Well, Pride is a dangerous sin.

It's one of the seven deadly sins.

So when you're a notable person who gets noticed and approached by strangers and restaurants

and in airports, how do you stay humble?

This was a question asked of Pastor John at the Desiring Guide National Conference in October

of 2010.

And to raise the stakes a little bit higher, Pastor John had just been presented with

a fest drift.

It was a large book published in his honor as a surprise gift.

It's titled for the fame of his name.

And in the context of a panel discussion at the conference, here's how Pastor John answered

the question of how to stay humble when God is blessing your ministry.

Oh my, probably the first thing to say is that God is in charge of keeping His people

humble.

The Bible does say, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.

But as in almost all other things, command what you will and give what you command.

So you may, I think, expect that God will deal roughly with you, if He has to, in order

to remind you that you're not God and that you are desperately in need of Him.

And perhaps, it's no accident that I received this book of essays in the middle of a leave

of absence taken because of pain, that an accident that it worked out that way.

It had been working on it for three years and that there are issues in my family and

my wider family and my soul that are such that I wanted to step back and look at all of

...