Philippians 2:3           New English Translation

3 Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself.

 

Humility

 

Is humility possible without knowing who you are?

Dishonoring God comes equally through anguish or ecstasy

Bright or dull shaped are by self and all through your feelings

To escape from who you are to be, into your self-made fantasy

 

Is the answer to this dilemma the unknown effect on my feelings?

The environment I can’t control or change most of the time

My feelings seem alive and change in a shift of the surroundings

So how can I keep on drifting from a steadfast walk, that’s mine?

 

How can I serve “my” Jesus equally in gladness and in sorrow?

How to get through the emotional synergy that dies as soon as it comes

But leaves traces on the landscape, that I will walk on tomorrow

And want to lead me on a path, that leads me far from home

 

How to exercise my will if strength is being guided by emotion?

If suddenly one’s true-life appears through the Spirit to our will?

My will should be working in lieu of my feelings’ devotion

And be exercised day and night with no aid from feelings, still

 

Sensation is not a measure of the spiritual life of a Christian

When a Christian dwells through a drought isn't this an authentic life?

When the Spirit presses upon "will" disregarding all emotion

Then real progress in the spiritual is made, unknown to self, in strife

 

To be faint in the heart is emotion, like the feeling of being unqualified

But whatever you receive in devotion has to be preserved in the "will"

Only what is retained in the "will", becomes a part of life’s promotion

Stimulating in action the parts that it wants until the desire is fulfilled

 

Jan Wienen