"Nothing!?"

"Until a man is nothing, God can do nothing with him." Martin Luther

"Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death - and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion." Phil 2:5-8 MSG

Selfless thinking is hardly the kind of education most of us appreciate. Jesus didn't either. Nor did the man who wrote those words about him. Its a process from which we learn to hear the voice of God in our painful disappointments and just commit the outcome to HIM.

You may be like me, one who doesn't see myself as a particularly humble person. We all develop the habit of matching our demeanor to the demands of a specific circumstance but more often than not we probably react instinctively rather than selflessly. Doing so is easy to rationalize using the common mantra, "Well, that's just the way I am." as though that sort of cancels out how the recipient of our displeasure may feel.

Somehow, I really don't much care for Martin Luther's assessment of me before God. "Nothing" is a word that I doubt I have ever used in any conversational description of me. Having been taught that I am a person of reasonable intelligence and in some ways capable of achieving whatever I set my mind to I find humility to be a pretty foreign concept in my daily life. You would think after more than half a century of pretty intense Bible study and teaching experience, my spirit would have smothered the pride instinct. To some degree it has modified that reactive way of thinking but there are times when it still explodes on the scene.

To be like Jesus is more a true quest today than at any time in my past. He made the decision to become a slave for me because that was the Father's will. From then to now, Jesus is hands down the most admired, respected and loved leader our wold has seen. Even with all the detractors and skeptics and outright unbelievers Satan has spawned over the centuries, Jesus and his book still outsell any other year after year. 

Hear Paul's final word of testimony to the Philippian brothers and sisters -

"I don't have a sense of needing anything personally. I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I'm just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I've found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who make me who I am.

Receive and experience the amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, deep, deep within yourselves." Philippians 4:13-14, 23 MSG

If Paul can do it, I can too. HALLELUJAH!