Ok, I'm back. Here's why:

Hi blog friends! My baby is crying and the laundry needs to be folded, but if I don’t do this I think this blog might slide off a cliff and be lost forever.

So the fact of the matter is that all this studying/learning/teaching on humility has got me all mixed up.  It’s good, just mixed up. I told Jeff last night I think that growing in humility is just like that unconscious competence thing. You know, when you learn a skill you go through four steps:

• Unconscious incompetence (ignorance is bliss!)
• Conscious incompetence (Oh dear, I am a big proud problem. Help!)
• Conscious competence (choose the low seat, struggle through self-centeredness, carefully choose and guard  words to avoid promoting self)
• Unconscious competence (self lost.  Freedom!)

Now of course it’s not so simple that one blessed day we wake up and we have arrived and never think of ourselves again. But hopefully we are growing toward that, right? Toward that blessed self-forgetfulness that has the freedom to look out for the interests of others before our own (Phil 2).

But it’s hard to move through these. For example, step 2–which is where I live most of the time. That’s where I know there’s a big problem, which makes me realize that in all my writing/teaching/sharing there is a great deal of pride, selfishness, and vanity, and makes me also see that the things I have to share are really not that remarkable. In fact, everytime I read someone else’s thoughts I realize mine are not just unremarkable, they are occasionally worthy of yawns, or worse–annoyance.  So this makes me not want to write anything. (are you sniffing the pride yet?)

It’s related to something I once heard a 50-year-old pastor say. He said that looking back, he now realized that he was so arrogant and inexperienced in his younger years that he thinks he only really now is becoming useful for Christ. I get what he’s saying, but that makes me feel like what’s the point, then, of teaching and sharing and writing, if I’m only 29 years old and probably doing more harm than good?!  You know what I mean? How discouraging is that?! Am I really helping anyone or am I just wasting my breath when I should saving my voicebox for latter days ahead.  I mean, if I’m really conscious of my sinful state, what’s the point of blabbering my thoughts all over the internet? The truth is that sometimes I yell at my kids.  I sometimes roll my eyes at my husband. I sometimes get jealous of other girls. What does someone with this much sin in her life have to say about anything?!

But God.

This passage right here is what changed my perspective.  Last week, when getting ready to walk on that stage and teach on humility, I was scared out of my wits.  I have never felt so ill-prepared in all my life, not the joking around kind of ill-prepared but the kind that stands and says to God, “You got the wrong girl here!  Wrong girl!”  But then as I was praying (and telling God He had the wrong girl!), God impressed 1 Corinthians 1 on my heart and I opened to read this:

²⁶For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, ²⁹so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. ³⁰And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

¹And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. ²For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, ⁴and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Cor 1:26-2:5)

So that your faith might rest in the power of God! That’s why we share with each other, girls!  That’s why we open up our lives, in vulnerability and humility, so that God can be glorified and no flesh can boast in His presence!  So that faith is placed not in our clever advice or helpful hints, but in the power of God!  So in that way, teaching, sharing, giving, is actually the humble thing to do. It is pride that thinks we must have arrived at some level of spiritual greatness in order to be used of God. It is humility that says, “Here is my life.  Take it, use it.  Look at it.  You can criticize it and that’s ok, because what is on display is God’s glory and not my own.”

So, by God’s grace, I do hope He uses my life in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. I do hope that my message would at all times be Christ crucified and not lofty speech or wisdom. I pray that my faith and your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.  And so, I’ll keep punching away on these keys. I do sure love to write, so that’s a plus. 🙂  I pray for the grace to lift up HIS name and not my own in this little corner of the world.  Thanks again for your faithfulness, for reading, for commenting, for encouraging me.  I love being on this journey together.

By grace,

Kari