Chapel Harvest Valley in Prosser before me and Faye came up this
way, we were on his elder board and it's a it's a fun, fun
little church and he he's great. So welcome Joe Kata, and he's
pretty awesome. Thank you, it's awesome to be
here. I'm from California.
That's when I was born and raised in a family farm and then
moved out to Missouri for five years, came to the tri-cities in
2009. That's where my wife and I
really grew up in the Lord. And, you know, we'll talk a
little bit, Dave, today about, you know, finding your flock
and, you know, the people that you want to hang out with and
grow with and people that can pour into you and people that
you need to pour into. And man, it was just a great
friendship with Nick and Faye just from the very beginning of
moving there. So that's how long I've known
them. They've been pretty awesome in
our lives. Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, we love you, Lord, and we just thank you for all
the good that you give us in our lives.
Lord, we come here wanting to hear a word from you.
And so, Lord, I pray as we go through the message, as we
examine your word, that you're speaking to our hearts, You're
changing us, You're making us more like you, and you're
bringing us to a place. Of.
Spiritual maturity, Lord, more and more every day that we
desire to grow in you and and you are satisfying us Lord, as
we continue to grow and desire. Thank you Jesus, Amen.
You know, we all have a ministry, whether you're a
parent, a spouse, if you're a Christian, you have a ministry
just in regard to the people that you influence.
And it's just how and where you you serve for the.
Effectiveness of the Kingdom and so today we're going to talk
about the one thing that's going determine to to determine your
success in that ministry and the quality.
Is. Humility, and we're going.
To be spending most of our time in first Peter 5 and verses 5
through 7. You can begin turning there if
you'd like, but we're going to pick that apart and examine that
passage, so. You know what gives me the right
to talk about humility? There isn't much, really.
If I tell you, it's because I'm really humble and you need to be
more like me. That doesn't really work.
Actually, it's the opposite, and we need to be looking at the
humility of Jesus. But I do know what happens when
you plant the flag on pride. Things do not go very well, and
I'll give you some of those examples as we go through the
study. Why Will?
The success of your ministry be determined by humility.
Because I can't learn, I can't understand, I can't repent, I
can't forgive, I cannot show any grace or any mercy without
humility. You know where where the the
point in which humility ends and pride begins.
All the understanding stops. All of the repenting stops.
All the forgiving stops. There's no grace and mercy.
It all stops when humility stops.
Pride is the brick wall of your ministry and your relationships.
To your wife, to your kids, to your family, to the people that
work in anything. Pride is the brick wall that
ends everything. Humility will ultimately have
the single greatest say on where we end up in life and in the
effectiveness of our Christian service.
Humility is actually the most desired trait of a pastor.
It's not how much he knows, it's not how much he influences.
It's his humility. When I started going to Calvary
Chapel tri-cities in 2009, I was pretty sure that God wanted me
at that church. I'd been there three times and
just, you know. Anytime I try to go somewhere
else, God would. Just send me back there.
And and then I had some concern about picking Pastor Steve as my
pastor. I thought he was arrogant and
that was a problem. For me, because I was arrogant
and you know, 2 arrogant people in a church don't make for a
happy church, so that wasn't going to work.
And so my wife and I, we went and we met Pastor Steve in his
office and we were going to leave or or go based on how this
this discussion went in his office.
And so I just prayed, God, you got to show me this is really
where you want me to be. There's a lot of things that are
working out here really well, but I just want to make sure
that this one hurdle is, is is removed.
I had just come out of the 7th Day Adventist faith.
I thought I knew way more than than I actually did.
And Steve gently let me know that we started talking about
end times prophecy, and he started talking about the
Millennium. And I was, I'm listening to him.
Talking, that sounded good. I was like, Oh yeah, we, we
believe that too. That's really great.
And he's kind of raising an eyebrows.
I I don't think that's what Adventists believe.
I'm just like, oh. I, it wasn't that hard of a pill
to swallow and that I didn't think I was a Bible expert or
anything like that, but I, I thought I knew more than I
actually did. And I also realized how much I'd
learned, you know, in just three Bible studies and listening to
him as a pastor. In my conversation with him in
that conversation, I didn't say anything about pride or what I
was thinking about or what I thought of him that would have
been rude. And so I just was looking for a
way for the Lord to reveal. Something in the conversation
and in the in the middle of the conversation, as he's talking,
he's completely off the subject. He stops.
