Think about the difference between someone who is too proud and someone who is humble. Someone who is too proud will think that they are better than other people. This is not how God wants us to see each other. Instead, He wants us to be humble. To be humble means you see yourself and others how youreally are. You don’t think of yourself as higher than anyone else. Today, we’re going to talk about someone who learned how to be humble.

After Jesus died, rose again, and went back to heaven, His followers were sharing the good news about what He had done with everyone they could. But the religious leaders who hadn’t liked Jesus didn’t like His followers, either. Especially now that they were going around saying that Jesus had risen from the dead!

One of these religious leaders was a man named Paul (or Saul). He had spent years studying the Old Testament under the best teachers. He came from an important family and was probably rich. He believed thathe knew what was right better than anyone else, and he believed that Jesus’ followers were very, very wrong about Jesus being the Son of God. So he went around throwing Christians in jail and even voting to have some of them killed.

But one day, when Paul was traveling to go arrest Christians in another city, he saw a bright light and heard a voice call his name and ask, “Why are you persecuting me?” Paul asked who was speaking to him. The voice said, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting!” (Acts 9:5) From then on, Paul believed that Jesus really was the Son of God, and he spent the rest of his life telling people about Jesus.

Paul realized thathe had been wrong. This was probably difficult for him, since he was a very proud guy. He had been full of himself and thoughthe had all the answers. But when he realized he had been wrong, Paul made the right choice. He turned from whathe had been doing and started living for something completely different. He stopped living for his pride and status and started living for Jesus.

Later in his life, Paul looked back at who he had been and all the things that used to matter to him before he heard Jesus speaking to him on that road. Paul wrote, “I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Philippians 3:7–8)