Always be humble and gentle

Ephesians 4:2 (NLT)

2 Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.

These are great words when it comes to relationships with others. We should be humble and gentle towards one another; for arrogance and harshness will create bitterness in any relationship. Allow room for one another’s faults out of love for each another. When we humbly correct a fault we win over the person to show them our concern for their care.

Time printed a photograph of the back of Washington Redskins quarterback Jeff George (his helmet off, revealing a big, white-skinned bald spot) sitting on the bench flanked by two African-American teammates, each with a supportive hand on his shoulder.

The caption read, "What counts most in creating a successful team is not how compatible its players are, but how they deal with incompatibility."  ["We Illustrated," Time (11-18-02)]

There are differences in each of us, both physical and mental. We have different thoughts, different objectives and different goals. We must however learn to put the differences aside so that we may show love towards each other. We can start this process by being humble and gentle with each other and allow for each other’s faults.

Become last to be first

Mark 9:35 (NKJV)

35 And He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”

Christ explains to His disciples those who are considered the greatest are the people who put aside themselves to serve God and place the needs of others first.

It is the desire for God which is the most fundamental appetite of all, and it is an appetite we can never eliminate. We may seek to disown it, but it will not go away. If we deny that it is there, we shall in fact only divert it to some other object or range of objects. And that will mean that we invest some creature or creatures with the full burden of our need for God, a burden which no creature can carry. —Friar and author Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes

The above words point to the fact that when we place ourselves first, we tend to invest in things other than God to meet our needs. In making ourselves first, we make ourselves last with God. When we surrender to God and perform His will then we make ourselves last and become first priority with God.

Worship in spirit and truth

John 4:24 (NKJV)

24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

It is required of all that worship God that they worship him in spirit and in truth. We must depend upon God's Spirit for strength and assistance, laying our souls under his influences and operations; we must devote our own spirits to, and employ them in, the service of God, must worship him with fixedness of thought and a flame of affection, with all that is within us. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

I was riding the crowded subway in New York City. Every 10 to 15 seconds or so, someone behind me shouted unintelligible words. The first time, I ignored them. After several outbursts, however, I turned around to see that they were coming from a disheveled man behind me.

Sitting fairly close to him was a woman reading a newspaper. As I watched, he reached out, touched her knee, and quickly brought his hand back. Not getting any response, he did it again a few seconds later. It seemed like a game a small child might play; each time, his face showed that he was pretending not to have touched her. No one said anything, but those sitting near him exchanged nervous glances and began to inch away.

I was caught off guard by what happened next. The woman put down her paper and looked at the man. I expected her to rebuke him. Instead, she politely engaged the man in conversation. "Do you know where your stop is?"

He nodded that he did.

"Do you need any help getting to where you need to go?"

He shook his head no.

I don't know what motivated this woman to treat a stranger on the subway with such kindness. But the way she asked these questions showed that she was genuinely concerned for his welfare. She chose to respond to him as a real person with real needs, not just as an annoyance on her commute.

The incident reminded me of how the Apostle Paul saw people: "We regard no one from a worldly point of view" (2 Cor. 5:16). Many people on that subway car including me had looked at the man from a human point of view. In contrast, the woman who spoke to him reflected the perspective Paul described. She addressed him as a person who had inherent worth. [Chuck Broughton, "Reflecting God's Nature," Discipleship Journal (Jan/Feb 2003), pp. 35-36]

Let others praise you

Proverbs 27:2 (NIV)

2 Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips.

We must do that which is commendable, for which even strangers may praise us. Our light must shine before men, and we must do good works that may be seen, though we must not do them on purpose that they may be seen. Let our own works be such as will praise us, even in the gates, Phil. 4:8. 2. When we have done it we must not commend ourselves, for that is an evidence of pride, folly, and self-love, and a great lessening to a man's reputation. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

"We're an overconfident species," contends New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks calls it a "magnification of the self," and he believes this glut of self-esteem is especially rampant in the United States. To back up these claims, Brooks cites an array of statistics, studies, and observations:

When pollsters ask people from around the world to rate themselves on different traits, Americans usually supply the most positive self-ratings.

Although American students do not perform well on global math tests, they are among the world leaders in having self-confidence about their math abilities.

Compared to college students from 30 years ago, today's college students are much more likely to agree with statements such as "I am easy to like."

94 percent of college professors believe they have above-average teaching skills.

70 percent of high school students surveyed claim they have above-average leadership skills, and only 2 percent are below average.

Brooks observes that a few decades ago it would have been unthinkable for a baseball player to celebrate himself in the batter's box after hitting a home run. Today it is routine.

Similarly, pop singers wouldn't have composed songs about their own greatness; now those songs dominate the charts.

The number of high school seniors who believed that they were "a very important person": in the 1950s—12 percent; in the 1990s—80 percent.

According to Brooks, American men are especially susceptible to the perils of overconfidence. Men unintentionally drown twice as often as women (because men have great faith in their swimming ability, especially after drinking).

"In short," Brooks concludes, "there's abundant evidence to suggest that we have shifted a bit from a culture that emphasized self-effacement—I'm not better than anybody else, but nobody is better than me—to a culture that emphasizes self-expansion." [David Brooks, "The Modesty Manifesto," The New York Times (3-21-11)]

Humble yourself

James 4:10 (NKJV)

10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

Jesus taught in the book of Matthew that those who humble themselves shall be exalted. Here James reminds us to humble ourselves before God and God Himself will lift you up. Matthew Henry wrote, “God will revive the spirit of the humble (Isa. 57:15), He will hear the desire of the humble (Ps. 10:17), and he will at last life them up to glory. Before honour is humility. The highest honour in heaven will be the reward of the greatest humility on earth.”

