Love Is Not Proud

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Welcome And A Judgmental Moment

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome. My name is Cameron. I'm one of the pastors here at Cross Point. If you've been around for a little bit, you know I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I feel like within the last month, though, I had a moment where I was like, I feel like I'm fully a Wisconsinite now. I was in a parking lot and I was pulling in. It was a little bit of a tight parking lot, and uh the other car is backing out, and I mean it took them a good like three, four minutes. Backing out almost hit my car, almost hit another car all over the place. My gosh, what is wrong with this person? And they pull out, and I see their license plate says Illinois, and I thought, of course. And then I realized, like, I am a Wisconsinite now. Like, I immediately had a judgment of someone from Illinois. Um, today we are talking actually about pride and judgment. Um, I want to also share a little quote. So I love Mark Twain. He always has some great quotes. This is one of my favorites of his, especially around pride. He said, When I was a bore boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. Now, for some of you who have teenagers, this might feel a little raw right now. Um, but it's funny because obviously uh the old man had not changed, right? But this is what pride does. It assumes everyone else is the problem and that we are great and we have nothing to change and we should just keep sailing just the way we are. Now we're talking about love over this series, looking at what love is. Uh, and Paul specifically in this section talks a lot about what love is not. Um, and sometimes seeing what something is not, like defining it by the opposite, is helpful to illuminate what it is, right? Like when my wife and I are talking about redecorating something. It usually starts with, oh, I don't like that, I don't like that, but that helps kind of get you to what is positive. So this is from 1 Corinthians chapter 13.

Love Does Not Boast Or Puff Up

SPEAKER_01 2:00

I'm just gonna throw it up here again. I know we just read it. It is love does not boast, it is not proud, and it does not dishonor others. So these are our three kind of things we're talking about today. Now remember, as we talk about these love, while this is kind of a big list of stuff, love is not a checklist or a formula. Love is ultimately something we discern with the Holy Spirit that is supposed to flow out of us. And this gives us a picture for what love is, not just like a formula we follow. Now, these three terms, uh I'm gonna explain a little bit what they are and how they relate to each other. They're pretty simple. Uh, boasting means bragging, talking up your own accomplishments, taking up a lot of space. Um, literally, uh, it means like to be a wind bag, so like fill yourself up with wind. Pride, uh, the Greek word has the connotation of being puffed up, like you've kind of puffed yourself up with pride, an overinflated sense of self, uh, trying to be more than who God created you to be, uh, putting yourself at the center of the universe and everything. Uh, in our preaching team meeting, Katie brought up, in some ways, this feels like the opposite of envy, which we talked about last week. The envy is, I want what you have. I think you have something great. Pride is like, I'm doing great, like I'm better than you, but it's still rooted ultimately in comparison, and specifically comparison using like a worldly metric. And then that third uh third thing there is dishonoring, which can also be translated as rude or acting improperly, ill-mannered. And all of these I think are related. Okay, so pride is like the heart posture that we have, where we believe and we think and we feel that we are better than the people around us. Or if you don't like the word better, we're more important than the people around us. Um, that the world revolves around me, that I'm in the we want to stay in the position of power and are unable to humble ourselves. Now, sometimes I think underneath that pride is a genuine sense of like, this is what I believe. I believe I'm more important than the other people around me. Sometimes, though, it's also insecurity, right? Like, I feel like I'm not measuring up, and so I'm gonna puff myself up in order to feel good about myself. Um, this is why if you go to a networking event or maybe you're meeting someone important for the first time, you might feel tempted to kind of pad your accomplishments because there's insecurity there. So you want to feel like you're doing better than you are as you're comparing yourself to other people. Um now, this of course is not the way God made the world to be. We know God created each and every one of us uh in his image. We are created with equal value and worth, no matter how many accomplishments you have, no matter how much money is in your bank account, no matter how much uh spiritual accomplishments you can put to your name. Like God sees us all equal with equal value and worth. But because of our pride, we try to change this reality. And we can do it by boasting and puffing up and trying to inflate ourselves to like kind of be bigger than others. But we can also do it by making other people smaller than us, right? By dishonoring them, by treating them rudely, by being ill-mannered towards them. You know, rude comments, pushy behavior, lecturing, talking down to people, passive aggressiveness are all ways that in our pride we try to push people down to keep ourselves bigger than they are. But the root problem is pride. In fact, ancient Christian writers, if you read like in the first few hundred years of the church, would write that they said pride is like the root of all sin, of seeing ourselves as more important and even more important than God, right? Like that is the root of it all. But specifically, pride affects how we view people, how we view ourselves. So if you see yourself boasting and puffing up or talking down to people and treating them rudely, at the root of that is probably some sort of pride, like the way you look at people and yourself. And if you deal with that pride inside in your heart, that will affect then the way you treat other people.

