The Quiet Work of Humility

There are seasons in life that strip away illusion faster than any sermon ever could.

Over the past few months, as I have worked as an on-call labourer in London, I have found myself in one of those seasons again. It has reached places that feel deeply personal. At this stage of my life, in my early fifties, after years in corporate work and then a costly journey into ministry, I might have assumed I had already learnt enough about humility to recognise it when it came knocking. Yet life has a way of taking us back into the classroom when we think we have already passed the lesson.

I remember one of my first days on the train to a work site here in London, thinking to myself, "Here I am again." Twenty-six years earlier, I had known a very similar road. Back in 2000, I arrived in the UK from South Africa as a young man with ambition, limited corporate experience, and a fierce desire to make the move count. It did not take long for life to humble me.

I took whatever temporary work I could find. I packed underwear in warehouses. I delivered sandwiches to offices and tall buildings. I worked early coffee shifts at stations before much of the city had fully woken. I still remember the awkward sting of those days. I remember calling out for sandwich deliveries and feeling the quiet embarrassment of knowing I used to be the one inside the building, the man who went down to reception while someone else handed over lunch.

I remember the disapproving look when I made a small mistake with someone's coffee. I remember the rebuke when train delays made me late. I remember the sharp class line that some people carried without ever naming it. At Harrods, one manager would not even let temporary workers go upstairs into the shop itself.

A year later, I had managed to make my way back into corporate life, though I had no business walking so confidently into the kind of role I secured. Two years after that, I sat at the far end of a long boardroom table as two senior managers confronted me about my poor performance. By God's grace, I turned things around. Yet even that moment left its mark. It still hurt. It still humbled me.

Years later, the Lord asked me to lay down a twenty-year career and answer His call into ministry. That step brought a different kind of humbling. Full-time gospel work has a way of dealing with ego, status, and self-importance. It exposes motives. It tests whether we love Christ's name or our own. It shows us whether we can keep serving when much of what the world calls success no longer props us up.

Then I came back to England in September 2025, and the lesson went deeper again.

This time, I found myself taking instructions from men half my age. I worked with tools and equipment I wasn't familiar with. I heard a contractor shout at me not to stand there when, in truth, I was waiting for him to show me what to do next. I fell from scaffolding one day and heard a younger worker laugh under his breath. On another site, I worked with men I had never met before, digging dirt and filling skips, when one of them realised I was the same age as his father.

On another day, a much younger man made a joke in front of others when I asked where I could relieve myself. Some may call that banter, and perhaps sometimes it is, but when God is already working on your heart, even ordinary moments can expose very tender places.

When Life Takes Us Lower

That is what this season has done for me. It has exposed places in my heart that I might have preferred to leave untouched.

Scripture speaks with uncomfortable clarity here. James tells us that God gives grace to the humble. Paul points us to Christ in Philippians 2 and calls us to take on His mindset, the mind of the One who did not cling to status, but humbled Himself and took the form of a servant. Many of us know those passages well, but familiar truth can remain strangely untouched until life presses it into our bones.

I think there is a difference between humility and humiliation, even though life often lets the two meet. Humility is something the Spirit works in us as we bow before God, receive our true place, and stop building ourselves on pride. Humiliation is what we feel when circumstances, people, or hard providence cut across our self-image and expose our weakness in public. We do not have to pretend those moments feel pleasant. They do not. Yet God often uses humiliating seasons to produce genuine humility.

That matters because many of us say we want to grow, but far fewer of us welcome the process that usually produces growth.

We want wisdom, but we resist correction. We want depth, but we avoid weakness. We want Christlike character, but we still hope to keep our pride intact.

The lower place does not allow that.

It reveals how much of our identity still rests in what we do, how others see us, what role we hold, or how much respect we think we deserve. It shows us how quickly the heart can tense up when someone younger instructs us, misunderstands us, laughs at us, or sees us in a role we would rather not occupy. It shows us that dignity can become tangled with status far more easily than we admit.

Why Humility Still Matters

That is one reason I believe humility deserves far more attention than it often receives. We hear a great deal about calling, purpose, vision, breakthrough, influence, and destiny. We hear much less about the quiet work of becoming small in our own eyes without losing our worth in God's eyes. Yet discipleship cannot mature without that work. A proud heart may look strong for a while, but it cannot carry the weight of real maturity.

I do not write this as someone who has mastered the lesson. I write as someone still in the school of it.

Nine months into this UK season, I can honestly say it has been the most humbling stretch of my life. That does not mean every day has brought ridicule or contempt. It does mean the Lord has kept pressing on areas of pride, self-protection, and hidden ego that I might otherwise have left alone. He has shown me that even after years of walking with Him, years in ministry, and years of earlier humbling experiences, the old self still tries to negotiate for dignity on its own terms.

Yet the gospel keeps bringing us back to a better place.

Christ never built His life around outward status. He did not protect Himself from the low place. He entered it. He washed feet. He bore misunderstanding. He accepted weakness in the eyes of others. He obeyed His Father when that road led downward before it led upward. If I claim to follow Him, then I cannot keep treating humiliation, obscurity, or lowly work as though they sit beneath me.

That does not mean God delights in degrading His children. I do not believe that. But I do believe He loves us enough to break what pride keeps building. He loves us enough to deal with the older man, the self that still wants importance without surrender. He loves us enough to take us into places where image dies and deeper character can form.

Grace in the Humbling

Later in the New Testament, Peter urges believers to humble themselves under God's mighty hand so that He may lift them up in due time. Proverbs also tells us that wisdom walks with humility. Those passages matter because they remind us that humility is not the end of the story. God does not ask us to live crushed. He asks us to come low before Him, trust His timing, and let Him define what lifting up should mean.

I suspect many readers will recognise this in their own setting, even if the details look different. Perhaps your lower place has come through work that feels beneath your training. Perhaps it has come through family strain, public misunderstanding, reduced circumstances, overlooked faithfulness, or a season where life no longer reflects the image you once carried of yourself. Whatever form it takes, the test often touches the same nerve. Who am I when comfort, role, and recognition no longer answer that question for me?

That is where humility begins to matter in a very real way.

It teaches us to receive life more honestly. It teaches us to see other people more clearly. It softens our judgment. It dismantles the quiet pride that often hides behind hurt. It forms a gentler strength in us. It prepares us to carry both weakness and responsibility with a steadier heart.

I would never wish humiliating experiences on anyone. I would not romanticise them, nor would I call them easy gifts. Yet I can thank God for what He teaches through them. Some lessons only reach us when life takes us lower than we would ever have chosen to go.

A Teachable Heart

Perhaps that is why we need to recover the value of humility, not as a religious slogan, but as a deeply human and deeply Christian grace. We need it in leadership. We need it in family life. We need it in ministry. We need it for ordinary work. We need it in the hidden places where the soul either hardens or yields.

So when life leads us into a lower place, perhaps the first question should not always be, "How do I get out of this quickly?" Sometimes the better question is, "Lord, what are You teaching me here?"

That question does not make pain smaller. It does, however, make us more teachable.

And in a world that still prizes image, speed, and self-importance, a teachable heart may be one of the most neglected graces of all.

If this lands close to home for you, it may be worth pausing before you rush past the discomfort. Humility rarely arrives wrapped in applause. More often, it comes through the quiet lessons life presses upon us. When it does, we may do well to listen, bow low, and let God form in us what ease never could.

Jacques Munnik