He starts talking about humility, and he says, you know,
it's just easy to get a big head when you're a pastor.
And I need to be on guard for those things, and I need to be
careful of that. And just as willingness to say.
I got to watch out for pride was enough for me.
You know, I mean, number one, that's from the Lord.
And #2 this guy, I realized, is just trying to follow the Lord
like I'm trying to follow the Lord.
And neither of us are going to be doing it without making
mistakes. You know, people want to be
around. Humble people, you know, we
actually naturally hope that the humble have success.
You know, we lift them up. We like cheering for the
underdog. The champion gets prideful and
we don't like the champion anymore.
Once he becomes a champion for a while, you know, people allow
the. Influence in their lives of a
humble person. Our success is determined by our
humility. It's not by our spiritual gifts,
it's not by our talents, it's not by our work ethic.
It's really easy to try to outwork people.
But that's not where our success is determined.
It's good. It's not determined by our
knowledge either. Why?
Because without humility, over time, all those things will get
tragically wrecked by pride. You know, they'll all be wasted
and pride will ruin all of it. In John 1, John the Baptist is
asked about his identity and he says, I'm not the Christ.
Are you? The Christ says no.
And that's a humble statement because he knows who he is.
Humility is not just knowing who you are and being who you are,
or it is just knowing those things.
The reason John the Baptist is humble is because the first
thing you need to know to know yourself is Jesus.
Now you need to know Jesus. To know who you are.
John knew who he was, and he knew who he wasn't.
And then when all. Of his followers and disciples
began to leave his ministry and join Jesus's ministry.
John the Baptist humbly said he must increase and I must
decrease. So the main scripture we're
going to be into today, first Peter 5.
Let's take a look at first Peter 5 verses 5 through 7.
And Peter says likewise. You younger people, submit
yourself to your elders yes, all of you be submissive to one
another and be clothed with humility, for God resists the
proud but gives grace to the. Humble, therefore humble
yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in
due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.
It's just kind of interesting that when Peter thinks about
submission and humility, the first thing that comes to mind
is, oh, the young people, they need to remember to submit.
Then he quickly considers that the application is for everyone.
This command be submissive to one another and be clothed with
humility. It applies to everyone for
perhaps especially young men. Peter.
Wasn't mature until he got older.
He knew what it was like to be a young man.
Peter knows the younger people need to find their older people.
That's really what's. Easy admonishing people to do
here you know one young person plus another young person does
not make wisdom it brings passion and it brings you know
volume when young people to get the other not a lot of wisdom
when I was younger I. Found some guys that had been
through some battles in life and I leaned into them and tried to
get everything from them that I possibly could.
They the advice that I received for them, it was extremely
valuable. See the the first part of first
Peter 5 here talks about shepherds and pastors and it's,
you know, for for us, it's like, it's like find your shepherd.
This is what 1 looks like. And so you find your shepherd,
you find the guy that can biblically lead you through your
difficult circumstances that you know you're going to have.
And then the next thing you do is.
You find your flock. You know, who are the people
that the friends that you're going to join in the church, you
need to find people that you're going to build up and you need
to find people that can build you up.
You know, the older guys mentor the middle age guys, the middle
age guys mentor the the younger guys.
And then in that we see which group needs the most humility.
It's the younger guys. They don't have anybody to teach
yet. Not that we can't learn anything
from them, but they especially need to be humble.
And so, Peter says, younger people, submit yourselves to
your elders. To everyone else, Peter says, be
submissive to one another and be clothed with humility.
Being clothed with humility is demonstrated by submission.
This is to put away our own agenda for God's agenda.
This applies to pastors too, Obviously.
It's easy to define submission to authority.
And your pastor. But the submission is actually
collectively to God's will. You know, the pastor and the
elders are just leading people into the will of God.
A bad pastor will lead people in his own will, in his own selfish
desire. But a bad congregation will do
the same thing. They won't submit to the pastor
due to their own selfish will or desire.
And so Peter says, be clothed with humility.
Humility submitting to one another.
Nobody's perfect at this. We all make mistakes.
