The person who faithfully endures the marathon of life is someone who has chosen to live with humility. But what does it mean to humble yourself?

It means being honest about your humanity. Be honest about your weaknesses, your limitations, and your imperfections.

I’ll let you in on a secret: Everybody already knows you’re not perfect! You can quit pretending like you’ve got it all together, because you don’t. In fact, nobody has it all together. We can all stop pretending like we don’t have faults or weaknesses.

Humility is not low self-esteem. It doesn’t mean you say you’re no good or that you’re a piece of junk. Jesus did not die for junk. He died for people who bear his image. That shows your great value! If you weren’t valuable, Jesus wouldn’t have died for you. 

Humility is not putting yourself down or denying your strengths. It’s being honest about your weaknesses.

All of us are a bundle of strengths and weaknesses. I have some great strengths, and I also have some great weaknesses—and so do you. Humility is just being honest about both.

Part of humility means being able to laugh at yourself. Did you know that “humor” and “humility” come from the same word? If you can laugh at yourself, it’s a good sign you have a healthy ego.

In The Message paraphrase of 2 Corinthian 4:7, the apostle Paul said, “We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us” (MSG).

God puts his glory and power and life in us, even though we’re like common clay pots. Clay pots break easily. We know this because it’s obvious we’re all a little cracked. But we don’t have to hide those weaknesses. We can find humor and joy in the ways God made us all different and learn to let go of the small stuff.

When I was senior pastor at Saddleback Church, we used to tell the staff, “Take God seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously.” That’s the secret of stress management. It’s a lot less stressful when you can relax and admit your humanity and even laugh about it.

And it’s a lot less stressful to acknowledge your weaknesses so you can lean on God and other people for their strength and help to move past your imperfections.