When Friends Gut Punch You, and You Enjoy It!

so, i've got this friend.  serve with him at church.  solid dude.  loves Jesus with everything he's got without the "super-Christian" persona.  every once in a while he sends me these emails.  things God shared with him about me.  things he's meant to build me up with.

and

they

are

spot

on.

today, he sends me this........

Okay, you are undoubtedly a child of our father. You live like him, always lifting others up and calling them into the purpose and identity that you see in them. Your ability to see this and to call others into it is one of your greatest gifts to the church.

However, I feel like you get down on yourself too easily. I don't think it's necessarily "false humility," because you are truly one of the most genuinely humble people I know. What I think it is is that you're a person who has their identity coming from 2 sources simultaneously. You live like Christ, then you slip up and you think of yourself as no better than scum. This is what the enemy tells you, and you have to stop buying into it.

Godly humility is a tricky thing, and I think you know this far better than me. But you have Christ in you, you have the mind if Christ, and you live like Christ. Then when something arises that feels contrary to that, it feels easier to buy into that thing than to stand on who the Word and Spirit say you are.

You can't do that anymore. Spank the enemy and don't even give him a chance to make you dwell on your not-good-enoughs. You have been given the mind of Christ! Align your thoughts to that truth. And stop getting down on yourself. Godly humility allows us to walk confidently in who our Father says we are. It's not tooting your own horn (as you know), but it certainly isn't rolling around in the dust and dwelling on when it feels like you didn't perform at 100% either.

Don't move on too quickly from this. I think it's a season in which you can have A LOT of transformation if you'll let the Spirit search you.

Love you bro

this stemmed from a verse he's been chewing on as of late.  

http://bible.us/Phil2.3.NIV Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,

what he shared is no secret to me, and yet was the gut punch i needed this morning.  do you have this in your life, a friend who can lovingly speak truth to you?  

admittedly, it's not one of those things that you just go to walmart and grab off the shelf.  friends like this kinda just fall into your lap.  love how God did that with this friend.

so, if you don't have someone like this in your life, begin to pray about it.  ask God for it.  i can tell you that this friend has proved invaluable over the past 2 years or so.