Let God Promote You – October 6, 2021

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
James 4:10

Let God Promote You

With the birth of social media came the birth of a new occupation, that of the social media influencer. Social media influencers are people who have thousands, even millions of followers on social media who use their wide audiences to promote products. Companies will pay these influencers large sums of money to mention their products in their social media posts. And these influencers put a lot of effort into promoting not only these products but also themselves. After all, you can’t become a social media influencer with millions of followers if you don’t work hard at promoting yourself in every way you can.

Self-promotion is essential if you want to be a social media influencer. It is the opposite of what you want to do, however, in your relationship with God. In fact, as the apostle James tells us today, the best way to be “promoted” in our relationship with God is to completely “demote” ourselves before him.

James tells us, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” Yes, if we want to be “promoted” before God, the first thing we need to do is humble ourselves. This means recognizing before God that on our own we have absolutely nothing to offer him. It means confessing before God our utter sinfulness from the moment of our conception. It means laying out before him the guilt we have accumulated for ourselves through all our sinful thoughts, words, and actions. It means throwing ourselves on his mercy, knowing that apart from his mercy we are doomed to be punished forever for our sins.

When we humble ourselves like that before God, he lifts us up. He assures us that for Jesus’ sake he has forgiven us all our sins. Through faith in Jesus, he adopts us into his family as his dearly loved sons and daughters. He makes us heirs of eternal life with him in heaven. He elevates us from the depths of sorrow to the heights of joy.

Self-promotion will never get you anywhere with God. Rather humble yourself and let God in his grace promote you.

Prayer:
Heavenly Father, I praise you that in your grace you have lifted me up. Help me always to find my reason for rejoicing in you. Amen.