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The Pursuit of Happiness Daily Devotional -9

by David Joynt on January 11, 2021


PHILIPPIANS 2:3 | 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  

Unity is a calling, a goal, and a tenuous but powerful achievement. It cannot coexist with selfishness or conceit. Conceit treats others’ gifts and contributions as a threat, instead of a cause for celebration. Conceit can’t embrace others’ ideas, or engage in the face to face business of accountability, confession, and the amendment of our lives and attitudes. Selfishness insists on the priority of the first person singular and undermines the first person plural.

This chapter describes a new virtue Jesus brought to the ancient world—humility. Oneness requires it, and classical societies considered it a sure sign of craven weakness and a disqualification for leadership. Jesus taught it as a precondition of the repentance that allows us to receive His mercy and enter God’s kingdom.

Do you have a strategy for remaining humble?

 

Tags: humility, repentance

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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