Maslow says that one of our basic human needs is recognition or acknowledgement. We, as human beings, need to be told that we are doing well at something. Nothing wrong with wanting feedback for your hard work, I say.
We sometimes work hard in front of the right people so that we can be noticed; even if we don’t get that promotion we wanted, at least the boss calls us shining stars with management potential, that’s enough to brighten up our day. Let’s be honest, as hard as we try to be humble, the pie is not the easiest one to swallow. As Christians we are taught to not let your right hand know what your left hand did in charity... hard I say.
In my second year as a Christian I joined the Creative Arts Group at church. One day when I was praying about it God said he’ll use that to teach me humility. I laughed because I thought, “how is being on stage performing for a couple of thousands of people going to make me humble?”. We were taught how not to take credit when people complemented us on a performance and I remember people would say I did awesome and I would be dying to say “thanks, it was a piece-of-cake” but instead we had to say, “I thank God that lives were touched and changed by the performance”. I also remember thinking I can do this much better than that person and then that person would be given lead. Because I would always be reminded of why we are doing it in the first place, that year I learned what humility really is and I also learned that I have to die daily to myself in order to walk in true humility. I will not lie to you and say I am now humble; this has been one of the greatest battles in my walk with Christ. To my credit though, I now know when I am walking in the opposite direction.
Not so long ago I was faced with this battle. I have been working hard on a program that I believed, still believe, could change lives and I was looking for a great opportunity to implement it. It was, still is, the best idea I’ve ever come up with. It was so big that I knew it was from God. I had an implementation plan, everything was in motion, proposed it to a lot of my leaders and it was well on the way. We implemented the first phase and it happened... someone else took the leading role. At first, to be honest, I was not bothered by her because I knew it was for the greater good of the project. But she started taking other parts of “my project” and implementing them the wrong way. She started getting the lime light, getting the complements, the recognition that I believed was mine, let alone the fact that she doesn’t even have the whole vision, the passion or the gifting that I have. I didn’t want to look jealous so I left her to it, but the more I tried to not look jealous the worse it became. The more bitter I became, the more she shined, the more complements she received and the more successful she became. I became twisted and sinister without even realising it. This great vision I had, the great plan I had to change the world was taken from me and all I had left was a bitter taste in my mouth, literally, because I started bad mouthing her every chance I got, she became my frienemy (sic) . Don’t get me wrong, she was no angel either, she knew which camera to smile for, which people to talk to and she worked it. I started hating her without realising it. I started hating the sound of her voice. I was torn up inside and out of my mouth came the issues of my heart. I said the meanest things about her and I became the nasty one. Praise God that before it got worse I remembered who the project was all about and who the glory belonged to. I am grateful that I still have my friend because she is great friend, I pray she will also get her revelation someday but till then I have to keep myself in check. I am glad God helped me get over it and gave me an even better idea on an even greater scale, which will have an even bigger impact on people and I would not even have to worry about who will have the recognition because He will.
How many of us have done even worse things because we felt robbed or because we were just plain jealous of someone because we wanted the glory for ourselves? My point in all this is that, if we do something with our hearts not in the right place and we are doing it for fame, recognition or acknowledgement, there is no way God is glorified because recognition is a craving, that when it becomes an addiction, we can easily lose ourselves to . I’m glad God saved me from it before it was too late... and this new vision, I don’t know how far it will take me, but if God puts someone else on the glory seat for it, I will know better because I learned from the last one...Whose Glory is it anyway?
