Nothing

As I was working in the yard the other day I noticed how a tree that had recently been planted was growing so well. I was proud of myself because I had given it good care, including fertilizing it. Then it dawned on me, God made the tree, gave it the ability to grow, created water, makes the sun come up, helped me get the money to buy the tree; you get the picture, God did everything and I get to participate in what God is doing. This is a clear analogy for our lives. We want to make ourselves so much, build some kind of significance, and often that journey takes us away from God and who we are rather than toward our creator. Apart from God we are and can do nothing the Bible says. But in His rich grace and love, life becomes full and eternal.
We are told in Philippians that “Jesus made Himself nothing”. It adds that “He humbled Himself, by becoming obedient even to the point of death on the cross.”
Jesus as God is really the only one who had the right to make Himself “Something” this is what Satan tried to get Him to do at the Mount of Temptation; prove to Satan and others that He was something, more than a carpenter in the wilderness. What is so interesting is how humanity trys so hard to make themselves “Something” when they are not. It is an intriguing reversal of roles lived out in the Biblical word in Romans, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly”, and then in an even more direct word in James, “‘God exults the Humble”. When we quit trying to make ourselves something, and accept the nothing that Jesus as God became, we might get an inkling of what it is to walk with Jesus and belong to God in the great abundant life He continues to promise all those who are willing to give their heart to Him.

Think what this might mean.