We offend people when we should probably be more gentle and more
gentle to people when we should probably be a little more
offensive. It's a hard thing to do
sometimes, but our desire. Is to be humble and submissive
to God's will. A person that desires to be
humble and submissive to God will apologize when he realizes
he's made a mistake. Sometimes it takes a while to
figure it out. Peter is saying that's what
everyone should be doing, especially younger people, but
also everyone else submitting to each other.
That phrase be clothed is a rare word that refers to a slave
putting on an apron right before he serves.
Jesus did this before washing the feet of the disciples in
John 13. You know, so when we're thinking
about humility, we want to be clothed in the humility of Jesus
Christ. You know, washing feet was the
job of the lowest servant in that culture.
You know, are you willing to perform the lowest and smallest
services for the sake of Jesus? This is a good thing to take
pride in, you know, doing The Dirty work, you know, men,
you'll be the first guy to do that job that nobody else wants
to do. And when you get there before
the rest. Of the guys you call them girls
and you say you know you what are you doing I beat you to this
job good thing to take pride in are you conscious of.
Your own inability to do anything apart from God, Jesus
said. Without me you can do nothing.
Yeah. What's nothing?
Yeah, nothing. Exactly.
Good job. Most people don't get that.
And we have to have a conversation about what nothing
is. I'm kidding.
Are you willing to be ignored by people?
You. Know when you do The Dirty job
that nobody else wants to do, Will it matter to you when no
one notices? Or will you get irritated when
you don't receive praise for that thing you know I need?
Jesus to do anything of spiritual value, even basic
tasks can can. My service to God can be ruined
by a bad attitude when I'm not relying on the Holy Spirit.
Are you others centered or are you self-centered?
You know, honestly, to some degree I can, I can say that
I'm, I'm negative on all these things.
I can say no, it's all these things.
I, I don't want to do The Dirty job.
I'm going to be upset when I don't get praise for.
It I'm going to be a little irritated when I get nothing in
return. Every once in a while I catch
myself not having the right attitude and so I give it to the
Lord. And then I become really
grateful because God knows all about my bad attitude and he
paid for it anyway through the cross.
And that brings me back to the place where I need to be in
humility, because Jesus just showed me his humility through
the Gospel. I become more submissive and I
become more humble. At the end of verse 5, Peter
quotes Proverbs 334 For God resists the proud, but gives
grace to the humble. The word resist is not a word
that means. God, you know, like passively
ignores you. He passively ignores the proud.
It's a verb that pictures God prepared for.
Battle standing against the proud.
If you pick pride, you're picking a fight with God.
You know, if you build it in pride, God is going to come and
he's going to knock it down. There is one specific time when
God told me that the guy who was making my life card and and
being a really big jerk, you know, God, God explained.
Yeah, I, I. Sympathize.
He's being a really big jerk, but I'm going to deal with it.
And then he said to me, if you go against him, I'm taking his
side. That's your authority and you
need to submit. And if you don't submit, things
are going to go really bad for you.
And I, I had to submit to the authority of God, which was to
submit to my authority, the, the instrument that he picked.
And I had to trust God in faith that I was doing the right thing
because I was young and I was confused over the issue.
I was one of those young people that needed to submit to older
people. And I want to say young, I was
like, oh, 33 years old. But God didn't need me to be
right. That's not what he was trying to
teach me. He was trying to teach me to be
humble so that I could grow. And apparently this was the way
that he wanted to teach me to do it.
But submitting in that moment is still yielding fruit in my life.
Can't imagine where I would ended up if I want to submit it
in that point in time. God would have gone to war
against me if I had decided to plant the flag on my pride in
that situation. Pride causes most of our
problems. I mean, how's.
It going to show. How's it going to go when you
show pride to your wife or your husband or a friend?
You're just going to get pride right back at you because you
reap what you sow. It's not going to be not going
to be a good time. What happens if you show
humility to that? Person your hearts get softened
and then you can start working through the issue because people
start getting a lot more genuine when you show humility.
Humility allows you to take a good look at yourself and ask
what's really going on here, Lord, like, what do I need to do
to reconcile the situation? What do I need to do to behave
more like you in this situation? When you show pride to your
kids, you know then your kids get attitude.
It doesn't work really well. You know when dad shows pride to
his kid, kids gets all mouthy and it's like, oh, you're going
to be mouthy OK, And then then dad gets prideful back.
