Do I really want to be humble?

Sometimes I assume the apostle Paul was born again and soon thereafter he was a fully sanctified super apostle.  Of course I know that's not true, but it's easy to read of his faith in action and just assume he was always like that and didn't really struggle that much with sin and self.  But Paul had to be made humble the same way the rest of us are made humble - through difficult situations and people.  God even gave Paul a thorn in the flesh, a "messenger of Satan to torment" him, in order to keep him from being prideful.  Paul prayed for it to be gone, but God had a purpose in the thorn.  God was showing Paul the sufficiency of His grace and the pathway to humility.  So rather than continuing to pray for the thorn to be gone, complaining about the thorn, or simply enduring the thorn, Paul actually rejoiced in it.  For Christ's sake, he delighted in whatever would lead to humility.

Murray writes of two stages Christians pass through in relation to trials and humility:

"In the first he fears and flees and seeks deliverance from all that can humble him.  He has not yet learnt to seek humility at any cost.  He prays for humility, at times earnestly; but in his secret heart he prays more, in not in word, then in wish, to be kept from the very things that will make him humble."

In the second stage we believe that it is in difficulties that Jesus Christ is revealed to us.  The believer longs to know Jesus and knows that only His presence can expel pride:

"A clearer insight was to be given to Paul in the deep truth that the presence of Jesus will banish every desire to seek anything in ourselves, and will make us delight in every humiliation that prepares us for His fuller manifestation."

I don't believe following Jesus can be broken into tidy "stages" that, once reached, becomes our permanent home.  These are more like attitudes or mindsets than stages.  But I do believe Paul's attitude can become that of any believer who understands that the grace that sanctified Paul is the grace that sanctifies us.  God still uses the same kind of circumstances.  I need to pay more careful attention to when my attitude is opposing my prayers and my actions reveal that I don't really want to be that humble!