Why Corinth Struggled With Pride

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Uh now, why does Paul use these terms? He could have talked about a lot of things with love, and he does. Like, why does he use these specific ones? Um, now obviously they're true, right? So that's one good reason why he'd use them. But I think why he specifically mentions these three things is these are things that the Corinthian church really struggled with. Um, the Greek word for pride is used by Paul in the New Testament only by Paul in the New Testament, and six out of the seven times it's used are used in uh in this letter in 1 Corinthians, right? So this is something they really struggle with. They had pride, we see, in their gifting, like how spiritual they were and what kind of spiritual gifts they had. Um, they were fighting with each other. We saw earlier in the in the book they had pride over which leader they followed and who they thought was better, and they were arguing and dividing over which leader and ministry philosophy and all of that that they're following. Uh later in the letter, we'll see that rich people were dishonoring poor people by the way they treated them, by the way they did their meals and the way they practiced the Lord's Supper. Um, if you remember back at the very beginning of this series when we talked about uh the city of Corinth, uh it's an up-and-coming city at this time. So it's kind of like the hot spot where people want to be, the socially ambitious, the ones wanting to start businesses and kind of set out on their own, would come to Corinth. Um so people had a growing sense in the way their city, or growing sense of pride in the way their city was developing and growing and their own accomplishments. One other kind of random thing that I thought was interesting that really connects with this, is that archaeologists looking at the city of Corinth have found more than any other ancient city, like plaques and inscriptions of people like literally having plaques commissioned about how awesome they were and boasting about their accomplishments. Um one commentator said it this way: Corinth was a city where public boasting and self-promotion had become an art form, right? Which is not at all like our culture right now with social media. Um, but all of this kind of boasting and and being proud and arrogant and dishonoring people in the church, it led to the fact that they were struggling to live in relationship with each other. They're struggling to maintain unity because they were constantly dividing and arguing and fighting over these things that they were proud of, right? They were boastful. So Paul says, love is not these things. Now it would be easy uh to talk about each of these just kind of like on their own. And Mac actually talked about pride earlier in the year, um, back kind of in the lead up to Easter. If you don't remember, that's okay. He didn't remember either when I said this in our preaching team meeting. He's like, I did? And I was like, Yes, you did. So don't worry, we're we we've all been there. Um I don't remember what I preached about two weeks ago, so he's still doing better than me. Um, but so go back and listen to that. Really a deep dive into pride and kind of what pride is and how to fight that. If you're like, man, this is a really big struggle in my life. I'd encourage you to go listen to that. Because today I want to spend a lot of time focusing specifically on how these things affect our ability to love people, right? Because that's what uh Paul is talking about here. And our bottom line for today is pride blocks our ability to be present to others with love. Um, and as we talk about these, I have four things we're gonna talk about. I want to toggle a little bit between the individual and the church level, right? Because Paul's writing to congregations, but we all struggle with these things individually. But also, I'm gonna talk about some of the obvious ways pride shows up in our life. Like when you think of a proud, arrogant person, you probably have a caricature in your mind right now of what that kind of person is. But pride can also like sneak its way into our life. We can be prideful about things that we wouldn't normally think of, right? Like uh you if someone some people are proud about their career, they have pride in how much money they've made. And other people might have pride in how not career focused they are or how much they're not chasing the next dollar, right? But or pride about spiritual things in your life, like how much you pray or how much you go to church or whatever it might be. And so all like pride is not uh just owned by CEOs and tech bros and people that you think of that are too busy for the other people in their life. Pride is something that can work itself into all of our hearts. So here were four. This isn't exhaustive, these are just four reasons I see, ways I see pride blocking our ability to love, um, both in my own life and in our church life.

