Philippians 2:3 says, "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself."

This past month and a half has been a huge time of growth for me. I have always thought of myself as a humble, compassionate and selfless person. Now think about that for a second. If I thought those things about myself, it kind of cancels out the possibility of being any of them. I realized that I am a people pleaser. I thought this just meant that I always wanted others to be happy, but in reality I just always wanted people to be happy with me. I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t anything to be upset at me about. I have never associated myself with the words "selfish" or "prideful", but just from the last month and a half, I have realized that I am both.

I do serve and I do want to help others but something that I'm ashamed to admit that I struggle with is that in my mind, I tend to think about what I will get out of it. How will what I am doing for someone else benefit me? How will people see me when I do this? That is so far off of what I am called to as a Christ-Follower. I am supposed to be serving and trying to not let my left hand know what my right hand is doing, not declaring it with all the dramatics that I can so that I can be seen and draw attention to myself. For everything I do, I want the glory to go to God. I want Jesus to live through me and when they look at me, they can't even see me but they see Him. I need to stop serving with the intention of, "What will I get out of this?" and "Who can I get to notice that I'm doing this?" This is something that I am working on every single day but it is a big struggle.

I have always looked at myself as humble but I have recently realized that I am prideful but have a really bad self esteem issue. I have always torn myself down and thought of myself as not as important as others and had this, "Good for nothing," and "No one will ever like me," attitude. There is a lot of self pity involved. Okay, all of those thoughts take a lot of thinking about me. If I am thinking that much about me, I am not humble but prideful. It's hard to understand and explain but there is a certain type of pride that comes with a horrible self esteem and I have mastered it.

So in these past 6 weeks, I have discovered the difference between thinking of myself as worthless and esteeming others as better than myself. I need to have a servant's heart and mind toward others. I need to always be looking for opportunities to help others without the thought of what I can get from it. Jesus Christ is the perfect and spotless Lord of Lords and King of Kings yet he humbled himself to the point of dying the death of a criminal on a cross for us. He washed His disciples' feet. He didn't come to be served but to serve. So how much more should I, as a sinful human, be willing to serve others and think of others as more important than myself.

Application:
Today, I will pray that God would help me to seek and cease every opportunity to serve others. I will pray that God would help me to take my thoughts captive so that every time I have a selfish thought about what I can get out of helping, that I would just be able to give it to God and ask Him to renew my mind with thoughts of Him and not selfish of myself.