Here's some good news: if you're like most people, you're way above average—at almost everything. Psychologists call this the state of "illusory superiority." (It's also called "The Lake Wobegone Effect," from Garrison Keillor's fictional Minnesota town where "all the children are above average.") It simply means that we tend to inflate our positive qualities and abilities, especially in comparison to other people.

Numerous research studies have revealed this tendency to overestimate ourselves. For instance, when researches asked a million high school students how well they got along with their peers, none of the students rated themselves below average. As a matter of fact, 60 percent of students believed they were in the top 10 percent; 25 percent rated themselves in the top one percent. You'd think college professors might have more self-insight, but they were just as biased about their abilities. Two percent rated themselves below average; 10 percent were average and 63 were above average; while 25 percent rated themselves as truly exceptional.

Of course this is statistically impossible. One researcher summarized the data this way: "It's the great contradiction: the average person believes he is a better person than the average person." Christian psychologist Mark McMinn contends that the "Lake Wobegone Effect" reveals our pride. He writes, "One of the clearest conclusions of social science research is that we are proud. We think better of ourselves than we really are, we see our faults in faint black and white rather than in vivid color, and we assume the worst in others while assuming the best in ourselves."  [Matt Woodley, managing editor, PreachingToday.com; sources: "Study: Self-Images Often Erroneously Inflate," ABC News (11-9-05); Mark McMinn, Why Sin Matters (Tyndale, 2004), pp. 69-71]

We all really do have a hard time in admitting our mistakes, our weaknesses and our faults. Yet God has told us that humility leads to honor and that He will support us even when we fail. If we can just learn to truly humble ourselves before God then we would be able to let go of many of our problems.

God will grant you wisdom

James 1:5 (NLT)

5 If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.

Here is something in answer to every discouraging turn of the mind, when we go to God, under a sense of our own weakness and folly, to ask for wisdom. He to whom we are sent, we are sure, has it to give: and he is of a giving disposition, inclined to bestow this upon those who ask. Nor is there any fear of his favours being limited to some in this case, so as to exclude others, or any humble petitioning soul; for he gives to all men. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

In his book The Many Faces of Evil, author John Feinberg tells the story of when his wife, Pat, was diagnosed with Huntington's Chorea—a genetically-transmitted disease that causes deterioration in the brain, thus causing deterioration of physical and psychological abilities. John and Pat were not only concerned about the future of her health, but the health of their children. If one parent has the gene that causes Huntington's, children of that parent have a 50-50 chance of suffering from the same disease. What was also troubling to John was that they had no warning that Huntington's was a possibility for Pat—and they should have been warned. Soon after the diagnosis, they requested a copy of Pat's mother's medical chart to see if there was any family history of the disease, and Pat's mother had suffered from Huntington's unbeknownst to the family. Feinberg was angry, realizing this diagnosis came five years before he met his wife. It could have altered everything! But Feinberg writes of his realization that the hidden knowledge was a gift of grace from God:

For twenty years that information had been there, and at any time we could have found it out. Why, then, did God not give it to us until 1987?

As I wrestled with that question, I began to see his love and concern for us. God kept it hidden because he wanted me to marry Pat, who is a wonderful wife. My life would be impoverished without her, and I would have missed the blessings of being married to her had I known earlier.

God wanted our three sons to be born. Each is a blessing and a treasure, but we would have missed that had we known earlier. And God knew that we needed to be in a community of brothers and sisters in Christ at church and at the seminary who would love us and care for us at this darkest hour.

And so he withheld that information, not because he accidentally overlooked giving it to us, and not because he is an uncaring God who delights in seeing his children suffer. He withheld it as a sign of his great care for us. There is never a good time to receive such news, but God knew that this was exactly the right time. [John S. Feinberg, The Many Faces of Evil (Crossway Books, 2004), pp. 464-465]

We often wrestle with the issues we face in our life. The Lord is faithful in seeing us through to an answer. He provides us wisdom to see our life for what it is. John Feinberg was distraught over the diagnosis of his wife, but God showed him the beautiful blessings John would have missed out on had things been any different.

Effective prayer

Matthew 7:7-8 (NLT)

7 “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

In these verses Jesus gave us the basis of effective prayer – Keep on seeking and Keep on asking. Ask we seek and ask for the answers to prayers the door will be opened until we find the appropriate response.

In her book Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard writes of attending a small church with some 20 people:

The minister is a Congregationalist and wears a white shirt. The man knows God. Once, in the middle of the long pastoral prayer of intercession for the whole world for the gift of wisdom to its leaders, for hope and mercy to the grieving and pained, succor to the oppressed, and God's grace to all in the middle of this he stopped and burst out, "Lord, we bring you these same petitions every week." After a shocked pause, he continued reading the prayer. Because of this, I like him very much. [Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (HarperCollins, 1999)]

Above we find the minister being honest in his prayer. The same basic prayer had been offered week after week. The desire was there for an answer, but an answer wasn’t coming in the manner everyone wanted. So in his desperation he called out to God, “Lord we bring you these same petitions every week.”  The minister was still asking and still seeking for a response. Be assured God is listening and God is working on the response. Sometimes the response just doesn’t come in the time constraint we have placed upon God.