Pride Hides Mistakes And Blocks Repair

SPEAKER_01 10:45

One, the first one is that pride affects your ability to admit your struggles and mistakes. Right, we even have a term for this when you need to like admit that you were wrong, it's swallow your pride. Because pride keeps us from thinking that we are the problem. If you can't admit your own faults or even see them, you're gonna be really crummy at relationships. Right? If you are never able to see where you are contributing to dysfunction or being rude or being angry, if you're never able to see those things, then you are gonna have a really hard time in relationships because deep, real relationships expose our rough edges and our faults and the ugliest parts of ourselves, and other people pay the cost for those things. And when you make mistakes, when you screw up, when you have unhealthy patterns, like part of being a good in a relationship, whether it's a friendship or a spouse or someone at church, whatever it might be, is being able to admit when you make mistakes. And if you never admit it, you'll just continue to hurt the people around you. Uh, Katie mentioned the phrase last week that I really liked. You can't take off what you can't name, right? You you cannot like heal from things and grow from them unless you can name what those things are that you need to move through. This is why any recovery program, an essential part, is being able to admit that there's a problem that you're dealing with, right? Not just living in denial. Pride causes us to defend and justify ourselves when we get confronted with our wrongdoing instead of apologizing and just being able to swallow your pride. Right? And pride means maybe we can't, we feel like we can't be vulnerable about those things because it's a little too scary. So I'm just gonna like guard up and wall people off, and because I don't want to like deal with the fact that I might not be as perfect as I think I am, right? Uh, pride can also make relationships one-sided. Uh, pride can make us want to win an argument rather than connect and listen with people. Uh, pride can make us always take advantage of the people around us because we just assume that our needs are more important than theirs or what we need out of the world or want out of the world. Pride can also affect us in a spiritual way as well with people around us. Like you might be someone who is always giving and serving and pouring yourself out, right? Doing all the spiritual things, right? But what does Paul say earlier in this uh passage is uh without love, those things don't matter at all. So if you're giving yourself up and constantly doing that, but love is not there, uh then it doesn't matter. And pride can make us be very like one-sided in the way we serve and love people. Like we we I'm happy to give, I'm happy to be helpful, but I don't want to accept help or receive help. Right? This is where we talk about being humbled by what someone does for us. Maybe you like to be in the position of power, you're always sharing your wisdom and advice with the people around you, but don't ever really need anyone else's wisdom or advice, right? This is pride. It might look really spiritual, like you're happy to help people and talk through things with people, um, but relationships are not one-sided. Those aren't real relationships. If you can't humble yourself, you might look super spiritual on the outside and be look like a really loving person, but you're missing out on the power of real reciprocal relationships.