Then dad double S down the. Pride.
That's not good. If mom has a mockery for one of
her kids, that's going to harden his heart.
He's going to get all ticked off.
He's going to show rebellion. Pride makes arguments go nuclear
and there are some topics that you just can't even bring up
with. People, because of their pride,
you know that things are just going to erupt if you bring that
thing up. God resists the proud.
He opposes pride to the married men here.
You know your your wife is God's daughter.
Your kids are his kids. In first Peter 37, it says
husbands likewise dwell with them.
Your wives with understanding. And that's because he knows we
don't understand giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel
and as being heirs together in the grace of life, that your
prayers may not be hindered. If you show pride to your wife,
God will stand against you. And it's certainly, you're
certainly not going to be answering your prayers, is what
he's saying there. In Malachi chapter 2, God says
he'll reject the offering of a man who deals with his wife
treacherously. How would you respond?
To someone showing pride to your wife, How would you respond to
someone showing pride to your daughter?
I mean, it's standing against that.
That's what the word means. That's what the word word resist
means. That's what God's going to do
with you when you show pride against his daughter.
God will stand against you and it's going to turn into a
disaster. You know, what if somebody shows
humility to your wife? What if somebody shows humility
to your daughter? Well, I'm going to go out of my
way to. Do things for that guy and so
God will shower you with grace. God resists the proud, but gives
grace to the humble. Humility brings grace.
You get good things that you don't deserve when you're
humble. Humility brings heaven down.
Pride brings hell up. You know when you're giving
somebody hell or you're giving somebody.
Pride. That's how that goes.
When you show humility, you're showing them the love of God in
the heart of Jesus. Humility ultimately comes from
the Holy Spirit. But it's interesting that the
Bible says to humble ourselves. This is something we have to do
in us. We have to voluntarily submit
and be humble first. Peter 5-6 the verse 6 it says
therefore humble yourselves. Under the mighty hand of God,
that He may exalt you in due time.
Some people think that going through a disaster or a
difficult circumstances can humble.
People. But that's not the case you.
Know when someone gets a beat in a competition, sometimes they'll
say well they got humbled, but truthfully they probably became
more prideful people. Can either harden their hearts
or soften their hearts when they lose a battle in life when dads
compete with their kids and beat them all the time, there's an
unfair. Advantage there so it can make
the kids bitter and prideful, you know, they'll try to prove
their value then in annihilating their opponents and their pride,
you know, pride just breeds more.
Pride. It doesn't soften their hearts
just because they lost is my point.
It. Actually makes them more
prideful When the marriage fails and there's divorce, it doesn't
mean that you know, people are now humble and everybody learned
their lessons. You have to humble yourself
hopefully before it gets to that point.
God gives grace to the humble. You know, grace and pride are
just eternal enemies. Grace demands that God bless me
in light of what I think I deserve.
God deals with me. Or grace is when God deals with
me on the basis of what's in God, not what's inside me.
You know, your salvation is about God being good, not you
being good. And when pride gets in the way
of that, God mightily opposes it.
You know, pride is the worst sin and it's the one we all suffer
from. Pride was found in Lucifer and
that led to his fall. Pride was what led Adam to.
Sin. And now we all have sin.
Pride. It's something that starts out
really small and we make different names.
For it so that's not so bad sometimes we call it
independence and self-reliance now look I'm.
I'm just as patriotic as anybody, but I'm talking about
independence and self-reliance because you care more about you
than your team. You know you can be, you can't
be independent in your marriage, you can't be self reliant on a
job that requires teamwork, and you certainly can't be
independent and self reliant in a relationship with God.
Some people realize this, so they start modifying their
behaviour. Some people hear the sermon on
grace and humility. And so they say, well, I can act
humble because I know what acting humble looks like, but
they're really not humble. And if you take your eyes off
Jesus while you're trying to fake humility, it's it's going
to go radically bad. However, if you're willing to
give up pride, you you're probably going to be surprised
with how much grace Jesus gives you.
Humility is the key to receiving more grace.
It's the, the way that the, it's, it's, it's the way of the
church. When you, when you're thinking
about climbing the church ladder, it's kind of a
disgusting thing. Like you're going to climb the
church ladder like people climb up in corporate America.
