The one you HAVE to read...

Paul says this was Jesus' attitude: "He always had the nature of God, but he did not think that by force he should try to remain equal with God. Instead of this, of his own free will, he gave up all he had and took the nature of a servant. He became like a human being and appeared in human likeness."

Imagine if you will that you've never heard any of that. That you have never even heard of this man Jesus.

Take those phrases apart one by one:
1) He always had the nature of God.
That mans he was, among other things, loving beyond measure, powerful beyond imagination, eternal beyond thought.
2)  ...but he did not think that by force he should try to remain equal with God.
That means he didn't keep his power or his eternal being. He could have, with loads of angels at his beck and call, but he chose not to.
3) ....of his own free will, he gave up all he had and took the nature of a servant.
A god who serves. What a wild, unbelievable to some, idea.
4) He became like at human being and appeared in human likeness.
I could get heavily involved in this statement, but I won't. I will simply say that to my understanding, Jesus became human. Fully human.

The question before all of us daily is what does that mean to us? With all the hubbub about WWJD, did we ever read this one little phrase here? Jesus, equal with God, gave up power and became a servant.

Jesus = God.
God serves.

What a concept. How much have we ceased to understand or at the minimum do?

I walked into the living room last night and Mary was watching her beloved HGTV (while I was watching my beloved ESPN in another room). There was a program on called Million Dollar Rooms. ROOMS. The one they were featuring was a closet. A CLOSET. A MILLION DOLLAR CLOSET. It featured a $10,000 rug. It featured a $35,000 chandelier. Those items are worth far more than my base pay, but that's not what I thought. What I thought was how Jesus came to serve, how many could be served with the money spent on those two items, and how we're called to do so.

I do not judge this woman I've never met who had this closet built. But I do judge a system that argues government is supposed to help the poor, the hungry, the outcast when in fact it is US who are supposed to. When the culture says we can spend over a million bucks on a closet and feel perfect about it (the woman said, "I wished every woman in America could have a closet like this), then we're not long for this planet I fear.

We should have the attitude of Jesus, but be mindful of the attitude of the Jesus who is coming back and who will ask how well did we love when He gets here.