When My Needs Come First

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Uh, secondly, pride causes you to believe your own needs and desires are more important than other people's. When I have an inflated view of myself, it keeps me from being able to love them because I'm more focused on getting my own needs and desires met in the life in my life. Right? And it's a heart posture where I always put myself first. And not in a healthy way, right? There is a good healthy level of this where you uh like take care of your own needs so you can be there to love and support and care for other people, and not just be like running yourself ragged, right? Uh so that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about we do this in an unhealthy way where I just feel more important than the people around me. Or I or it's rooted in selfishness. Here's what Paul says in Romans 12. Be devoted to one another in love, honor one another above yourselves. Right? We are not called to put ourselves first, but to put other people first. Right? This might look like pushing past people in a store or line or crowd because you have somewhere more important to be than the other people around you. Right? Pride and boasting can cause us to take up so much space in a room that you can't even be present to what's happening because it's all about you and what's going on for you, and you sharing and taking over and making it all about your agenda. Uh every other year uh we go to a conference with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, our denomination. How like our whole district gets together uh somewhere in the state, and we, you know, it's it's great, you get to connect with other people. And what I've noticed is there are some other pastors there that feel like they're there for real connection, and you you develop these good connections and bonds, and you talk, and you and it's like this good back and forth you can share honestly and vulnerably. And some pastors, I feel like I'm just a warm body, so they can tell me all the good things that are happening in their church, right? And I'm like, cool, this was fun. Thanks for doing that. I really appreciate it. Um, we all know someone like that. Maybe you are that person who really likes the sound of your own voice. Uh, but when you're boasting and talking and taking over, you cannot be present to what's happening in the room or with the people around you. If you are constantly caught up in your own agenda, you can do that so much that you can never be interrupted to pay attention to God's agenda or the agenda of someone who really needs you in your life. Don't get me wrong, at times it's totally appropriate to share about your life. I'm not saying like here at coffee hour afterwards, everyone's gonna be like nervous to say anything good happening in their life. No, that's not what I'm talking about. Um, you can be present to other people and share from a place of wanting to connect with people, but there's a huge heart posture difference between wanting to connect and forge connections with other people versus wanting to puff yourself up or wanting to kind of take over whatever's happening. Um, you know, when I think of for myself, uh, this can be a real struggle. Like I don't think I struggle with pride very much, but as of course I've reflected on it the last couple weeks, I'm like, oh, there's maybe more here than I realized, which is really fun. Um, I noticed I love to put my own needs first, right? Especially if I get home and my kids, there's something going on. I objectively think my problems are more important than their problems. And to be fair, they probably are, because their problems can be really dumb sometimes, the things that they're really focused on. Um so that's true, I think. But I'm sure at one, I'm sure other people feel the same way about my problems. They're like, oh my gosh, Cameron's like a little toddler throwing a fit in the kitchen right now, right? Um, but also, even if it is true, that does not give me the excuse to not be loving and present to them. Even if I think whatever I have going on is more important, that does not ex and I have to say, hey, I can't deal with this right now, or we can't talk about this, there is still a posture of love that needs to pervade all of my interactions with them. Um, another uh one I thought of as I was thinking about this is when my wife and I, most of the time, probably 98% of the time, we go to bed together, and we have very different ideas about what it means to like settle in and go to bed, right? And to get ready for bed. Mine involves reading and like reading a book and just kind of disconnecting and until I start to drift off to sleep and I put the bookmark in and set it down. Megan, it involves sharing every detail of her day that she experienced, right? And these two needs are incompatible with each other when uh if we are both trying to just focusing on getting our own needs met. Creates a lot of conflict at times. But as we've grown in marriage, right, we've both learned to flex instead of being prideful of like, no, but what I need is more important than what she needs, or what I need is more important than what he needs, is what if both of our needs are important and we both flexed towards each other so we cared about the other person's needs and desires more than just our own, right? And so now, like, I can, you know, I've gotten to I can like put my book down and like listen to whatever is gonna be shared. And Megan has learned, like, hey, maybe I don't need to share about every diaper change and tantrum that happened, right? I can I can give you more of a summary, right? And so we can bend towards each other, but as long as I'm thinking my needs are more important than her needs, then we are gonna struggle in relationships, right? And that's my pride getting in the way. Now, of course, it is a problem if only one person is flexing it all the time. Uh, that's not a healthy relationship or a healthy marriage or a healthy friendship. And so we both need to have that perspective in order for it to be healthy. But it starts with me realizing, like, hey, I need to orient to my own needs and desires differently. Uh, this happens in church all the time, right? We show up to a church, and Mac's gonna talk about this in the DNA class that's today. Uh, people show up to church and they bring their own idea of what the church should be into like joining a church community. Um, and things like this is how a healthy church needs to be, this is what needs to happen, and it's usually rooted in our own needs and desires. And frankly, most of the things that there becomes like drama about um are about our preferences, right? So, music style, preaching style, how liturgical or not liturgical, what types of groups are offered. For me, my biggest like preference hill that I want to die on, if I was just gonna let myself be really selfish, is how I would love it if during worship the sanctuary was just pitch black, right? And there was like no lights on at all. Um, and so for those of you who get mad at Adam and chew him out, you know, every month or so, it's probably my fault. Come talk to me, don't talk to Adam about it. Um, right, this is how I would like it to be is just black during worship. Like it's really dark, we're all just engaged in worship that way. And what happens in church, though, is we know we're not supposed to be selfish, and so we find ways to spiritualize our preferences. And so I'd say, Adam, I just feel like when it's dark, like it cuts out all the distractions, right? And then you can't be distracted by the people around you. And so I spiritualize it. I think there's some truth to that, right? Uh, but we all do this in different ways. We bring our needs and our desires and our preferences to a church community and try to push and get what we want. And if we're not careful, it can cause arguments and divisions and fights. Now, it's not to say your preferences don't matter. Of course, like I love to hear when people have ideas about how our service could be or ways that would help them engage more at church or groups or whatever. All that is great. It's about the heart posture. Is it a desire to make this church community the best church it can be? Help people lean in, or is it about, I think it should be my way, and I'm gonna fight to get my way like brought about in our church? Right? Those are very different heart postures. Um, you know, and if we're just focusing on ourselves and kind of we're planting our flag and we're gonna die on this hill, like that is exactly what was happening in Corinth, where they had these different ideas and just thought, like, nope, I am going to make it all about me and what I think.

