My Dear Friend,

Are you a promotable Christian? That is, one who is prepared, ready, or worthy to be promoted to a higher position? Why ask such a simple question?

It is one that is on the minds of many of us. We want God to raise us - as He did Joseph, Daniel, David, Ruth, Rebekah, Esther, and many other Bible characters - to a higher level of service. Yet we give little or no thought to the issue that should come first: are we qualified for God to raise us? While not always easy to fulfill, those qualifications are usually simple enough to know. That is, if we really want to know them.

When promotable, we seek Christ, His presence, Word, and guidance "first" every day (Matthew 6:33). We offer thanks, praise, and worship through the day. And we are faithful in our present position of service. Oh, this is such an important question: are we serving Christ faithfully where we are? If we won't serve God faithfully where we are, how can He trust us to do so in a higher, often more demanding position?

Are we doing "whatsoever" we do "heartily," or wholeheartedly, as Scripture instructs us, with joyful enthusiasm and without complaints (Colossians 3:23-24). Or are we serving half-heartedly, because we are indulging a gnawing lust to rise higher that is nearly always motivated, not by love for Christ and concern for His people, but by personal pride. Yes, pride, is such a universal spiritual spoiler.

Pride will not serve heartily in the hidden places. It demands recognition - and squirms and raises its hands and voice for attention - and fusses and fumes until it gets it! We are all infected with, and none exempted from, this excessive, dominating self-esteem. Pride cares far more about holding positions and titles than it does serving our Lord, His people, and others with compassion and excellence. If not acknowledged and renounced, pride, along with its companion sins, discontent and laziness, will make us spiritual unemployables. And unpromotable.

While unpromotable, Christ wants to raise us, but cannot. If you are in this condition, please consider the apostle Peter's call and promise to us in his first general epistle.

PETER'S CALL TO "GO DOWN"

First, Peter warns us bluntly of the grave danger of pride: "God resists the proud" (1 Peter 5:5). Second, he promises God will give "grace" - unmerited divine ability and strength imparted to the believer with which to serve God. Third, he points the way up: go down! "Humble yourselves [down] under the mighty hand of God" (1 Peter 5:6).

Go down in self-esteem - destroying all imaginations of grandeur and refusing to see yourself in your mind's eye as being more important than you actually are.

Go down in contentment, being "content with such things as you [presently] have . . ." (Hebrews 13:5). How can you do this? Even in the lowest, most undesirable settings in this temporary, fallen world, the born-again Christian still has Jesus! If he wills, he can seek Him and have sweet, exhilarating, personal fellowship with Him at any time: "For he has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you" (Hebrew 13:5).

Go down in humility training, as Jesus did. When at age 12, He was intellectually ready for ministry, instead of going up in rabbinic studies and ministry, He "went down" to His hometown of Nazareth. There He lived in total obscurity. He also submitted completely to the authority of His parents, Joseph and Mary. And finally, Jesus worked faithfully as a manual laborer for 18 more years.

Go down in injustice, as Joseph, betrayed by his own brothers, went down from his father's house in Canaan into slavery in Egypt. And because God wanted to raise Joseph exceptionally high, He permitted him to learn humility in an exceptionally low place - years of unjust incarceration in Egypt.

Go down as Paul did. When newly converted Saul of Tarsus, bursting with zeal to take the gospel to the Gentiles, arrived suddenly one day in Jerusalem hoping to be received by the Christians there, God took him in a different direction. The apostles sent him down to his hometown of Tarsus, where no one for even a moment would have believed he was divinely called and specially endowed with special revelations that would impact the whole western world for the next 20 centuries.

Are you ready to respond to Peter's inspired call? Right where you are? In your present service? While you read this piece?

• As a mother at home with three or four very active children?
• As a factory worker holding no title, office, or distinction?
• As a church greeter who is largely unnoticed every Sunday morning?
• As a basketball, football, or baseball player presently on the second team?
• As a professor at a small college no one has ever heard of?
• As an associate pastor - when you know you have the education, experience, and gifts that qualify you to serve as a senior pastor?
• As an unnoticed secretary or office worker running errands, handling mail, taking dictation, and keeping the office clean and in order
• And in a thousand other invisible positions and undesired duties that you would never have chosen for yourself?

But God chose them! If so, He is asking you this very moment, "Will you serve Me in your Nazareth, Tarsus, or Egypt?" Friend, how will you respond?

I would counsel you to be humble and trust God by simply following Peter's call. Then you will be becoming promotable! And the rest of Peter's inspired counsel will be yours.

PETER'S PROMISE OF PROMOTION

Peter's inspired counsel does not end with his summons to, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God ..." He completes his holy thought with this sweet promise: "... So that He may exalt [promote] you." And when will this divine promotion take place? "In due season." When is this "due" season? I cannot tell you. No man can tell you. Only God knows.

But I can tell you this: it will be sometime after you "humble yourself" under God's mighty hand. That is, after you have become very comfortable and content in the low places and humble duties to which Christ has called you. In this state you will faithfully and heartily serve whoever you meet, knowing God is arranging your circumstances. You will actually rejoice in the lowest places, with profuse thanksgiving and songs of praise, because you realize He is permitting you the great privilege of enrolling in His College of Humility, where His future leaders learn to serve the Most High in the most lowly places. You will "graduate" when you are consistently serving faithfully and wholeheartedly without the slightest whimper for a change of circumstances. Like David, you are thoroughly weaned from all your human desires for "lofty" places and "great" matters (Psalm 131:1-3). Then, in this condition and in this Christlike mindset, your heavenly Father will command that you be released and promoted: "Friend, go up higher" (Luke 14:10). Why? You have become promotable. And one more thing.

Peter explicitly calls us to humble ourselves under God's "mighty hand." God's "hand" symbolizes His mighty power. If you will submit under His power now just where you are, and patiently and faithfully live and serve there, His mighty power - His powerful presence, His gifts of power, His life-changing power - will come to rest on you. And the longer you submit under His power, the greater will be the power that comes to rest on you and flows through you in kingdom ministry.

As a result, when you pray, your prayers will be powerful! When you study, the insights God gives you for yourself and others to live by will be powerful. The words you speak in Christ's name will be fully empowered by the Spirit, so that those who hear or read them will be permanently altered for the King and kingdom. And the walk you walk before your peers will release a powerful witness of who Jesus is and what He can do for the most needy, broken, and hopeless son or daughter of Adam's race.

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But your promotion is not the most significant thing that will occur. A far more rare and wonderful internal change will have happened. During your humility training, as you follow Jesus' steps downward (see Philippians 2:5-8), you will have forgotten about you! New, heavenly, Christlike motives will have taken the place of your old self-driven lust for promotion. You will take Christ's motto as your own: "I do always those things that please him" (John 8:29). And like David when he emerged from his humility training, you will understand the real reason God has raised you: for His honor and to serve His peoples needs the rest of your days. (See 2 Samuel 5:11-12.)

In the end, you will pour out every bit of energy you have daily to accomplish two great, central goals: first, to please God; second, to bless others.

So, friend, please ponder Peter's call and his promise of promotion God's way. Yes, think it over slowly. Deeply. Thoroughly. Prayerfully. Worshipfully. Then go live a promotable life!

For the promotable life,

Dr. Greg Hinnant
GREG HINNANT MINISTRIES