Week 10: Chapter IX — Meekness and Rest

1.Tozer opens with a striking observation: take the Beatitudes and reverse them, and you have an accurate description of the human race — proud, pleasure-seeking, arrogant, self-satisfied, cruel, corrupt, quarrelsome, retaliatory. Do you find this to be an accurate diagnosis? What does it say about the radicality of Jesus' vision of human flourishing?

2.He identifies the burden Jesus invites us to lay down as an inner one — not poverty or political oppression, but the burden of *pride*: "the heart's fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy." How much mental and emotional energy do you spend protecting your sense of self? Is this a burden you recognize in yourself?

3.Tozer describes the meek person with a memorable phrase: "He has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God's estimate of his own life." This is not self-deprecation but clear-eyed accuracy. What is God's estimate of us — both the humbling part and the exalting part?