Power in Humility
“God gives us his power to obey when we believe that the blood of Jesus empowers our efforts at humility” (Heath Lambert, Finally Free).
Sin is essentially pride being manifested in a particular area at a particular time. Humility is the opposite of pride. Pride is thinking highly, or only of yourself. Humility is not thinking about yourself, and can only be accomplished by thinking highly of God and/or others. Humility is others focused.
Often people think being humble means thinking badly of yourself. But this is wrong. Some people think badly of themselves, but they are still thinking only of themselves–just that they are worms. This kind of thinking is just as self centered as thinking you’re the king of the universe. Some pride brings fat heads, other pride brings skinny heads, but pride always brings selfish heads.
Your quote rightly points us to Jesus. When we are thinking rightly of him, which is to say, only of him, we don’t have time to think highly of ourselves.And thus we are being humble and can freely serve him. In addition, because he is alive and ruling, he reminds us to think of him and to stop thinking of what we want for ourselves. His indwelling spirit calls us and empowers us to do and be what he calls us to.
We do what we do because we want what we want. And we want what we want because our hearts want to rule the universe–at least our part of the universe. But Jesus’ death and resurrection have spun who gets to be God around, and we are left rebelling against the God who died in our place so that we could fit into his world. Apart from humbling ourselves, dying to ourselves, and living for Jesus, our lives will always be train wrecks.
So, lay down your claim to your life. Submit to Jesus. Love him, serve him, love the brothers, pour yourself out for and to them. Don’t forget yourself, we’re not Buddhists, humble yourself and think of service as the goal.