Flying can—and usually does—test the limits of human endurance. Our most recent trip did not disappoint.
The penultimate leg of our journey took us from New York to San Francisco—two cities that, in their own ways, can feel like centers of the universe when it comes to financial and technological power.
Prior to take-off, I found myself doing one of those things I occasionally do on an airplane: listening to one side of a conversation and trying to reconstruct the other.
It’s almost a game. You hear only one person, so you have to fill in the blanks.
What I could determine, however, was pretty obvious: the conversation was much louder than it needed to be. Loud enough that people ten rows away could have participated without ever leaving their seats.
And the half of the conversation I could hear sounded, well… like a flex.
There seemed to be a desperate need to establish credentials. To demonstrate experience. To make sure the person on the other end of the phone understood just how knowledgeable, accomplished, and indispensable this speaker was.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years…”
“I’m quite familiar with what has to be done…”
“When I return, I will…”
Ugh!
Maybe it was the cumulative fatigue of travel. But I remember thinking:
Do we really need to announce ourselves this loudly?
Not long afterward, another passenger apparently decided that the rules of the cabin didn’t apply to him. As the plane prepared to taxi and the safety video was playing, he stood up and wandered into the aisle.
Really?
The chief flight attendant responded firmly:
“The playing of the video is not background noise. It’s for your safety! Please sit down!”
I smiled to myself. And then I began to reflect and consider the lesson and application.
The Apostle Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, was writing to believers living in the heart of an empire where status, power, wealth, influence, and social standing mattered deeply.
In other words, Rome knew a thing or two about flexing. Into that environment, Paul offered a radically different way of understanding identity.
In Romans 12:3 (MSG), he writes:
“The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.”
That is a powerful corrective to our natural tendency to make ourselves bigger than we are.
But Paul doesn’t simply drop an isolated instruction about humility into the middle of his letter. The sequence matters.
Before he tells us how to think about ourselves, he tells us how to offer ourselves.
Before he addresses our self-perception, he addresses our posture before God.
Before he tells us not to think too highly of ourselves, he tells us to surrender ourselves.
That’s where Romans 12 begins.
Paul urges us to take our everyday, ordinary lives—our sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around lives—and place them before God as an offering. Then he tells us not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Only then does he move to the question of how we see ourselves.
And perhaps that’s the point.
Our ability to live with humility begins with a proper understanding of our place in His creation. If my view is centered on me, there will always be a temptation to make sure everyone knows who I am, what I know, what I’ve accomplished, and what I can do. But when my life becomes centered on Him, something begins to change. I no longer need to announce my importance because I am increasingly aware of His. I no longer need to prove my worth because my worth is anchored in the God who created me and redeemed me. I no longer need to occupy the center of the conversation because I have discovered that I was never meant to occupy the center of the universe.
Knowledge matters. Experience matters. Skills matter. Accomplishments matter. But none of these things were given to us merely to construct a larger version of ourselves. They are gifts to be stewarded. Resources to be surrendered. Opportunities to serve. And ultimately, they are meant for His glory and the good of others.
That changes the way we carry ourselves.
Humility is not pretending that we have nothing to offer. It is recognizing that whatever we have to offer was first given to us.
Later, prior to takeoff, the head flight attendant gently reminded me that I needed to affix my shoulder strap to my seat belt.
My whispered comment to Gail?
“Flight attendants have a hard job dealing with folks who know everything.”
The irony was not lost on me. Because the truth is, we—well, I—don’t know everything.
And perhaps that is one of the quiet gifts of humility: recognizing that we don’t have to. We don’t have to be the loudest voice in the room. We don’t have to establish our credentials. We don’t have to remind everyone what we’ve accomplished. We don’t have to prove that we are the most knowledgeable person at the table. We can simply receive what God has given us, offer it back to Him, and trust Him to use it.
The world may reward the loudest voices. But the kingdom of God operates by a different economy.
In God’s economy, greatness is not found in how loudly we announce ourselves, but in how faithfully we surrender ourselves.
Maybe that is why Paul begins Romans 12 not with “Tell the world who you are,” but with “Offer yourselves to God.”
Before we can think rightly about ourselves, we have to remember who God is. Before we can stop making ourselves the center, we have to recognize who actually is. And when we do, something beautiful happens.
We become free from the exhausting need to make ourselves known. Free to serve without applause. Free to give without recognition. Free to listen without having the last word. Free to use what we have been given for someone else’s good.
Sometimes the loudest thing humility can say is also the simplest:
“Lord, here I am. Everything I am and everything I have belongs to You. Use me for Your glory and for the good of others.”
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Pastor Mark
Mark, the eighth of nine children born to Reuben and Henrietta Meeks—dedicated church planters with nearly 30 congregations established across California’s Central Valley—is a preacher's kid who grew up immersed in faith and service. With over forty years of experience teaching, discipling, and ministering to communities, including the hospitalized and incarcerated, Mark responded to God's call to pastoral ministry. He holds degrees in civil engineering and public administration, as well as a Master’s in Theology from Fuller Seminary, equipping him to serve with both practical insight and spiritual depth.
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