Humility

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Philippians 2:3

Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is, from the very nature of things, the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue.   -Andrew Murray

Don't do anything to put yourself on top or to feed your starved ego.  In stead, in humility --the place of entire dependence on God -- see other people as a high priority.  Completely satisfied and dependent on God rest in the fact that all your needs for love, security and significance are met in Him.   Nothing needs to be added.  The desire to push to the top and to get to the head of the line disappears.  Seeing others recognized becomes your new priority.

Lord, I place my poor, tired, lonely, ambitious self completely in your lap.  I seek to do nothing to make myself rich, popular, or successful.  Instead, I trust you to meet all my needs freeing me to meet others needs. I am free to see to it that others are rich or popular or successful.   Lead me into the free and happy place of humility!

Abounding Love

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.  Philippians 1:9-11

So this is my prayer; that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well.  Learn to love appropriately   You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush.  Live a lover's life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God. (The Message Bible)

We need to pursue love as a commitment and an action, not just a positive feeling.  Jesus is our model.  Love pursues the words and actions that bring the best of everything to the beloved.   We must test our love to make sure that we are not ultimately only loving ourselves but truly loving others.  Do we love merely to be loved?  Do we love to make Jesus "attractive to all"?   Do we love from our soul's great union with our Lover, Jesus.

Jesus, increase my love.  Deepen my love affair with you.   May I become so lost in Your love that I love well, that I love from a Deep well.   Test my heart Lord; purify it from the tyranny of the self-life.   Make Your love so good and perfect in me that it attracts people to You.  

Be Strong in the Lord and the Strength of His Might

Ephesians 6:10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.

In conclusion, be strong in the Lord (be empowered through your union with Him) draw your strength from Him (that strength which His boundless might provides.)  Our power comes from tight relationship with God; no other source will satisfy.  Everything else, every last thing, is false strength.

We try to be empowered by so many things: relationships, jobs, achievements, talents, intellect and the list could go on.   Hustling for some sense of energy and capability and security from the many sources our world seems to offer and seems to encourage us to pursue gives a false promise of empowerment and strength.   Those sources because they are so immediate seem so much easier to obtain and so much easier to access.  Our strength coming from our union with Him can seem so vague and so ethereal when we want tangible and solid.    However, His strength is boundless might; it is huge and vast.   Most of all that power is eternal while those earthbound sources are tenuous and temporary.  Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.

Jesus, teach me stay in union with you.  Teach me Your strength.  Show me how boundless is Your might.  When I feel weak and small, alone and afraid,  remind me Holy Spirit to run in to Your strong tower and be safe.   Help me not to reach first to manipulating my circumstances and to  manipulating other people to find strength.  Instead, teach me how to always and anywhere be strong in us (me and You).  

Walk in Love

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.  and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.  Ephesians 5:1-2

Since Christ forgave us, be imitators of Him in that way.  Live in love putting others well being before our own as Christ did on the cross.  Be so centered and satisfied in God's love, in the love of the Trinity that all you have left to do is pour out God's love.  Be so free from shame, be so confident you are enough, accepted and adopted that you don't need to play the petty games and partake in petty indulgences to numb the pain and fill the void.

All the sins and vices that Paul admonishes the Ephesians to avoid are all ways to dull the pain of sin and to grasp for significance.  When we find ourselves manipulating people and abusing substances to hustle for a few minutes of peace or a fleeting sense of power or adequacy, we need to ask ourselves what part of God's love do we still not understand.  

Father deliver me from my shame, from not being nearly enough.   Center me so deeply into the truth of my adoption that it frees me from all my addictions and from all the hurtful ways I can use and abuse people.  Help me to love others and give myself up for them as you did.   Show me how to be a true child of the Father.  

An Incredible Life

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  Ephesians 4:1-3

At the end of chapter three, Paul has prayed that the Ephesians they would be "strengthened with power through the Spirit in (their) inner being" and that Christ would dwell in their hearts and that they would be rooted in grounded in His love.  What would be the result?  A life full of humility, gentleness, patience and love, a love that puts up with a lot.

I have found myself lately saying that I would follow Jesus even if there were no heaven.  This calling Paul describes, this humble and gentle way of life, is already the reward.   Whenever I find myself wandering away from this calling He is available to me all over again.  His Spirit is available to make deeper changes, to make a deeper peace. To be sure, many good people with great ideals exist outside the church.  However, this gentle bond of peace can be found nowhere else.  I am not the creator of it; Jesus is.

Lord, strengthen me with the power through the Spirit in my inner being so that I may walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have called me.  You have called me to humility, gentleness, patience and love.  You have called me to put up with others imperfections as you put up with mine.  You have called me to maintain peace and unity with those around me.  Dwell in me Jesus so that I might live this incredible life.

Making Known the Manifold Wisdom of God

Ephesians 3: 8-10  To me, though I am the very least of all the saints  this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places.

So favor was given to me, an ordinary person, to put into words the unfathomable, boundless, exhaust-less wealth of Christ, a wealth so vast no human being can explore to the end of it.   Favor was also given to me to make plain God's strategy to redeem this broken world invisible to mankind for ages.   I am revealing this mystery of God's strategy in Christ so that a Church, a group of other ordinary people, would make known the many-sided and infinite variety of God's wisdom to angelic and spiritual powers in high places.

God's word reminds me today that I am an ordinary person called to live an extraordinary life.  My humdrum, routine world lulls me into thinking my life is boring, dull, pedestrian.  The reality is that my life reveals a deep and profound mystery to the world wherever I find myself.  My life when joined with the lives of other followers of Christ put powers and principalities on notice that their reign is limited and that they are defeated.  Jesus loved the ordinary people.  Jesus' power is made known in weak and ordinary ways!  Hallelujah!

Father, thank-you for choosing me to reveal your vast mystery to the world.  I trust you to give me the words and actions to explain and to demonstrate the riches of Christ and a plan of Redemption far beyond my understanding.   Give your church the purity to make plain Your wisdom to the world.  Put the kingdom of darkness on notice that your ordinary people are revealing the Kingdom of God.  Hallelujah!  Our God reigns!