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Humility for the Sake of Others

Philippians 2:3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

This is such a hard thing to accomplish when we are human.  Our natural self absolutely craves selfishness.  We so easily fall into this trap of thinking about what we want and when we want it.  I think it is quite possible that our culture has encouraged our selfishness too, which definitely doesn't help anything.  So how do we overcome our selfishness?  Very simply, we don't.  The only way for us to consider others better than ourselves is to let the one who already did so do it for us.  Jesus put others first.  Paul describes it this way in verses 5 and 6, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus; Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,".  Through Jesus we can put others first, but only through him.  Left to our own efforts we will continue to fail.  My prayer is that I can be humble enough to recognize my incredible need for Jesus and selfless enough to let Him take over my life. Then He will make others first in my life because that is who He is and who I am in Him.

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