Judgment Keeps People At A Distance

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Now, third, uh, pride can lead to judging others and keeping them at arm's length. Right? So pride makes us think that we are better than the people around us or the people we see, and that judgment has the effect of like kind of keeping them distant from us. And when we are distant from people, it blocks our ability to love them and to be present to them when we kind of keep them at a distance. Uh, Drew mentioned during our preaching team meeting about how you know sometimes you'll be in a store and see a kid throwing a tantrum and have a little pride of like, hey, that's not my kid, right? And then, of course, a week later it is your kid and everyone's watching you. Um, but that judgmental attitude in the store, uh saying, oh, well, my kid wouldn't do that, right? It makes you feel better. It kind of, but it what it also does is it pushes you away from whatever's happening. Right? No part of you is thinking, like, hey, is there anything I can do to help this situation? It's just like, oh, that's not my kid and kind of like stiff arm it and walk away, right? And this happens all the time. Our pride causes us to judge people the way you see them living their life, the choices they make, the the stupid choices they make, right? Like our pride of like, I would never do that. I'm better than that, uh, keeps people at arm's length. You know, I think of uh we didn't have kids for a while uh after we got married, and so sometimes we would be in like a small group or something, my wife and I, and share something about feeling busy, right? And all the parents would be like, ha ha ha, you don't even know what busyness is, right? Uh because it's like, and to be fair, you don't, like kids just add a level of chaos to your life that is hard to hard to understand, right? Until you're living with it day in and day out. Um, but what stuck with me in that is like, yeah, I know I'm not as busy as you, but that's really dismissive, and it makes me not even want to talk to you, honestly, or share what's going on in my life if it's just gonna be pushed aside, right? And so now when we've had kids, it's like, oh, I find myself like, oh, I might be tempted to say some of those things of like, you don't know how hard life is gonna get, or how hard life could be, right? But that is not love. That is like pride and boasting, kind of puffing ourselves up to feel more important and better than the people around us. We can do this as churches too, right? We can judge other churches. And if you're looking for a church, like of course it's appropriate to be discerning, or as we as a church like partner with other churches at times, we like to be discerning about which churches we connect with and partner with and do ministry with. Um, so that's appropriate, but sometimes the heart posture is judging other churches so we can feel like we're a better church than other churches, right? And that's not good. Pride keeps other people at arm's length, and love requires presence and connection, right? Love requires being close to people, not distant. I think this one is a huge problem in Lake Country, right? When we first moved here, we called up we heard about this place called Watertown. Okay? Are there any Watertown people out here? Watertonians, Watertowners, I don't know what's what is the name for someone from Watertown? Do you guys know?

