Your Inner Core Strength
Philippians 2:3,4 In whatever you do, don’t let selfishness or pride be your guide. Be humble, and honour others more than yourselves. Don’t be interested only in your own life, but care about the lives of others too.
There are people in this world who will oppose you – some for the right reasons, some for the wrong reasons. How you respond to them has a lot to do with your inner, core strength.
So when someone comes against you with, say… an opposing view, or a personal slight, or even some harsh criticism, what does your gut tell you to do? What’s your natural response? Generally, it comes down to either fight or flight, depending on the individual, the circumstances and our own makeup.
When we feel maltreated, maligned, miffed… our pride tends to rise up in response, in the belief that we deserve better than this. Isn’t that how it normally goes? But is that the best response? Is it the godly response?
Philippians 2:3,4 In whatever you do, don’t let selfishness or pride be your guide. Be humble, and honour others more than yourselves. Don’t be interested only in your own life, but care about the lives of others too.
It turns out that our selfishness and pride are never the best guides in whatever we do. And that includes dealing with difficult people. But the idea of humbling ourselves, of honouring them, of caring for them even perhaps more than we care for our own lives … well, that’s a complete anathema. Really? Is that what God’s calling me to do?!
If you read the next few verses that follow on, you discover that that’s precisely what God’s calling us to do. He tells us to think just the way Jesus did when He humbled Himself to become a man and die on that cross for us.
Humbling yourself in the face of an attack isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of an inner, core strength that’s grounded in Christ.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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