So Who Do You Think You Are?

Whether you are in a job interview, a conversation with a friend or a family member, or looking at yourself in a mirror, your answer to the question "who do you think you are" reveals the degree to which you live in reality or fantasy. Several years ago Mac Davis wrote and recorded a song whose title and first line was "It is hard to be humble, when you are perfect in every way." Sometimes we see ourselves as being perfect. The cheer of my high school's senior class when I graduated was "we are the greatest ones alive; we are the class of sixty-five." It didn't take us long to realize that our pride in that saying was lacking in accuracy.

The truth all of us must face is that an honest appraisal of who we think we are is hard to achieve. Our grandmothers often did see us as perfect. While our mothers wanted to believe we were perfect, they saw a different reality as they observed our lives day by day. The first part of Mac Davis' song is true - it is hard to be humble. One dictionary defines humble or humility as "a modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance or rank."

Several years ago I was beginning a new job with a title of Executive Director and a staff of ten. I thought that I had arrived and would no longer have to deal with some of the menial tasks that surround any business, even a religious one. I discovered in one week two great truths. First, I was wrong, and second, God has a great sense of humor. My first day at my new office, I pulled into a parking place. As I stepped out of my car, someone had left a dirty diaper a few inches from where my foot touched the ground. I thought that someone should pick that up. My next thought was that I had an empty plastic bag in my car and I should be the one to pick up the dirty diaper. Two days later, a toilet overflowed in one of the restrooms in our offices. Soon I was ankle deep in water running a wet vac. Being humbled to experience humility can come in a variety of ways.

Later that week, I was reading in the Bible in the book of Philippians. As I read Philippians 2:3, the Lord gave me a much better way to approach my new position, and really, all of life.

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility

count others more significant than yourselves."

This verse gives us a way to begin to place ourselves in proper relationship with God's creation. Remember when Jesus was asked about what was the greatest commandment? He answered that the greatest was to love God with all of our being. And then He said that the second was to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. By getting these two commandments in proper alignment within our lives, we see who we really are. Regardless of our titles or positions, when we love God first with all we are, then we can love others and serve as equals doing what He places before us at any given time.

Paul wrote these words to the church at Ephesus in Ephesians 4:1-3.

"I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy

of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility

and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,

eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

This week may we all think accurately concerning who we are in Christ and in what He has called us to do with qualities and characteristics that only He can place in our lives.