We (humans) spend a lot of time managing other people’s egos.
We often call it a warning, or advice, or sometimes we even call it parenting. But, rather ironically, it is most often our own ego, and its wounds, that prompts us to respond with correction instead of encouragement.
It’s the same ego we attempt to manage in others that keeps us sitting on a compliment instead of telling the person we see shining. It’s the same ego that keeps us hoarding what we know in an effort to “save it” for our own use, and increase our leverage over others.
What I know for sure is this: it’s not my job to keep you humble. It’s my job to keep you hopeful.
Gassed up. Head high. Confident. Feeling yourself. Aware of when you are hitting it out of the proverbial park. And it’s impossible to do that without an awareness and deep gratitude for the gifts I myself possess. You can also think of this as: If I can’t see it in me, I damn sure can’t see it in you.
Despite what we think of ourselves, God expects humanity to accomplish remarkable things because we are made in His image. If you can’t see that, or you’ve been talked out of it by church or by people you love, you’re out of alignment. You are failing to fulfill the expectation.
I like the way Paul puts it in the second chapter of his letter to the Philippians: God’s energy [is] deep within you, God Himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure. Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing.
God expects growth.
He expects good living, on display, as a reflection of His goodness.
It’s not fair to say the people telling you to “stay humble” are wrong in intention or that their words aren’t rooted in love at all. Some of it is love. But too often it’s framed as a warning or aged wisdom instead of what would be more helpful: a reminder that this is just the beginning. God called us to do these things (whatever they are!) and even greater.
Sifting through the nuances of Biblical confidence versus pride can be confusing. The simplest compass I have found based on my readings is this: God-centered confidence leads to gratitude. Pride leads to comparison.
Are you emboldened to do more? Love more? Give more? Share more? Or are you prompted to look to your left, to your right, or up ahead to gauge your progress? Measuring your wealth, your accomplishments, your family, your education against someone else’s, attempting to earn your way to where you think they are? Or are you taking what you’ve built and survived and using it to empower, encourage, promote, and shine a light on others?
If you said the latter, how is that possible without a healthy awareness of what you’ve done, accomplished, built, and survived? How do you keep others hopeful when you’re too busy groveling in fake humility about how little you deserve it?
Beyond stifling our gifts, the domino effect of a “posture of humility” as we have come to understand it is that it keeps you from leveraging the power God placed inside of you for the visible work He’s called you too. If you’re too insecure to put your gifts to work, too afraid of being called arrogant or big-headed, how can you walk in the purpose those gifts were built for? How do you make your gifts count for someone outside of you (which is the whole point), if you’re busy monitoring the line between haughty and humble?
The question we should be asking isn’t, "Am I capable?" but rather, "For whose glory am I using what God has entrusted to me?"
I realize all of this is easier said than done. Most of us are combatting decades (sometimes generations) of trauma, lack of self-worth, victimhood, and manipulated theology. That’s part of why I created the sensory card deck: to help me practice an embodied faith where what you believe about God changes the way you think, speak, and live every day. When faith lives in all of your senses, you know God better, you know yourself better, and you become a greater blessing to everyone you come into contact with.
Journal this:
- Have you ever held back a gift or talent because you were afraid people would think you were arrogant? What did the world lose because you stayed quiet?
- What's the difference between saying, "I'm better than everyone else," and saying, "God has given me something valuable to offer"? Which of those feels more like pride? Which feels more like responsibility?
- What if humility isn't pretending your gifts are small, but using them to make someone else's life better? How would that change the way you think about your own strengths?
I love you.
Coi Marie
Affirmations:
God created me with extraordinary capacity to work on His behalf. That capacity does not replace my dependence on God, it inspires me to ask for more.
Humility isn’t dimming my light. Humility is using my light to bring light to others.
If this landed for you, pass it on. First time reading? Catch up at afteramen.kit.com.
