For years, I’ve been struggling with the concept of self-promotion. I don’t like to do it. I’m sure it’s not biblical. I know God is teaching me to trust Him and not my own machinations. So I don’t say anything, yet deep inside, I long to be recognized as having a contribution to make. On the inside, I’m jumping in my seat, waving my hand, clamoring, “me, me, me!” like a first grader who can’t wait to be called on for an answer. But no one would ever know, because on the outside, I sit on my hands.

The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue,
to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. Isaiah 50:4

Lately, however, I sense that I have something to share and need to be bolder about bringing it out it the open. If God has given me a word to sustain the weary, who am I to choose not to speak it? If He’s been taming my tongue for a purpose, who am I to keep it clamped behind my lips? And yet I haven’t been able to trust myself, not wanting to err on the side of boasting. I wondered what the balance between self-promotion and shining my light should be.

Then God gave me a new picture. Years ago, hiking in Switzerland, I walked on a trail that followed a sharp ridgeline. The trail, a narrow gravel path lined with alpine flowers, was barely more than a foot wide, dropping away steeply, precipitously, towards valleys below on both sides. It felt like walking on the edge of a knife, beautiful and a bit unnerving. As I remembered that sensation, I sensed that the narrow path before me was to do exactly what God called me to do, to offer my words in obedience for His glory. To speak with any sense of self-promotion would be tumbling down one side of the path. The drop on other side of the path represented not speaking at all. So it is not a matter of balance, but obedience.

I realize now that I could not share what He had given me to say because that of that voice inside me wanting to be noticed. Suddenly, that voice is so much quieter. Instead of focusing on what people will think of me and how they will respond to what I have to say, I focus on that beautiful mountaintop path, intent on staying true to God’s purpose for me.