Paths to Wise Living: Confederacy of the Humble

Paths to Wise Living

Have you joined the path? Are you a member? The founder invites you. Will you?

Paul, a superb interpreter of Jesus in the New Testament, highlights Jesus’ humility. By doing so he started a confederacy of the humble patterned on how he lived.

Let me paraphrase Philippians 2:5-11. You should join this confederacy. Which confederacy? One our glorious King Jesus adopted when he loosened his grip on divine privilege to become one of us. He clung to humility because his Father and his Spirit would act this way. And he proved it by dying on a cross.

His humility inaugurated a new confederacy of the humble. “Come die with me to be exalted with me. Wear humility as my badge of honor in your life.”

John the Baptizer did. His words ring true with humility, “He must increase, I must decrease.” He was the earliest adopter of the confederacy of humility as a way of life.

Evangelicalism is losing grounds, because we have forgotten that humility is the corner stone of our life with God. Built on Christ alone. The corner stone of the structure of this kingdom we’re in? Our Lord the Humble Servant.

Embrace the invitation and learn the way of humility. Will you?

What’s it take to be a member? Willing surrender!

He invites and with our yes we step into the country of the humble. We check our selfishness at the narrow gate. We enter the wide path of humility as he did. We refuse to elbow our way through life like a bull in a China shop. It’s the enemy’s ploy to lure us into the ways of power and coercion.

I drop pretense in the garbage bin of worn-out wineskins.

On the way to humility, I learn to not presume but always ask, seek, knock to open doors of reconciliation.

Above all, I join the rank of the humble with the same prayers that once graced his holy lips: “Not my will but yours.”

What’s it take to join? Loving motivation!

Love is humble and gentle. Obedient and self-denying. Everlasting. The region of the humble is inhabited with Christ followers determined to say no to self-centeredness. Talk to any counselor or pastor. They hear this primary regret, “I’ve been selfish.” Take the time to see this regret in your life, as I do in mine.

Without the humility of love as the driving force of the Christian movement we will get as stuck on selfishness as spiders on glue strips.

What’s it take? Make peace with inconvenience!

In this confederacy inconvenience is prized as a pearl of a great price. God is not looking for convenience. His love is always flowing toward others  at great cost. Jesus did not act out of convenience to rescue humanity. Rather he was willing to drop privileges and suffer much for our sake. If Jesus teaches us anything by his life it’s that we must welcome inconvenience as an opportunity for good.

Jesus interrupted the surge of a whole crowd to speak to a lowly sick woman. He inconvenienced himself by traveling through Samaria. It was not convenient to awaken early to pray because the day was full of healing, teaching and miracle making.

In the end, saying yes to the inconveniences of life marks us as bona fide members of the confederacy of the humble. Will you embrace the humble way of Jesus? The world awaits the fleshing out of this humility. Let it begin with me! Joy is just around the corner!