But the lesson of humility teaches us that if you want to
climb the ladder, you aim for the bottom.
That's humility, Peter says. Therefore, humble yourselves
under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due
time. That's Peter encouraging
Christians to be patient. You know, we all want to bear
fruit in our ministries and a relationship, all of our
relationships. Maybe it's to your family.
When you're raising your kids, sometimes it feels like you're
just poured into a black hole and there's.
Nothing coming out yet. You know, I don't see the fruit
yet. Lord, you know what's going on.
I pray with my kids. I'm teaching them the Bible.
I'm surrounding them with Christian influence, but they
act like they don't care, Peter says.
Humble yourself, be patient. Keep doing the things that God
has told you to do. You know, maybe it's a Sunday
school ministry, maybe it's a service ministry, a home Bible
study. Sometimes it's just a service
project. You're building something.
You're doing something at your job.
With with a, you're doing it, showing Jesus how you do it.
That's a ministry. And there are a lot of times
when you're going to do all the right things and you're going to
be in the will of God, but you will not be exalted.
Yet it's going to take some time for that to happen.
You know, nobody knows what you're doing.
The ministry is not growing. You're struggling to get things
off the ground. You know, maybe something's gone
wrong. You know somebody.
Slandered you. Somebody since stopped the
progress of whatever you were trying to do.
Maybe you got injured and that stopped the progress of whatever
you're trying to do, Peter says. Don't get frustrated.
Don't start acting like God owes you something.
That's pride, he says. Remain humble.
God will exalt you in due time. Humble yourselves and at the
right time God will lift you up. Humility is a constant journey.
It never ends. We need it more and it.
Surprises us when we learn that we don't have it.
It's like that in marriage. It's like that in finding a job,
you know, ministry, raising a family.
In 2004, I left California. I took a job to manage a
vineyard in Missouri. And it was a good opportunity to
farm in really adverse conditions and just learn how to
be a better farmer, a godly guy that helped lure me out there.
Once I, I got started and, and he said you should start a
vineyard business. And so I prayed, you know, I was
young in the Lord, definitely immature.
I didn't really know how to how to listen to the Lord
completely, but I didn't pray about the little things.
But this was a big thing, so I prayed about the big thing.
And so I prayed and as I sat in the quiet there, I just felt a
piece of God come over me like this was a confirmation of this
is what I was supposed to do to start this business.
So. It was kind of an awesome thing,
you know, I knew God's will for me.
Now I know what to do. And so I made a business plan
and there was a lot of interest and it looked like it was going
to be lucrative right out of the gate.
But Long story short, everyone backed out at the last minute
with no time for me to react or seek more opportunities.
You know, leaving me with no income.
So I explained the situation to my wife and we prayed.
That's a humble thing to do. And so, and the prayer was just
like, you know, God, if I messed up, if I've been disobedient to
you, let's, let's, let's make this quick and painful, not slow
and painful. Let's lose the house now, get
things right now, start over. Now.
I'll think about how dumb I was, how smart you are, and we'll
just get things right right now. And that was pretty much it for
about 20 minutes. And then the phone rang.
And I just went and answered the phone being exhausted from
prayer, and it was a consulting call and it wasn't $1,000,000
call or anything, but that peace of God was something that I felt
returned in that moment. I just told Jenny, I think God
wants us to go forward with this.
I think that peace and that. Call is something telling us to
go forward and I had two appointments on my work calendar
going into the month of May and they were only going to make a
day's wage at the end of the month.
I only did not work 2 days. That was pretty amazing.
Now I'm looking at the month of June and I've got three
appointments on my calendar at the end of June.
I only did not work. Three days now, I'm getting up
in the morning and many times somebody would just call, you
know, you wouldn't happen to be available today.
Oh, actually, I am available today.
I could. Come and see you right now.
And so that that happened for five consecutive months and that
was just God saying you're not going to be the one that builds
this company. I am.
And everything that you scheduled, everything that
you're doing, I am taking away. This is only going to be me.
It was a pretty amazing time, an intimate time with God where I
was learning how to trust Him. And I was in 2005.
By 2008 the company was flourishing and growing, but I
needed more labour to commit to the large jobs that I wanted to
take on and so I decided it would be a good idea.
This is this is the humble part of the testimony.
