Humility is a reflection of who Christ is in your life.
I ponder those words a lot.
Yesterday, as I was scrolling a social media newsfeed, I saw a post with a large number of ❤️ and 👍. It read:
“I’VE GOT 3 RULES:
1. Don’t lie to me
2. Don’t use me
3. If you’re tired of me, leave me alone.”
I immediately went to the comments, wondering if I was alone in my thought of, “Is this really the state of relationships today?”
I was alone.
The comments read, “I’m right there with you” and “Totally agree” and “Yes!”
I paused after reading them and thought about a scripture that a friend of mine had shared with me.
**** 2 Corinthians 10:5 ****
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
****
I wish I could tell you my exact comment on the post, but it was deleted. And that’s okay. I like to assume when my comments get deleted, conviction is occurring in someone’s heart, and they’re not sure what to do with it.
In fairness, the original post didn’t say what happened if you broke the 3 rules. Maybe you got an invitation for coffee, cookies, and conversation to mend the relationship.
I do tend to assume the worst sometimes, and my interpretation of its implication was, “…or we won’t be friends anymore.”
That made me think, “How much different would our walk with Christ be if those were his 3 rules, and if we didn’t follow them, He wouldn’t love us?”
So I challenged the thought and asked, what if instead it read:
I’VE GOT 3 RULES:
1. Don’t lie to me … unless you are going to come back and ask for forgiveness when you recognize what you did was wrong. Know that I will show you the same grace God shows me because your struggle with honesty is a battle I want to help you win.
2. Please use me when you need me because I was called to show you unconditional love and to support you, even when you sin against me.
3. Please don’t ever get tired of me or leave me alone because I love you and want to help you grow.
Our words matter. They control our thoughts, they create strongholds in our hearts, and they have the power to either build up others or completely destroy relationships.
God calls us to love one another, not to judge one another.
It’s a hard calling because when people sin against us the way we sin against God, we tend to go to a place of pride instead of humility. And that pride makes us completely unequipped to show people the same grace and forgiveness we expect God to show us.
“Humility is a reflection of who Christ is in your life.”
Can you imagine how much lower the divorce rate would be today if we treated our spouse the way God treats us? If instead of filing for divorce when our spouse sins against us, we extend grace and grow together in Christ?
Can you imagine how much more excited we would be about holiday dinners with extended family if instead of harboring hate against people, we showered them with grace and let them see the unconditional love Christ showers us with daily?
Can you imagine how much stronger our work relationships would be if instead of focusing on what our coworkers did wrong, we recognized we are all on the same team, and that team isn’t the name of our company … it’s the walk with Christ we have been called to make?
Can you imagine how much more peace we would have in our hearts if we forgave others for their sins against us, the way Christ forgives us?
But Satan is doing his best to win. Social media is filled with memes and graphics and thoughts that highlight the ungodly philosophies we have adopted as cultural norms.
We cheer each other for agreeing it’s okay to hate people, to not forgive them, and to live by the rules we have set that allow us to judge others for their sins against us … completely unaware that we are trying to play God in our own little kingdom. Completely unaware that our hearts aren’t built to play that role.
As I work on growing in humility, I will also work on taking every thought captive. I challenge you to do the same. Before you hit “share” on a meme, ask yourself if you’d send it directly to Jesus? Then send it. You might just find there’s more power in rewriting it to make the words obedient to what He has called you to be as a disciple.
**** 1 Peter 4:8 ****
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
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