Perhaps you have learned to be agreeable rather than obedient, careful rather than courageous, quiet enough never to be accused of pride, and somewhere along the way you began calling that Christlikeness. If the fire you once carried has been sanded down into something polite and manageable, and your faith feels safe, tidy, and strangely powerless, you may have mistaken being nice for being meek, and those have never been the same thing. Ryan Miller joins me to recover a virtue the church has traded for a counterfeit.
Niceness is a social skill, but meekness is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, “gentleness (meekness, humility)” (Galatians 5:23 AMPC), strength that has come under the rule of Christ rather than strength shamed into hiding. Drawing from his book Meek as a Mustang and from four years in a wilderness that dismantled his performance-based identity, Ryan shows why the wilderness is a grace rather than a sentence, how distraction starves our intimacy with Jesus, and what it costs to lose ownership of your life.
If you have been offering the Lord your pleasantness while withholding your surrender, hear this clearly: He is not asking you to become smaller; He is asking you to become yielded. Jesus said, “Learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart” (Matthew 11:29 AMPC). So lay down the version of yourself everyone finds agreeable, bring your whole wild heart to the One who knows how to lead it, and let Him finish what He has begun in you.
About Ryan Miller
Ryan Miller is an online evangelist, filmmaker, and founder of The Jesus People, a digital ministry reaching millions each year with the gospel through social media, podcasts, and documentaries, and he hosts The Jesus People Podcast. A former pastor whose understanding of meekness was forged through a long season of failure and surrender, Ryan is the author of Meek as a Mustang: Find the Strength to Surrender Your Wild Heart to Jesus (Tyndale Momentum). He lives in Texas with his wife, Annie, and their children.
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Resources Mentioned This Week
- Meek as a Mustang: Find the Strength to Surrender Your Wild Heart to Jesus
- Healing What You Can’t Erase: Transform Your Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health from the Inside Out
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