Student Study Guide
Lesson 36
The Cloak of Humility
Section 1 - The Nature of Pride
The Most Common Enemy - and the Least Visible
Humility is the greatest attribute we can carry. Without it, we will never have the working of grace. "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (Jas. 4:6). Jesus opened His definitive teaching on discipleship with this very quality - "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3). The entire foundation of the Sermon on the Mount begins with humility.
1. Pride is the that covers your insecurities and your inferiorities. It performs over the place of felt weakness. It is by nature - when you have it, you do not know it.
Pride does not always announce itself as arrogance. It operates just as effectively in the quiet interior desire for recognition, for position, for the acknowledgement of others, for the security that comes from being seen and valued. That kind of pride does not look like arrogance - it looks like ambition, like healthy self-worth, like vision. And that is precisely what makes it so dangerous.
2. Iniquity was found in the heart of Lucifer, not first some gross moral failure, but the working of : "I will make myself like the Most High. I want something God has not given me, and I view myself as to what He has said I am."
3. When Jesus says "Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity" (Matt. 7:23) to those who worked miracles in His name - the iniquity He is naming is this same working. They moved in miracles but they had . And God the proud.
Your Reflection
Section 2 - The Cloak of Humility
What the Vision Showed - and Why the Cloak Cannot Come Off
✍ The Vision from Rick Joyner's Final Quest
Warriors descended from the mountain where they had been with Jesus, given a cloak to wear - ugly, plain, entirely unremarkable. The cloak of humility. Some put it on and descended into battle. Others did not.
Those who came down uncloaked were dazzled by the light coming off themselves from their encounter with God. They could not see the demon spirit of pride drawing closer. As pride's arrows landed, they grew weaker - but the weakening felt like something else. They dropped their armor: the shield, the helmet, and finally the sword. "We don't need this anymore. We have so much glory." Eventually they ended as prisoners of the enemy.
The glory does not protect you from pride - it feeds it, if the cloak is absent.
4. When the cloak is taken off even for a moment - one moment of wanting just a glimpse of the glory coming through you - the Lord, who had been speaking to face, goes . Your pride has you.
The Personal Shift: Until that moment, humility had been held as something required but not truly desired. I knew I was supposed to have it but wasn't actively pursuing it. It was not arrogance, but a deep lack of understanding of the beauty of humility. The reading broke something open. It changed the pursuit.
Your Reflection
Section 3 - Moses: The Most Humble Man on Earth
Humility's Greatest Reward Is Intimacy with God
5. Moses was the most humble man on the face of the earth. The direct result of that humility was the most intimate form of divine communication available: to face - not visions, not dreams, not dark sayings. God spoke to Moses as a man speaks to his .
God said: "Many of the major preachers in America have made a grave mistake. They are standing up in pulpits declaring My favor upon their lives when it is My favor upon the ministry. They have mistaken the increase in influence, wealth, and popularity for My favor upon them personally.
Your favor will never be measured in the size of your crowds or the influence of your ministry or the wealth that you have. Your favor is only ever measured in one thing: the access I have given you to My presence."
6. Humility's greatest reward is not . Humility's greatest reward is with God. God looks not to influence or wealth or crowds, but to "him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word" (Isa. 66:2).
Your Reflection
Section 4 - The Fog Layer
How Humility Blinds the Enemy - and How Pride Locates You
✍ The Fog Layer Vision
In a vision: a great field with enemy forces along berms on either side, armed with old rusted weapons - not powerful, but lethal. Up to the height of the berm, hovering over the entire field, was a fog layer. To be under the fog layer, a person had to be almost face down, very low to the ground. Moving through the field at that low posture, the enemy could not locate the position. But the moment the head lifted just slightly above the fog layer, the enemy's eyes snapped open and the firing started immediately.
The Lord said: "If you stay low enough in humility, the enemy is incapable of seeing you. But the moment you rear your head in even a little pride, he knows exactly where you are and exactly how to hit you."
7. Humility the enemy just as pride the Christian. Pride is like a locating - it broadcasts position and draws in the forces of darkness. Humility removes that signal.
8. In the end times, when the anointing being released is greater than anything the church has yet seen, people cannot be trusted with it. God is not going to release what is coming through vessels that the can locate and systematically dismantle.
Your Reflection
Section 5 - You Are Not Your Own
The Centerpiece That Eliminates the Soil of Pride
9. You are not your own. This is the centerpiece of everything. The moment that reality truly settles - not as a theological position but as a lived - the entire platform of pride loses its . There is nothing left to , because the self being defended is no longer one's own.
A bondservant is a slave who has been freed and then willingly chose to return to the master's household permanently. Paul called himself "a bondservant of Jesus Christ." Not his own. Bought with a price. When it is not about me, when I am not my own, when my promotion is irrelevant and the glorification of God is the only measure of success - there is no soil left in which pride can grow.
10. The criterion of whether people are "honoring" you is a criterion. It exalts the self's need for recognition above the assignment God has placed on a life. And the moment a person begins operating from that philosophy, every position they occupy will be used to and control the environment to ensure they are treated the way they feel they deserve.
