“Whoever wants to be first among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be great among you must be your slave.” – Matthew 20:27

“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” – Luke 9:24

It’s a commons saying that it is hard for the average person to get ahead. This is often associated with a feeling of contempt and unfairness. However, I think this is what Jesus calls us to.

There is no way around it; there is a cost to following Christ and I believe Christ calls us to lower ourselves and embrace this fact of life. Everything Jesus calls us to do will have pain associated with it, not misery, but pain. Misery is not the same as pain and as pastor John Piper has said, Jesus calls us not to a miserable life, but a painful life.

The world tells the “average” person to get ahead. Jesus also tells us to do the same, but not in the same way. Instead, he flips the world’s methods on its head and says the way to get ahead is the exact opposite of what the world says. As followers of Christ, we get ahead by lowering ourselves.

We get ahead not by saving everything we get but by building treasure in heaven. We get ahead not by focusing on ourselves but by considering others as more important than ourselves. We get ahead not by exercising our rights and freedoms but by laying them down for the good of others.

Following Christ requires laying down our lives, embracing suffering, and obeying Jesus. I always end up circling back to this verse and meditating on its meaning. I now realize that the meaning is simple, and the reason why it keeps coming back to me is because this applies to everything we do.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians to do everything out of love. Everything we do must be done by denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and obeying Christ. During the periods of life when nothing is going your way, everyone seems to ignore or reject you, and every day is a struggle, just know that God is doing his deepest work in you, a work that can only be done in lowliness.

-Phil