Many of the things which God asks us to do are not difficult once we get past the initial issue of obedience. Those He calls He equips to fulfill His calling. It is in obeying the call that we most often find difficulty.
Is it possible that there is an attitude or state of mind that is always ready to obey God’s will, when once we hear it? In today’s passage, Paul admonishes us to have the same attitude as that of Christ himself – considering ourselves nothing and equality with God as nothing to be grasped. In every Biblical instance where groups or individuals considered equality with God something that they could grasp, failure resulted. But Christ was in very nature God and did not grasp for that equality but humbled himself and allowed the Father to live through Him.
We know that we are brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus because the word tells us so. We cannot say, as Christ could, that we are in nature God, but God has imparted His nature to us if we are born again. As such, we might be able to deduce that we have the nature of God in our regenerated lives, and indeed we do. Where we so often fail is in our attitude – our supposition that equality with God is to be grasped. When once we stop grasping and simply surrender - ‘taking on the very nature of a servant’- we may begin to live in the fullness which God intended for us.
LORD GOD – HELP ME THIS DAY TO REALIZE THAT EQUALITY WITH YOU IS NOT SOMETHING THAT I CAN GRASP. REMIND ME BY YOUR SPIRIT THROUGHOUT THE DAY THAT I NEED ONLY TO TAKE ON THE NATURE OF A SERVANT AND YOU WILL IMPART YOUR NATURE TO ME AND THROUGH ME. AMEN.
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