Becoming More Like Jesus: HumilitySample

Pursuing Humility

When you look around the landscape of our culture today, so many are caught up in self-promotion, self-indulgence, and glory-seeking. Now these behaviors aren't unique to our specific moment in history. But they do seem to be amplified because we live in the age of social media, where most people have access to a supercomputer in their pocket, making it all too easy to instantly share their unfiltered opinion on anything and everything. Sadly, we are a people who often fall victim to the subtle trap of chasing our own dream of influence.

Reflecting on our current times, it does make you wonder, has the Biblical virtue of humility largely vanished from our culture, including our church culture today? And if so, is humility essential in our pursuit of becoming like Christ? Over the next few days, let's journey together to observe what God's Word says about humility. Also, we should consider what we can learn about humility from the lives of faithful apprentices of Jesus who have gone before us on this journey of life - people like Thomas A. Kempis, Andrew Murray, C.S. Lewis, Dallas Willard, Ruth Haley Barton and so many others.

Dallas Willard once said, "Humility is the framework within which all virtue lives." Said another way, humility is like a fence around a garden that provides protection for other virtues, like kindness, compassion, gentleness, and patience, to grow. Without the protection of humility, our pursuit of godly character becomes an act of performance that always directs the focus back on us.

The Message translation of Matthew 6:1 describes what can happen when our pursuit of spiritual formation is missing the protection of humility. "Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding."

These two examples bring us to the first of our observations about humility.

Observation #1: Humility is the glue that holds all of the other virtues together.

Perhaps we should spend some time reflecting on the role that humility currently plays in our spiritual life. I know I am guilty of making the pursuit of godly character into a performance more often than I care to admit. What about you?

Tomorrow we will consider another side of humility that often goes under the radar: False Humility.