After speaking at a church a few weeks ago, my family grabbed lunch with some of the staff and their families, including the worship leader and his family. A bit after we were seated, another group of people came in to sit at another table.
The worship leader said he knew one of the ladies from the other group because she was from a church where he had grown up. He went on to tell about a time when he first started leading worship as a younger kid. After the service, the woman came up to him and said it was good. Trying to form some bit of humility, he said, "It was all God." Without missing a beat, she said, "If it was all God, it would have been a whole lot better."
As we go about our Christian lives, we want to learn to navigate those waters with the right kind of humility, and we think, "Why would God even choose me?" Rich Mullins used to say, "It just proves God has bad taste." We want to think we have no value to God and then wonder why He would choose us.
This is the very reason He chooses people. Once you are truly down to nothing, He can make out of you the something he wants to make. God is not going to choose you for something unless you have actually reached the end of what selfish things you depended upon before.
Also, we cannot think of these things in terms of what I bring to God's table. It is not about what you bring; it is about what God puts into you. Humility is necessary, but humility is not a LOW sense of self; it is NO sense of self. You do not need to break yourself down, but simply come to a point where you lose your hold on what you think you bring that God needs. Once you can let go of those things, God will put into you all that you need.
