Dear LifeSpring Family
A few weeks ago, I finished a course that was offered to us missionaries in Power To Change. Soul Care taught and reminded me to look deeply and care for my soul. In doing this, it brought to the surface the pride in my life that I still default to when hard pressed.
Below is the devotion from Soul Care that challenged the way I sometimes think and operate – Pretend, Presume and Push.
How about you?
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is how to live and lead with a quiet humility. What does that look like, in a world where pride, aggression, and noise are valued and seem to be the things that grab everyone’s attention? If we live humble lives, do we run the risk of backing into the shadows and letting the loud voices take over the public square?
[from: soul Care]
We have to look beyond our concerns over platform and reach–it’s a simple fact that the scriptures exhort us to live humble lives and find our strength in God. In this regard, I love Isaiah’s words in Isaiah 30:15:
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…
Quietness and trust is our strength! In today’s age, this is so counter-intuitive, that rest, and not busyness, will be my salvation.
I am also reminded of this verse in Philippians chapter 2:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,not looking only to your own interests but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus, who though being in very nature God, did not consider equality with Him something to be grasped, but instead took on a servant’s nature.
But how do we do it? What are the daily choices we can make in order to live out this humility and avoid a life where selfish ambition and vain conceit become the fruit we produce?
The main three choices for me that lead to humility are these: Don’t pretend. Don’t presume. Don’t push. They come from a Dallas Willard quote:
“God will gladly give humility to us if, trusting and waiting on him to act, we refrain from pretending we are what we know we are not, from presuming a favourable position for ourselves and from pushing or trying to override the will of others.”
Wow! There’s so much in there. Don’t pretend. Don’t presume. Don’t push.