unknown 25:44

Watertonian.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Watertonian? Yeah. All right, there we go. So we heard about this, and the way people talked about Watertown before I went to Watertown, I was ex- this is kind of what I was expecting. Um, is this picture? So, like cardboard boxes, garbage flowing through the street. Like, you better like hold your wallet in your pocket because someone's gonna mug you if you walk anywhere. And we drove into Wondertown. I'm like, this place is delightful. Like, what is wrong with all these people from Okunawak, right? And so this is an attitude that comes up all the time in late country that we judge other people, people in the city, people in Milwaukee, people in Madison, people in other parts of the world, whatever it might be, and keep them at arm's distance, right? It's a way to not move toward them with love. But if you notice how quickly pride made me think I am so much better than all those late country snobs who judge Watertown, right? Like pride can show up whether you're being snobby or whether you're being reverse snobby, right? No matter where you're at, you can have pride and judgment, and it keeps people at arm's length, which is the opposite of love. Now, the result of all this judgment that

Too Important To Serve Anyone

SPEAKER_01 27:01

comes up because of our pride and because of our inflating ourselves and thinking we're better than people, is this final point that pride keeps you from using your time and energy to serve other people. When you think deep down, if you're really honest, that you're too good for something or too good for some people in your life, it keeps you from using your time and energy in unproductive ways to serve them and to love them. Right? Pride can make us only spend time with people who will advance your career or advance your social status, uh, or someone you can get something out of. Anyway, we don't want to waste our time and energy, so we only use it in productive ways. Uh my uh four-year-old daughter, sometimes when I go to like go to leave to come into the church office, she'll say, But daddy, I thought you were gonna play with the Barbie dream house with me today, right? And in no like world is playing with the Barbie dream house, like on the top eight billion things I want to do in my life, right? I love my kids, I love playing with them. Playing Barbie Dreamhouse is just not one of those things. Right? So, no normal formula is playing with it worth my time, but love changes that formula, changes that calculation of like, no, like this doesn't objectively, this isn't worth my time, but connecting with you is. Right, and of course, there are times we need to be discerning about how we spend our time and our energy. Like, there will come a point in your life where you become too busy to say yes to everything. Or if you do say yes to everything, you will be overwhelmed and stretched thin. And people will want more from you than you can give them. But the thing guiding that discernment of how do I spend my time and energy and my resources uh should be love and the Holy Spirit, not an overinflated sense of how much more important I am than the people around me. This is one I see all the time in church communities, like uh like in our church community and at my old church, is uh I talked to someone who said, I only have time to be in another group. I asked why they weren't in a group. They said, I only have time to be in a group with other high achieving people like myself. And I was like, oh, that's an interesting perspective. Um, first of all, like you're probably missing out on what you could give to other people, but also you're probably missing out on all these people that you think don't have anything to teach you, probably actually do. So we're talking about the kingdom of God, not how successful you can be in running your business. Uh, this happens all the time when people, uh when I'm looking for people to like start groups or be a part of groups or different things like that, say, like, oh, I'm too far along, I'm too spiritual for something like that. Like, I'm I'm kind of advanced beyond that. Um, and part of me is like, I get it, like you don't want to like just revisit the basics all the time. But also, like, uh not to be rude, but like, I don't know, I've been to a lot of schooling for this. I've read a lot of books, I've been doing full-time ministry for a long time now, and I do a lot of basic things and still get a lot out of it, right? Strengthening that foundation, the basics of our faith. Not to mention, uh, most people are orienting to group spaces is like they're asking, what can I get out of this? What am I gonna get out of doing this? Not what do I have to give to other people.

unknown 30:28

Right?

