Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3-4) I think nothing irks me more than watching a person try to snivel away an “accomplishment” because they covet it more than other people. It’s so plain to everybody that he/she/it is motivated by a jealousy and conceited-ness; but who will waste their time to argue with that individual otherwise? Have you noticed that the very person who denies being motivated selfishly by jealousy and conceit is us on a good day? On a bad day, we just want to be better than everybody else so we do things in a rivalrous spirit, trying to one up our friends, family and colleagues. Don’t feel like I’m pointing fingers at you alone, I’m guilty of it too. In fact, I think I owe most of my success and achievements because of my conceited drive to prove I’m the best and out of a jealousy of not having as much. See, even this humble bragging makes me guilty of only having an ambition for myself and myself alone. Yet, here we find ourselves in an interesting predicament. Paul is telling the Christians of Philipia to stop doing this themselves– that is, only being significantly motivated by themselves and only themselves. This mentality of follow the Joneses or be the Joneses is not beneficial for anybody. Paul makes that clear. He says we have to be the Joneses and look out for people who are not the Joneses. It’s double duty for people who are half way apt to have ambition. We need to make our ambition larger than ourselves. This is what the Bible is saying here in this passage. We need our ambition to include people who are significant to us. We need our ambition to be significantly greater than our own lives. We need our ambition to have long lasting significance. You see, this is the mindset Jesus had and as his followers, this should be the mindset er have. Jesus, who is God, did not count himself in equality with God and made himself nothing for nothings like you and me. His ambition was to fulfill the law of death for all of humanity once and for all; a significant ambition for those who are significant to him and a significant change to the destiny of everyone significant in the world. So I ask you today, how significant is your ambition? Is your mindset above and greater than yourself? Let’s see how much more fulfilling your life becomes in doing so.