40|50 Project: 40 Days To Heal A Nation’s Racial DivideSample

Week 4: One Family in God

In this second half of the plan, we turn our focus toward solution and action and becoming one family in God by embodying love that replaces pride, fear, greed and division. 

Day 23: Who’s the Greatest?

Luke 22:24-27 reveals Jesus’s disciples arguing about who among them is “the greatest.” Jesus points out that we are not to lord our authority over another, but the greatest is the one who humbles himself and serves. Matthew goes a step further and records the same conversation ending with Jesus saying that we are to serve like Him and be willing to give our lives for many (Matthew 20:28). That’s the epitome of love, the willingness to lay down our lives for another. 

Racism completely unravels when the belief of “the greatest” and one’s superiority and supremacy is supplanted by service and the lay-down-my-life-Jesus-type-love. Pride cannot stand before this type of humility. 

ACTION: Examine: Where have you been striving to be “the greatest” and judging and belittling others to put them lower than yourself instead of humbling self in service and love?

PRAYER

Lord, please forgive me for partnering with the same pride-filled and superior-driven agendas that feed into our country’s racist structure. I pray that Your love in me will replace racism because Your love is greater than pride, in Jesus’s Name, Amen.