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(Presented by Lisa Bishop)
In Ephesians 4:2 Paul says, “be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
Ok—first off, did you notice the word completely? That’s a REALLY high bar Paul is setting for us as followers of Jesus. He didn’t say be sort of humble, a little bit gentle, be patient when you feel like it, only bear with people in love when it’s easy. Paul uses a word that means, each and every time, with everyone, in all things and always!
I don’t know about you but I can already recall a couple of times this past week where I didn’t meet this gospel standard.
You and I cannot live our high calling in our own strength. We need Jesus and the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. When we read God’s Word, it is the standard for living as a follower of Jesus and God knows that we are all works in progress. Our lives are a constant work of God’s grace and sanctification, conforming our hearts, minds and lives to the will of God, as we daily strive to become more and more like Christ.
Lamentations 3:40 instructs us to test and examine our ways and return to the Lord. To take a good look at the way we’re living and reorder our lives under God. So as we are called to be humble, let’s invite the Lord to examine our ways and highlight where we have missed the mark.
When Paul says to be humble it means not proud or arrogant, thinking that you are better than someone else. If I am honest I wouldn’t say I lack humility, but when I am reminded of the definition of being humble, I am quickly confronted with the fact that I can be judgmental and that is a form of lacking humility. Someone will do or say something that I don’t agree with and it can be easy to think I am better than them. It’s the “get the log out of your own eye first” that we see in Matthew chapter 7. There are a lot of us walking around with logs in our eyes but we keep pointing the finger at each other. I wonder what the world would be like if we all examined our lives and ate some humble pie before pointing out the faults in others.
My friend has a saying that really hit home for me, “If we both took the log out of our own eyes, we could build a bridge.”
Where is humility lacking in your life? Let’s aim to give a true picture of Jesus and be humble.