This month the Lord has been re-forming the way I think about pride and humility. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, at training camp I was approached by my leaders and asked to be Team Vessel’s point person. This means that, in the times when we’re living without one of our squad leaders, I’m the point of contact to keep them updated on how we’re doing as a team, and also for facilitating our daily team times (things like worship, Bible studies, and team debrief).
At the start of Month 3, I heard the Lord asking me to grow in casting vision and leading the team so that Mason and Emily, our squad leaders, could have more space to disciple us, have one-on-ones, and do all the things they’re really here for. Funny enough, they approached me the next morning and said basically the same thing—they believed God was asking me to step into a position of slightly more creative influence so that they would be able to help me grow in skills like interceding for the team and vision-casting to really provide direction. We also found out that for Months 3 and 4 here in Santiago, we’d be living and doing ministry with Team Humbly United, meaning there would be 14 of us living in the same house, and our leaders would get to be in the same space as us the entire time we’d be in Chile.
This last month has been a crazy exciting time of growing in intimacy with the Father and community, especially. As He pushes me into a place of increased influence, the Lord has done a lot of re-working in the way that I view pride and humility.
For a lot of my life, I had a hard time understanding what it was to be humble. I felt like humility meant either having a deflated view of yourself, hiding your talents so others wouldn’t praise you, or else interjecting constantly with pious phrases like “I’m really nothing without God, though!” (Please note that this is absolutely true, and everything good is God’s mercy. I never disagreed with the sentiment, only the way to truly walk it out.) I could see that I had a pride problem, but too often attempting to reach a place of humility turned into self-mutilation or overly focusing on my flaws rather than receiving God’s grace and love.
Being in leadership, learning to walk in humility has been more important than ever. But I’m discovering something interesting: as the Lord is finally walking in true humility, I’m also walking in more positive self-esteem and confidence than I ever have. How on earth could high self-esteem be a part of humility? I’d always seen great confidence walk hand-in-hand with having a large ego, and I almost wondered if a humble life meant feeling awful about myself all the time.
The reality that the Lord is leading me into, though, is much simpler than that. What he’s showing me is that true humility simply means that His opinion of me is the only one I choose to listen to.
Why is this changing my heart? Because the Spirit knows my heart better than I do (Jer. 17:9-10), and He is the one I will allow to convict me. When I’ve acted wrongly, I trust that the Spirit will show me, and then I will repent. But more than anything else, it’s the Father’s pride in me that’s changing my heart.
His pride is my humility. It’s the only thing that matters. Choosing to rest in the Father’s pride means that I’m learning not to act on my desires to please others—“If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of God” (Gal 1:10). Rather, I’m working for the one who is already pleased in me, as Paul asked us to do: “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Col. 3:17).
All my life, I’ve dealt with putting myself down and feeling like I’m somehow less than everyone else. I’ve put ridiculously high standards on myself in an attempt to account for the insecurity I felt; I worked hard to call out sin, repeatedly plunged to the depths of theology and Scripture. I was always the friend who was willing to be there and listen when others left. I was the “good kid” in church—I went to AWANA every Wednesday until High School, never missed a week at youth group, joined the worship team at 15, and did all I could to be enough. I craved the attention of others, yet when it was given felt a self-loathing desire to shift it to the Lord so I’d become less prideful: “It wasn’t me, it was God,” I would say when given compliments.
But hear me when I say: asking the Lord what He thinks of me is changing everything. He’s teaching me true humility, perhaps for the first time, and it is sweeter than I could have ever dreamed. There’s no hint of hating myself in this humility, because it stems from the Father’s love for me, His pride in me that caused him to choose me “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).
It comes from the One who actually wants to call me his son. My heart has never been at once so confident and so unconcerned with appearing a certain way in anyone else’s eyes. It’s probably the greatest lesson I’ve learned this whole journey, and for that I can’t thank you supporters enough. Thank you for bringing me here; my life is a journey much more beautiful than I deserve, and I owe that to all of your prayers and donations.
I am incredibly grateful for all of you who’ve supported me in any way, and who pray for me regularly. God bless you!!
~Joel
