Forget About Yourself

Shift Your Focus… If you were clothed in your own humility, would you be scantily clad?

Humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself than others; nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts, abilities and station in life.  It simply means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all.

Dallas Willard, one of the great Christian thinkers of our time, said one of the signs of spiritual maturity is all the thoughts that no longer occur to you.  That would include all the thoughts in your head that keep you at the center of your universe.  God does that for you, so you don’t have to.

Some time ago, I was with my spiritual mentor, the late Dr. Charles Blair, who had brilliantly pastored his church in Denver, Colorado for fifty-one years.  We were with a small group of Christian leaders in Florida.  Among them were Jack Hayford, R.C. Sproul, Reinhard Bonnke, and other well known authors, media personalities, pastors and denominational leaders in the charismatic and evangelical world.

At one point, Dr. Hayford, our moderator, singled out and paid tribute to Charles in the presence of these other great leaders as the greatest example of pastoral perseverance and ministerial integrity in the last half century.  I could see the high esteem in which these Who’s Who type leaders held Dr. Blair.

Yet at the beginning of the conference, when we were asked to introduce ourselves, Dr. Blair simply stood and said, “I’m Charles, from Denver.”

What humility!  Unfortunately for me, I had just introduced myself right before Dr. Blair’s turn, and I hadn’t been quite that humble:  “Yes, I’m the Right Reverend Ray Noah, Senior Pastor…Presbyter…President of the Blair Foundation…blah, blah, blah.” I reminded myself of the pastor who was so humble that one Sunday his church presented him with a solid gold lapel pin that said “World’s Most Humble Pastor.”  When he wore the pin on his suit again the next Sunday, they took it away from him!

To truly enter into the kind of authentic humility that Jesus described, you’ve got to start thinking less of yourself.

I recently came across a little parable about man who was talking with the Lord one day and said, “Lord, I’d like to know what Heaven and Hell are like.”

The Lord led him to two doors.  The Lord opened one of the doors and the man looked in.  In the middle of the room was a large round table.  In the middle of the table was a large pot of mouthwatering stew. But the people sitting at the table were thin and sickly; they appeared famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles, and each found it possible to reach into the pot and take a spoonful, but impossible to get the spoons back to their mouths. The handle was longer than their arms.  As the man shuddered at the sight of their misery, the Lord said,  “You have just seen Hell.”

They went to the next room and found the same large round table with a large pot of mouthwatering stew in the middle.  These people had the same long-handled spoons, but unlike the first room, these were well-nourished and joyful people.  The man said, “Lord, I don’t understand.” The Lord replied, “It is simple—it takes one skill:  They’ve learned to feed each other, while the miserable think only of themselves.”

Let me give you a challenge this week: Forget about yourself!  Try it.  Practice being absent minded when it comes to you.  Get you out of your thoughts, and replace them with prayers of blessings and plans for serving for other people in your life.

And see what happens.  I suspect that if you allow the Lord to change your attitude, the simple joy of just belonging to him will be the result.

“Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less.”  ~Mike Show

Prayer… Lord, you perfectly modeled authentic humility.  Teach me to be just like you!