it’s not about me

a couple weeks ago i was packing up the candy and soda from our middle school movement, the flow, while the evening was coming to a close.  i carefully stacked the nerds next to the starbursts and made sure that no peanut m&m’s mixed with the regular m&m’s.  the tops of coke and sprite had to be twisted tight and the cups had to be gathered according to color.  no one really instructed me on how i should go about doing this, but my ocd-type organizational skills managed to manage my way of ordering the goodness that our students devour for fifty cents every saturday night.

in the middle of placing the skittles into their appropriate holding place; a thought crossed my mind.

“why do i have to do this?”

you ever have those thoughts?  that feeling of unfairness that creeps in when you are doing a task that is menial and below your “pay grade” perhaps?  i’m pretty sure those thoughts follow everyone around.  we are selfish people.

back to “why do i have to do this?”  i was about unravel that thought in my mind and continue my silent rant in my head about how we should have volunteers who do this and how i already spoke and led worship so i should be connecting with students and not throwing away garbage when Jesus decided to show up a douse that little fire before it even began.

upon ending my thought of “why do i have to do this?”  i heard (not audibly) someone say, “because it’s not about you.”  i was petrified…insert the rest of Gloria Gaynor’s song here, and big ups to her for putting the word ‘petrified’ in a song…and i could barely continue putting candy in the box but feared stopping what i was doing because someone had just told me it wasn’t about me!

at the age of twenty five it finally clicked.  it’s not about me.

from that moment on i began to explore what it meant for it not to be about me.  i read scriptures specifically about humility and pride because now i had an actual context i could put them into because i now understood that i am here for something else besides myself.

Luke 18:14, in the chapter of The Pharisee and the Publican.  (Publican is fancy word for ‘Jewish Tax Collector’.)  Jesus says, “…for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

James takes a look at humility and thinks it important enough to touch on it twice in the same chapter.

James 4:6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

James 4:10  ”Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

initially, when i read these verses i thought; ”wow, God wants to exalt me?  He wants to lift me up?”  i can’t believe i was still thinking about me!  but that interpretation of scripture began to change as i read commentaries and the verses that came before the one about ”lifting me up.”  James spends the majority of this part of the chapter telling us that God desires a relationship with us and how we can go about becoming closer to God.

i didn’t realize that to be ‘lifted up’ simply means to be drawn closer to God.  what about that word ‘exalted’?  doesn’t that mean to be raised up in a higher position?  maybe in the western mindset.  the word exalted can be chopped in half.  it derives from the latin word ‘exaltare’ in which ‘ex’ means ‘out, upward’ and ‘altus’ which means ‘higher’.  it does mean to be lifted higher, but not in a promotional type of definition.

i look at it this way.  Phillipians 2:7-8  

7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Christ humbled Himself.  He came down from the highest place in order to save us from our sin.  after He humbled Himself, God exalted, or raised Him to the highest place.  the highest place being in community with God.  so if God raised Christ up to be in the highest place after He humbled Himself, then what does it mean for Him to lift us up after we humble ourselves?

in 1 Peter 5:10; Peter unveils what exactly will happen when we are ‘exalted’.  here’s the text.

10 After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.

some things to note here…

‘for a little while’ should be read as ‘your entire life’.  since our existence is a ‘vapor’  our whole life could be considered a ‘little while’.

when he says that God will ‘perfect’ us, ‘This verb is the same that is used of “preparing” the earthly body for the incarnation of Christ in Heb. 10:5; and is therefore strongly suggestive of other passages in the New Testament where total and absolute perfection is the obvious meaning.  (See Coffman’s Commentary on the New Testament.)

also, the word ‘establish’ means to ‘fix or to set’ in the way that concrete sets.

so we can read this passage as

‘after you have suffered your entire life, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will personally prepare, validate, strengthen and fix you.’

you see, the suffering is our suffering a life lived in sin.  we will continue to endure the temptation of sin until we die and go to be with God.

the good news is that Jesus has already died in our place so we do not have to die for our sins.  instead, He will vouch for us because He loves us so much.

in a nutshell, the humbling of ourselves isn’t a one time deal.  we don’t just humble ourselves on a tuesday and then we’re set for life.  we must continually humble ourselves towards one another.  Peter said for us to go as far as to “clothe ourselves with humility towards one another.’  what he’s doing in that passage by using the word ‘clothe’ or ‘gird’, is reminiscing on the time Jesus girded Himself to wash the disciples feet.  the Greek word literally means, “an apron worn by slaves.”  the apron was to keep their garments clean while they worked.  in that light we can say that our humility should be worn in such a way that everyone can see it.  this virtue should be more visible than any in the Christian walk. 

so, as i packed up the candy that Saturday night, my prayer began to be ‘Lord, please help me to continually humble myself.  Let it always be about You Lord, and let Your glory shine brighter than everything.’

this glory we try so hard to give to God is weighted my friends.  it is weighted by our lives.  i hope that as we continue to seek God and serve Him and humble ourselves, the weight will lessen as we draw near to Him and begin to live a life that glorifies Him with our every breath.

Tags: Christ, Flow, glory, Humility, Jesus, Journey, Origins, Uprising