REMAIN SMALL: The Gift You Give by Thinking of Yourself Less
By Duncan Sprague
My wife, Angie, and I just returned from four months on the road. We traveled over 13,000 miles in a 24-foot motorhome. Passing through about 30 states, we traveled from Colorado down to Texas, across to Florida, up the East Coast to New Hampshire, and then across the Midwest before heading back to Colorado.
With nearly 170 stops along the way, we spent countless hours connecting with friends (new and old), telling stories, sharing memories, and consuming calories (way too many calories). Traveling can be a growing experience.
A large part of our ministry with Cadence International is to connect with and encourage former participants and leaders (alumni) from 70 years of ministry to the military. The goal during these visits is to encourage these precious souls to keep growing in Jesus and not quit on His beautiful, yet dysfunctional family, no matter how messy life gets.
My wife, Angie, likes to say, “We Listen (attentively, without drawing attention to ourselves), We Love (affectionately, no matter how difficult they or their stories may be), and We Launch (intentionally, back to God, and back to each other)!”
As often happens, this “Listen, Love & Launch” mantra is easier said than done.
So often, I listen to others with an internal pull to be impressive and well-liked, and wanting the conversation to circle back to me and my experience, my insights, and my story. “Do they like me? Do they respect me? Are they impressed with who I am and what I’ve done?”
As you can hear, the pressure to impress can quickly eclipse any of the good goals of listening, loving, and launching others. If, when these pressures surface, I have any inkling of or inclination toward self-awareness, I may wrongly assume, “I just need to think less about myself and get rid of this internal pressure. I’ve got to make myself humbler and become less proud.”
Have you ever tried being humble by focusing on yourself? It’s impossible. Humility can’t be found by looking in a mirror. You must look beyond yourself by becoming captivated by something bigger than you, a larger story that places God’s eternal spirit and divine nature in earthen clay pots. That’s why Jesus said, “If you want to follow me, you must begin by denying yourself.” Relational discipleship from Jesus begins with the death and denial of self, losing our lives to find them. Humility becomes like breathing when you are not the point.
When Angie and I made our first excursion in the motorhome almost three years ago, we visited our old friend and mentor from our college years. David Needham was a beloved professor for forty-four years at our college alma mater and fathered my soul as few have dared. He remains to this day the most captivated, open-eyed dreamer that I have ever known.
His prayer for us then still lingers, as relevant today as it was during our first visit in the RV, “Father, might they remain small in their own estimation of themselves.” I’ve repeated that prayer nearly every day since.
David passed away last February, just before we hit the road again. I had written him at the first of the year about my need for humility and asked for prayers and any advice he might have. I’ll close with his brief, but powerful, 94 ½-year-old wisdom:
Right above my desk, I see a plaque a student gave to me many years ago—my life verse, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” When you mentioned your need for humility, that need keeps coming back to my mind. In light of the number of times the Apostle Paul used the word “boast,” plus “proud” or “pride,” I think there is a good likelihood that it was a real problem that he himself at times struggled with. For him even to think the thought, “I labored even more than all of them,” left the door wide open for pride even though he surrounded those words with God’s grace (1 Cor 15:10). In fact, I imagine that “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12) was needed because God knew the threat of pride for Paul was a real one.
As I look back over these long years there comes to mind the variety of circumstances—some of them quite blunt—that God used to keep in the forefront the convicting truth of my own utter inadequacies—most of which are too personal to share. My prayer for you is that increasingly you will find yourself overwhelmed with “Thank you’s” as he blesses your life and gifts you for his glory because He knows you will not take the credit.
If true humility is to grip our hearts, we must remain small in our own estimation of ourselves by becoming captivated by a much larger story. A love story that begins with a divorce on Earth and ends with a wedding banquet in Heaven. Perhaps then we will be able to speak and live out of humility in the way that C.S. Lewis describes in Mere Christianity. “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”
I can envision no greater delight in heaven than coming face-to-face with Jesus and finding ourselves overwhelmed with “Thank you’s” as we think of ourselves less and Him forevermore.
If you’d like to read a few of David Needham’s reflections on heaven that sustain his hope in his waning years, I created a YouTube Channel with him during the last three months of his life entitled, Sunrise Promises. CLICK HERE or type in this URL: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidNeedham-SunrisePromises
If you’d like to experience a little of the adventure my bride and I just finished, you can CLICK HERE or type in the link below to go to our Vimeo Showcase Page where we posted the three most recent videos from our travels. https://vimeo.com/showcase/7769370