The Path to Humility

As I look back over the course of my life, there is one convicting theme that really stands out to me. I can read about the importance of humility over and over in scripture, yet I find myself blind to the way of attaining it. I believe it has been a life-long process for me, and will continue to be a long hard journey to become a humble man in the sight of God. I desire humility more and more as I learn how to align the passions of my heart with the Lord's passions, as I see them through scripture.
As I foolishly put other desires ahead of the Lord, he snatches them away from me, and I am grateful for that. Being recruited by a D-II school for basketball, only to be benched by my coach my senior year, was one of the toughest things I have ever gone through. After all the work I put into basketball, that dream came up empty. It absolutely crushed me, but it brought me to a point of humility before the Lord. Today, I thank him for that. I learned many things from that experience, but the most important I think was to desire Him above all else.
Like most of us I never learned my lesson and made many more mistakes stemming from my pride in myself, and my selfish desires. Over and over again, the Lord breaks me, and gently reminds me that I only need Him. Every time He breaks me, I become more and more dependent on Him. I realize that I am not the most important thing on earth, my desires are not above another's needs. I realize that I am not self-sufficient, self-righteous, self-sustaining, I need Jesus. Away from Him I am nothing.
He is my Source. He is my Strength. He is my Protector. He is my Father. He is my Bread. He is my Water. He is my Righteousness. He is my Sustainer. He is my Love. He is my Joy. He is my Everything.
As I pray and listen to Him, I feel his reminder that the path to humility starts on my knees every morning. When I wake up and center myself in Him, lay down my pride and surrender to Him, everything is so much easier. When I let Him fill me up, I am full. When I let him love me, I am no longer lonely. When I rest in Him, I am renewed.
Lord, continue to lead me to brokeness before You, that nothing will come in the way of You. I pray that I will desire You above all else. I surrender my wants, my desires and submit them to you. Humble me Lord. Remind me that the path to humility starts on my knees.

The Lord's Passion

I want to be passionate. I believe that we all feel that burning desire inside of us to be passionate about something. I believe that we were created as passionate beings, as we are created in the image of our passionate Creator. So not only do I want to be passionate, but I want to make sure that I am passionate for what God is passionate for.
Reading Isaiah 1 with the question, "What is God passionate for?", is very interesting. I came away with a few things. One is for His children to listen and obey Him. Another is for us to stop doing evil. However, the two that I really want to focus on, is that the Lord is passionate that we "seek justice, and correct oppression." How? "bring justice to the fatherless, and plead the widow's cause." As I move through the passage, I find that the Lord uses those last two things as a measuring stick for judging those that are doing evil. The Lord could have illustrated any two things for justice and oppression, but He chose to speak of fatherless children and widows, and I think we can relate that to all disadvantaged and helpless people, through His prophet Isaiah. We see this occur many more times in scripture, I believe that this indicates that He is passionate about them.
This gives me confidence that I am passionate about ministering to fatherless and at-risk youth because of a God-given passion.
Lord make me more passionate for the salvation and ultimate justice for these kids. Make me more passionate about you, give me your passion.