I feel like the Holy Spirit is speaking to me about “becoming less” at the moment.

I don’t mean ‘positionally’, as if it’s ‘less’ being a full-time mum, than a full-time office worker.

Rather I mean an attitude of the heart, whatever ‘position’ in life I function in.

I think like with all personal change, this will be a process, but it began recently when I felt Him show me how He ‘became less’ to reach all of us.

It says this in Philippians 2:5-11

‘In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.’

One of my first encounters with the power of Jesus in His humility was when I was 20.

I was very broken and to begin to reach me, He gave me a vision of who I really was inside.

I was a little girl, struck dumb and paralysed by fear, on the floor of a cell. In the vision, light flooded the cell, and Jesus came in. He showed me the holes in his hands and I knew He was doing that so I could see how gentle He was and therefore, how safe I was with Him.

He was able to reach me in the very depths of who I was, because of His humility, because He became ‘less’.

As He spoke to me about ‘becoming less’ recently, I suddenly understood my relationship with someone in a new light.

I realised that our personal circumstances, that had positioned me in the ‘less’ place, were designed by Him so she could be reached by Him and me. Since embracing this understanding and working with it, I’ve seen this person open up much more.

I realised that I also saw this principle at work a couple of years ago, when we didn’t have a car. Someone kindly gave me lifts for a while, and it was in their car that I had the best conversation about Christ we’ve ever had before or since. They were the most open to Him, asking me questions, when they were in the seemingly ‘stronger’ position.

I think God speaking to me about “becoming less” goes beyond even circumstances though. I think He wants me to become “less” in all my interactions. That my heart would take the “less” place.

In the light of that, I find myself mulling over the scripture ‘Let your gentleness be evident to all’, in Philippians 4:5.

I’m a lot gentler than I was years ago. God has worked out of me so much impatience and anger. Yet I think God’s Spirit in me wants to go further.

I think in my need to be valued, known, or seen, I can sometimes be too ‘overbearing’ (Titus 1:7). I also think I sometimes ‘boast’, in the tone of how I share things (1 Corinthians 13:4).

I think God’s gentleness wants to work those things out of me more, and that will enable me to be “less” as I speak with people.

As I become “less”, hopefully I will be able to listen better (James 1:19), and think more highly of others than I do myself (Philippians 2:3-4).

Some of this I can feel within me as the conviction of the Holy Spirit, which I am doing my best to yield to.

Some I notice, as I ‘come up against myself’, in my every day interactions with people.

Even as I write this, I turn my sharing with you in this blog, into a prayer: “Come Holy Spirit. Yes Holy Spirit. Make your home in me. Make me less, even as Jesus made Himself less. Have your way in me.” Amen.