WHAT THEN WILL YOU DO?
HOW WILL YOU SHOW YOURSELF A MAN?

1. Take note of the areas of your life in which you’ve been trying to perfect virtue by managing your emotions rather than by acting, by doing something that needs to be done. How has this hindered you? What actions can you take to begin doing humility that you hadn’t thought of before?

2. List practical ways in which you can humble yourself and have friends hold you accountable for actually doing them. At the same time, memorize the scriptures that promise the Holy Spirit will produce the fruit of humility in your life. True humility will come from your offering of obedience and the Holy Spirit’s faithfulness to work in you. Hold to this confidence, pray for it often, and act.

3. Is there any area of your life where you have done damage through haughtiness and pride? Of course, we all do damage through pride through the years, but is there an ongoing area like this in your life now? Go after it. Address it. Apologize. Repent. Confess. Call your band of brothers in to help.

4. Finally, don’t ignore healthy emotions. I urge action over emotion in this book, but I also urge that emotions are important in their right priority. Don’t ignore the importance of a healthy soul and healthy emotions. I suggest you pray Psalm 23:3 every day. Lord, please be my good shepherd and restore my soul. If you do this, you will be enlisting God’s help in healing any emotional damage you have sustained and in restoring you to what you are made to be.

“I FIND MORE AND MORE THAT TRUE HUMILITY CONSISTS IN BEING SUBMISSIVE TO THOSE WHO ARE A LITTLE ABOVE OR A LITTLE BELOW US. OH, WHEN SHALL I COME TO REJOICE IN OTHERS’ GIFTS AND GRACES AS MUCH AS IN MY OWN!”

—George Whitefield, from Sketches of the life and labours of the Rev George Whitefield (1850)