The Darkness of Obscurity

There's no place for Stage-Seeking leaders in the Church. Seek God, seek to serve, and Seek to expand the gospel, but don't Seek the stage.

One of the primary functions of Obscurity is to begin the process of choking pride out of our lives. This is a tough chapter to write since I don’t ever deal with pride... or maybe it’s tough because I could write an entire book just full of all of the examples of when pride, arrogance, insecurity, self-centeredness, self-interest, selfish ambition, and many other forms of pride have shown their ugly heads in my life.

“None of the remarkable people I know think They’re remarkable. It's the small thinkers who are impressed with themselves.”

STRUGGLE OF THE GREAT

One of the more freeing conversations I had about this topic was quite a few years ago when Gary Clark [Hillsong London] was speaking at our church. He spoke on the topic of humility. Afterward, I was talking with him and shared my own struggle with pride. At the time of the conversation, I thought I was going to identify a big weakness that I had, and I kind of assumed that someone like Gary didn't struggle with it. I said something like, "Wow, Pastor Gary, that was right for me. Pride is my big struggle," and he said, "That’s the struggle of anyone who wants to do something great for God."

It’s a constant tension and heart check to consider my motives in everything that I’m doing. The enemy and our sinful nature have this subtle way of coming after us and constantly turning the focus back inward and toward ourselves. We blur that line between bringing glory to God and pulling glory towards ourselves. Pride skews the difference between building His fame on earth and building my name. But guess what? God knows that; God knows that this is a challenge for us. And where is the best place to remove and purge this pride out of our lives; a good old-fashioned hidden season.

Nothing chokes out pride in our lives like being overlooked

Consider the possible pride and arrogance that could have been very present for David when the prophet Samuel first anointed him as the next King. I mean, really if that happened to you, what would you do? How fast would you update your bio on social media? You'd be posting pics of you and the prophet with the "horn" with which he anointed you. Your Instagram feed would quite possibly be loaded with posts letting the whole world know about what happened. You may post up a couple of “humble-brag” tweets, or at least that’s what I’d feel like doing. That could have been David's tendency, so God sends him back out to take care of the sheep. No fame or promotion. Not from his Dad or Samuel. That would have choked out any pride!

Another interesting thread in this story about humility and killing pride is the untold angle of the prophet Samuel. Think about it. Samuel was God’s lead guy, and then his role gets shifted. The role still has influence, but now it is focused on supporting and raising up the Kings. Then, later on, when Saul gets offended because the women of the city sang that Saul has killed his thousands but David his tens of thousands, I thought, “You know what? Samuel isn’t even mentioned in the song!” Talk about obscurity! The guy who had anointed both of these guys and mentored them gets fully passed over when the credit is handed out. For the prophet Samuel to continue to be a value or valuable to God’s purpose, he would have had to lay down a lot of pride.