and your efforts to live for the Lord, but it is something completely different for the Lord to resist you because you refuse to walk in the grace of humility.

In other words, the Lord will empower those who choose humility with His grace and favor. With this being said, Peter gives us his instructions to follow. We are to humble ourselves instead of being humbled.

1 Peter 5:6 NKJV

[6] Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.

There is a promise associated with the act of humbling ourselves under the Lord and living under His Lordship: promotion. The New Living Translation says, “He will lift you up in honor.” The Passion Translation says, “He will eventually exalt you as you leave the timing in His hands.” The Message Translation says, “He’ll promote you at the right time.”

To be exalted means that promotion comes to us from the Lord. His promotion means that He is honoring you with a new position, a higher level, or greater responsibility. Greater responsibility is probably the best way to view His promotion in your life.

Those who qualify themselves through humility have the honor of carrying greater weight in the Kingdom of God, and it all happens in God’s timing according to His plans.

There is an often-missed component to humbling ourselves under the Lord. In fact, in our efforts to mine the riches of scripture, we often single out verses or even extract them from their context. The very next verse in First Peter is one that often gets pulled out of context. Listen to what Peter says in context.

1 Peter 5:6-7 NKJV

[6] Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, [7] casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

I love the comma at the end of verse six because it means that the two verses are connected! Remember, Peter didn’t assign the verse numbers; he wrote a complete thought that we separated into two verses. Verse seven completes the thought that began in verse six: humbling ourselves. We humble ourselves by casting all our cares upon the Lord.

Humility recognizes the limits of our ability to carry the weight and begins casting our cares on the Lord by faith. Our insistence on trying to solve all our issues and problems only reveals our lack of humility. It is not honorable in the kingdom of God to attempt to solve every problem, carry all the load, or make all the ends meet. What is honored in God’s kingdom is the act of casting away all your cares onto Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith.

Casting means to throw.

The only other instance in the Bible of this Greek word translated as “cast” is in Luke 19:35, where we see the apostles throw their clothes upon the donkey that will carry Jesus into the city. Let’s read it together.

Luke 19:35 NKJV

[35] Then they brought him to Jesus. And they threw their own clothes on the colt, and they set Jesus on him.

If we are to “clothe” ourselves with humility, it means we must remove whatever we have been wearing before. You cannot clothe something that is already wearing clothes. To humble ourselves means we take off the burden and remove the problems that we often choose to carry, then clothe ourselves with humility and cast those burdens onto the only one qualified to carry them: Jesus.

The little donkey this scripture speaks of was a beast of burden. They are lowly and humble. Donkeys were, and still are, used to carry heavy loads. When we think about it this way, it reminds me of the passage in Matthew that says:

Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV

[28] Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. [29] Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [30] For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Humility says, “I cannot carry this load, so I will place it on the One who can.” It is an open admission of our need for God’s intervention.

To make our own way and solve our own problems would mean we also bear the glory of finding the answer. When we give Jesus Lordship over our lives, it means He takes on the responsibility of carrying our problems, but He also receives the glory for the answers.

Humility acknowledges that Jesus is the answer and the only one worthy of the glory. So as I cast my cares on Him, He bears the weight of the burden and the glory of the answer, giving Him the opportunity to honor my life with promotion as I recognize His Lordship over me.

Blessings,

Larry & Amanda Shankle