Your Reflection
Section 6 - How Humility Is Developed
Submission Is Only Real When Exercised Under Disagreement
11. Humility will never be manifested in a life unless that life is given opportunities to exalt, promote, or protect itself - and not to. This is the only soil in which genuine humility grows. Without confrontation, without the situation that demands a choice between self and submission, there is no humility - only theoretical meekness.
✍ David and Saul - The Cave
Saul was the greatest developer of humility in David, because David had done nothing wrong and yet was relentlessly pursued. In the cave, with Saul utterly vulnerable before him, David's men said: "This is your day. God has delivered your enemy into your hand." He got close enough to cut a corner of Saul's robe - and immediately his conscience broke: "I should not have touched even this much." He went back and forbade his men to strike.
David had to continually choose not to defend himself, not to retaliate, not to use the opportunities that presented themselves to advance his own cause. That is humility being developed.
12. Submission is only real when it is exercised under . You are not in submission when you do what authority says because you agree with it. You are in submission when you completely and do it anyway, because you understand that God is more interested in developing in you than in you being able to prove you were right.
The End-Time Leadership: Will not be those lusting after the spotlight. They will be those genuinely loving the background, preferring others above themselves, not interested in their own advancement but in the advancement of the kingdom. Those who have been exalting themselves and getting away with it for years - God is going to give them pink slips. He is about to release an anointing and glory so great that pride cannot operate inside it.
13. Those who have left a church, ministry, or relationship the moment something difficult arose - insisting they go where they will be better - may have missed the very moment God was building the thing He needed built in them in order to what He had promised them.
Your Reflection
Section 7 - David's Humility & The Weapon That Protects Everything
My Life Is Not My Own
David spent his entire life pursuing one thing: that he might build a dwelling place for God. Not a name for himself. Not a legacy. A house for God. He gathered the wealth, assembled the resources, bore the cost - and at the very end, when everything was ready, God said: "You do not get to build it" (1 Chr. 17:4). David's son would build it. Nobody calls it David's Temple. His name is not on it.
14. And what did David do? He gave the largest of his life, not out of grief or resignation, but out of . He was saying: "I get to be part of this." That is the heart of a person who is truly not their own.
Humility keeps the cloak on. Humility keeps the head below the fog layer. Humility removes the locating signal that pride broadcasts to the enemy. Humility opens the door to face-to-face intimacy with God that no amount of platform can provide. And humility ensures that when God speaks "well done," it is followed by the only word that matters: "faithful."
15. The questions that must be settled are not about gifting or calling. They are about . Is there a genuine delight in the back of the line? Is the glorification of God the actual goal - or is it the self, wearing the gospel as a ?
Final Reflection
Lesson 36 - Practice Test
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Part A: Multiple Choice (5 questions · 2 pts each)
1. What does the lesson say is the most dangerous form of pride - and why?
2. In the vision from The Final Quest, what happened to those who descended the mountain without the cloak of humility?
3. According to God's word to the lesson author, how is genuine divine favor actually measured?
4. What does the lesson say about the fog layer vision - specifically about what pride does spiritually?
5. What does the lesson say is the only soil in which genuine humility grows?
Part B: True or False (6 statements · 1 pt each)
1. The lesson teaches that pride is primarily visible to the person who has it, which is why it is the most dangerous enemy a believer faces.
2. According to the lesson, God's reward for humility is primarily promotion and increased influence in the Kingdom.
3. The lesson teaches that you are only in true submission when you completely disagree with authority and do what it says anyway, because God is more interested in developing humility in you than in you proving you were right.
4. The lesson teaches that a powerful spiritual encounter with God - a genuine experience of His glory - automatically produces and deepens humility in the believer.
5. The lesson teaches that the false grace message is ultimately a pride problem - it removes any responsibility to humble the self before God, while repackaging the gospel as a message entirely about the self.
6. David paid all the cost for the temple but never got to build it - and the lesson says he responded not with grief or resignation but with joy, giving the largest offering of his life.
Part C: Fill in the Blank (5 items · 1 pt each)
1. Pride is the that covers your insecurities and inferiorities - and it is blinding by nature.
2. God resists the , but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6).
3. Humility's greatest reward is not promotion - it is with God.
4. You are not your own. For you were bought at a (1 Corinthians 6:20).
5. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may you in due time (1 Peter 5:6).
Part D: Short Answer (completion credit)
1. Explain the cloak of humility vision and what it reveals about the relationship between a genuine encounter with God's glory and the danger of pride. Why does the glory feed pride when the cloak is absent?
2. What is the direct connection the lesson draws between Moses' humility and God speaking face to face? What does this reveal about God's primary reward for humility?
3. Explain why submission is only real under disagreement, using the example of David and Saul in the cave. What is God doing in difficult structures and difficult leaders?
Part E - Before You Leave
Name the specific situation in your life right now where God is most likely trying to develop humility - where you are being given the opportunity to promote yourself, defend yourself, or advance your own cause, and choosing not to. What would genuine cooperation with that process look like?
Write your version of the closing declaration: "My life is not my own. I have been bought with a price. I am here to glorify God in my body and in my spirit, which are His." Make it specific to your current season, your current role, and your current temptations.