Be Humble.

To follow Jesus means embracing a downward way of humility and sacrifice, where we lay down our rights, our pride, and our desire for control to take on the posture of Christ among the people and places Christ has called us. 

We all want to be great at something.  It might not bleed into everything , but there is something. And Missional Community life will absolutely expose us and invite us into something better.  

Some of us were raised to believe that life is about moving up—up in our careers, up in influence, up in respect. Whether it’s climbing a corporate ladder, growing a platform, or just making sure we get noticed, we are wired to think that greatness is about going higher, being better, always getting the win. 

And here’s the thing—we don’t just see it in the world out there. It’s in us. It’s in me. We want to win arguments. We want people to see our good work. We want to be somebody.

And then Jesus shows up.

And He says things like:

“Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant.” (Mark 10:43)

Whoever wants to be great… must go lower.

I don’t know about you, but that messes with me.

Because everything in me wants to believe that life is about gaining, climbing, achieving. But Jesus flips the script. He says life—true life—is about emptying, humbling, serving. And there’s so much inside us that wants to resist that. The path to greatness is getting your servant identity on- is not very instagram worthy. But Jesus still calls us, over and over again, to follow him in simplicity and humility.

Kendrick Lamar simply tells us to be humble, but Tim Keller is a little more helpful on this one. He puts it this way:

“The essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.”

This is what we see in Philippians 2—the downward way of Jesus.

And today, the invitation is simple: Are we willing to follow Him there?

Meditate on this passage all week: Philippians 2:5-11 It’s a good one and it starts like this…

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant…”