It is humbling in one sense of the word to think of just how utterly dependent the soul is on God and His grace. It is humbling in the sense that it makes one see just how weak and powerless the creature is. But humility is the emptiness of self. A person can be humbled in a modern sense of the word and still be full of self. To truly be humbled, then, is for the creature to be emptied of self to the degree that it now lives by grace received each moment from God. Indeed the humbled soul knows that God upholds it each moment, but it also lives by grace received each moment since the power of God for the strengthening of the soul comes to the soul only by grace.
“God wished to reveal Himself in and through created beings by communicating to them as much of His own goodness and glory as they were capable of receiving. But this communication was not a giving to the creature something which it could possess in itself, a certain life or goodness, of which it had the charge and disposal. By no means. But as God is the ever-living, ever-present, ever-acting One, who upholdeth all things by the word of His power, and in whom all things exist, the relation of the creature to God could only be one of unceasing, absolute, universal dependence. As truly as God by His power once created, so truly by that same power must God every moment maintain. The creature has not only to look back to the origin and first beginning of existence , and acknowledge that it there owes everything to God; its chief care, its highest virtue, its only happiness, now and through all eternity, is to present itself an empty vessel, in which God can dwell and manifest His power and goodness.”
It was God that brings each soul into existence. It is mysterious to the human mind of how souls come into existence, but that does not mean that just because it is mysterious that we cannot know anything about it.
“13 For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; 16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.” (Psalm 139).
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5).
God knew more than the physical features of those who were writing, He knew them and had even ordained all their days before they were born. The same power that created these bodies and these souls is the same power that keeps them in existence each moment. The same power that brought them into existence is the same power that has ordained each day and each event of each day. The same power that brought them into existence is the same power that has to regenerate them and bring spiritual life into their souls:
18 “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might 20 which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly place” (Ephesians 1).
This power that brought spiritual life is also the same power that Paul prayed for the believers to have in Eph 3:
16 “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. 20 Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us.”
It is clear that it is the power of God that works to create souls and then it is His power that gives them spiritual life in regeneration and then upholds them each moment. This power only comes by grace. The soul that truly sees these things and bows low before this God is one that lives by grace alone which is to say that it lives by the grace it receives. Receiving the power and love of God is grace. The soul must be humble to live in utter dependence.
God Loves... Himself 
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