I replied, “The closest I’ll get to Ben Hogan is that his name is on my golf clubs.”
Name-dropping is easy. I’ve done it to impress people. I’ve once had lunch with Elizabeth Elliot or we used to belong to John MacArthur’s church.
However, I’ve also learned that the “big name” authors and speakers are ordinary people too. This happened the day I met Evelyn Christenson. I’d read and studied her amazing books on prayer, then met her and discovered that she is a most ordinary person, delightful, but down-to-earth ordinary. Actually, every well-known person I’ve met is ordinary in most ways. They have incredible talents in some areas, but they lose their car keys and have their off days just like I do.
A few years after figuring this out, a person started putting me on a pedestal. I hated it. I know myself; pedestals I do not deserve or need. How foolish I am to think of myself more highly than I ought, never mind have someone else do it for me.
At the same time, God knows we need reminding about this kind of pride and self-serving. Because I tend to think my own status is raised if I can hobnob with the rich and famous or spend time around those whose talents and reputation are widespread and well-known, He says,
Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion. (Romans 12:16)The person who wrote my devotional book says that there is no aristocracy in the church, no place for an ecclesiastical elite that deserves all the attention. He is right. We are all sinners saved by grace. Anything good that we have comes from Jesus Christ, not ourselves. If there is any glory given, it must go to Him.
Instead of prideful attention seeking, I am supposed to consider others. Jesus illustrated this by saying, “‘When you give a dinner or a supper, do not ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor rich neighbors, lest they also invite you back, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just’” (Luke 14:12-14).
I know that God isn’t forbidding me to invite friends and relatives to my home for a meal, nor is this really about who I invite as much as it is about my motive for inviting them. If I am selfishly thinking I will be rewarded in some way, or that I can boast about who was over for dinner, or if I can somehow impress others with my guest list, then my motives are sinful. God is asking me to be hospitable without any concern for myself. All of what I do is to be for those who need it done for them.
This devotional writer also says that the poor are more needy than the rich, which is another reason for inviting them. That may be true in a financial sense, but I’ve found that the rich and famous are needy too, but with different needs. Further, a person’s financial status or place of prominence does not mean they are in the category of people to avoid. The passage from Romans says to “associate with the humble” and the three people whose names I’ve dropped just in the last few paragraphs happen to be just that, very humble people who are not wise in their own opinion. I’ve learned a great deal from them.
My conclusion is that pride’s removal may require the discipline of being with people who have nothing to be proud of, people who are in poverty and great need and in whose presence I am moved to think more of them than of myself. However, there is also great value in being around humble people with great blessings on their life for they realize all of it came as a gift from God and not as a result of their own importance. They know how to glorify God with their blessings, and I need to know how to do that also.
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