SPEAKER_01 30:29

This happens all the time in serving. People say, I don't have time to serve, I have too much going on. Which I get it. We all have way too much going on to be able to say yes to everything. Uh, but underneath that, I think there's often an unacknowledged pride. Maybe we're not even aware of it, where it's like, oh no, I'm too important to serve in kids' ministry, or to go to the church work day, or to serve down at bridge builders, or to serve the homeless, or whatever it might be. Again, it's about a heart posture. Sometimes saying no is a hundred percent the right answer, but you should be praying and discerning about what God is inviting you into. Um, you know, if you've said yes to all the right things, if you have a clear sense of what God wants you to do, then please say no. Like I'm not trying to make you now feel guilty for saying no anytime I ask you to do something, right? But I do want you to be doing that process of bringing it to God and say, God, what is it you want me to do? Because our pride will often make us say no to things uh that maybe we're not supposed to say no to, right? Because the kingdom of God does not work in the same like uh balance sheet as our world does. And you might be missing out on things God has for you by saying no to too many things first. Romans 12, 16 says this: live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position or willing to do menial work is like an alternate way to translate that. Now, so God might be calling you into something, and your pride might be keeping you at arm's length from it. But I also know, we're talking about sneaky ways pride can get in. For those of you that do serve, you might have kind of like puffed up a little bit, like, yeah, what's wrong with all these other people who don't serve in kids' ministry or don't like join groups or whatever it might be, right? Our pride can overinflate our sense of self or kind of put us over other people if we're not careful. Even about things like serving, even about things like being a part of a group, even about things like, oh, well, I come to church every week. Why do some of these people only come a couple times a month or you know, a couple times a year or whatever it might be? That prideful posture, though, keeps us from being able to love people. What if instead of orienting to people and ministries and church and the needs around you with, what am I gonna get out of this? You started asking the question, what is God asking me to give here? No, I didn't say not what can I give, because again, there's an endless number of things we can say yes to. Just because you can give to something doesn't mean God is calling you to. And I know for some of you this is a struggle to feel like, oh, if there's a need, I need to meet it. Uh I was reminded as we were talking about this in our preaching team meeting of this quote from C.S. Lewis, uh, which is just great. He talks about, you know, meeting every need without thinking about it and just kind of responding. He says, if you do that, you'll become one of those people who, as they say, live for others, but always in a discontented, grumbling way. Always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr of yourself. And once you become that, you'll be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been had you remained selfish. Right? So I'm not saying give and give and give and more of yourself, and just like, that's just what you have to do all the time. But like, no, you should slow, stop, slow down. It's like, God, is this something you're wanting me to sacrifice for? Is this something you're wanting me to lean into? Um, because God has like your pride might be making you say no to the good things God has for you in your life. All right, so that's pride and boasting and dishonoring

Humility Modeled By Jesus

SPEAKER_01 34:12

other people. Uh, that's what love is not. So, what is love? Uh, and what is the opposite of that? And the opposite of pride is humility, other centered love. Not believing that my needs and my wants are more important than everyone else's. Allowing myself to be interrupted in order to serve and love people, humbly admitting our faults, recognizing we're covered in God's grace so we can grow and repair relationships, right? Humble love doesn't judge and evaluate other people's worth, but sees people through the eyes of God as infinitely valuable, complex beings worthy of love. And this is what we see embodied in Jesus. The woman who stops him when Jesus is on his way to heal someone really important, right? And this woman stops Jesus and he stops and he talks to her, and he spends time with her and he heals her, even though it made him late to his next thing. We see this in Jesus as he spends time with children, right? The children are coming to him, and his disciples are like, Oh, this is Jesus, like he's way too important, and doesn't have time for this right now. Jesus says, No, let them come, like, let them come to me. We see this in Jesus with Zacchaeus, this guy who was a tax collector and corrupt, and everyone hated him. And everyone in Zacchaeus' area would have thought Zacchaeus is not worth anyone's time. He's just a villain. But Jesus saw past that and wanted to connect with him and spend time with him. Jesus had all the reasons to puff himself up, right? I mean, he was God in the flesh, and he spoke the truth about who he was, but not in a way that pushed others away or made himself more important than he was, but in a way that connected with people. And so I want to end here reading from Philippians chapter two. Um, it's a passage you're probably familiar with if you've read the Bible or been a part of a church for a long time. But I want to read it in a kind of a slower, prayerful, reflective way as we just think about who Jesus was and how he embodies this humble, other-centered love. So take a minute, quiet your heart and your soul. I'm gonna read it slowly. There's some questions up on the screen that'll be the reflection questions for action steps too. Um so feel free to look at those just to take, close your eyes and soak in the words of scripture as I read them, pray and ask God how He wants to reveal to you where you might be struggling with pride. Um then after we read, we'll have a little bit of silence and Katie will come up and close our service. So let's kind of settle our heart and soul for a minute. God, as we read this scripture, just ask that you would give us a vision for a different type of love than we see in our world. God help us to see you and to see Jesus in all his complexity and glory that is embodied in humble love. So open up our hearts, open up our souls, and convict us of the things you want to transform in our hearts and in our minds. Amen. From Philippians 2. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather in humility, value others above yourselves. Not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. By taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

SPEAKER_00 40:46

And in particular, even my walk with God. So as I was thinking about how there are those seasons where I'm not prioritizing prayer and reading God's word and practicing the Sabbath, those spiritual disciplines that keep me close to God. When I look at why I'm not prioritizing those, the root of that really is pride, right? Like I think that, oh, I can I can do this on my own. Like, yes, God is important, but I can, I got it. I figured out I've I've more important things to do, or I'm busy, or whatever that is, how pride is at the root of that for me. And so, whatever bubbled up for you, um, I would encourage you just to step into that this week. We want to end with some prayerful reflection and action steps.

Reflection Questions And Next Steps

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First is to spend some time in prayer with these questions that Cameron put up. So, where is pride creeping into your life? In what ways do you put your own needs and desires over others? Where do you find yourself judging others? And how isn't God inviting you to give of yourself for the sake of others? We would encourage you just to spend some time really meditating on that and praying and inviting God to speak to you. And then as an action step, just take a step into that. Some ideas might be just listening before you speak with someone, right? So often we can hear someone um talking and you're thinking, okay, what am I gonna say next? Just listen. That's a small thing you can do. Do something that normally doesn't feel worth your time out of love for someone, or maybe just apologize. That can be a real act of humility.

Retreats Workshops And Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_00 42:09

All right, before we close our service today, I have some announcements that we're sharing at the end of the service today. First, we have our middle school fall retreat coming up, October 30th to November 1st. Um, so this is a weekend away at Silver Birch Ranch with Drew. And they're gonna be playing, they're gonna have dodgeball, horseback riding, airsoft, carpet ball, lots of games, and a really good time. We do ask that you register soon since it's coming up at the end of the month. So it's October 30th to November 1st. Then the holidays, believe it or not, are right around the corner. And we recognize that both the divorce and grief can make holidays really difficult. So we're doing a workshop, a divorce care workshop November 7th, and a grief share workshop November 14th. Those are 9 to 11 in the morning. And those will be a place where you can meet other people in a similar situation, where you can find community, where you can receive advice or tools and navigating the holiday season. Um, and we just really want you to know that you're not alone and have this be a place where you can come. There is a small fee for these workshops that cover the cost of the resource booklet. So we ask that you sign up and register online. And we would love to have you there and invite anyone, even friends, neighbors outside of this community who might benefit from that workshop. We would love to have you join us for that. All right, let me pray. Dear God, I thank you for this time of worship this morning and hearing your word. Um, I thank you for Cameron's message. I pray that it would just really sink deep down into our hearts where we wouldn't just hear it and walk away, but that where we would be changed by it. I pray that you would help us to reflect on whatever it is you're inviting us into. Would you help us to see the areas where pride is blocking our ability to love you and to love other people? And would you help us to walk in humility in all ways? Father, would you help us just continue to grow as disciples of you that would share your love with the world? We love you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, go in peace.