Here to break all kinds of laws and take matters into my own
hands because my company was not being exalted the way that I
wanted it to be exalted. And so then I got caught.
To the level where the senior prosecuting attorney from the
state attorney general's office was calling my house.
And my immigration attorney said this is out of my league.
This is really scary. You need a criminal attorney.
Went and got a criminal attorney.
He took every dime that I had and and I was immediately
repentant in the thing. You know the way the whole deal
went down, don't have time to get into all of it, but it was a
set of circumstances where as soon as it happened.
It was like, oh, this is definitely from you.
This isn't just something that happened on accident.
Not that anything does, but in that point in my life, it's.
Just how it felt I I repented. I knew it immediately was from
the Lord. I had two young boys at home.
I had my my wife. And I thought I was going to be
without them for a. Very long time.
I was looking at a minimum sentence of around 20 years.
And so after two months of just kind of being in limbo, my
humble wife cried out to the Lord and confessed that she had
made me her Jesus. You know she was humble to me,
but not to God you. Know she trusted me to take care
of everything and didn't take a stand when I chose to do what I
did. She warned me hey you better not
do this. And then when I didn't listen to
her, she helped me do it. And so she tells the Lord, I
realize I need to follow you, not him.
But I beg you, Lord, will you? Please have mercy on this
situation. The same day.
I wasn't expecting a call, but I get a call from my lawyers and
these guys say we met with the prosecuting attorney and they
aren't going to press any charges.
You're probably still going to have some fines even later on.
We didn't even pay any fines. It was complete mercy.
I asked the attorney why, you know what, what could have
possibly led to this outcome, and he just kind of got out
awkward and said things that didn't make a whole lot of
sense. You know what did?
You say, how did this happen? I don't understand.
And I just knew it was from the Lord.
He didn't have a straight answer for me.
So God answered my wife's prayer at that moment, You know, she
humbled herself before God, and He gave grace.
The business was wrecked, but I could find more work.
I just needed people. I only had one employee at the
time and he was one of those guys, though, that would go do
The Dirty job and call you a girl if he beat you to it.
So that was really helpful. Eventually, through that summer
season, I hired and trained and fired about 60 employees.
None of them could do the work. I'd get him started and
eventually have to let him go and try to find other people.
But we got through the growing season with something to show
for it. We kept things afloat, and then
God presented me with a tremendous opportunity through
an equally amazing alignment of circumstances.
And God made the business even bigger and better than it was
before. Then a year later, in 2009, he
told us to walk away from it. You know, bag it and walk away.
Last year was our best year, so that was a hard thing to do.
But he wanted us to go to Washington.
God revealed that to us and we knew that if we were offered
this job in Washington that we were supposed to take it.
It didn't even matter what the offer was.
And the offer was about half of the income we were making in
Missouri. But we took it because we we
just knew God's will was in it and we had learned some lessons.
So faith is radically increasing and changing, humility changing
and increasing. I don't need money.
I just need to follow the Lord. I was also transitioning out of
the 7th Day Adventist religion at the time, as I mentioned
before, and I found Calvary Chapel where my wife and I
learned the Bible. We picked our shepherd, we found
our flock guys like Nick and ladies like Faye.
And my wife and I learned ministry.
We received amazing mentorship, and I learned how to lead my
family in the Lord. After being in Washington less
than a year, I was called the ministry.
You know, there was a job offer in California and there was
continued opportunity in Washington state.
And so I was praying about those two options and God did this
thing. I'm not that emotional of a guy,
but he broke me. I guess I'm a little more now
than I. Was then, but then definitely
not. He broke me down five times and
I did not know what was going on.
On the 5th time I was exhausted and I just cried out to the.
Lord, you know what is going on here.
What are you doing? And he said you're going to
build a church. Long story really short.
I spent the next 12 years in in volunteer ministry, teaching.
I spent nine of those years in Prosser.
That took us to 2022, when a pastor gave.
Me, his church building, I did three more years of a volunteer,
you know, pastoring at that church and then in 2000. 25 I
lost my job of of 16 years, you know, being a vineyard manager
because the entire industry there is just radically
shrinking. And I didn't know what to do
because my church wasn't big enough to support me yet.
And then it was. And I I still need to have.
A a part time job in to pay the bills and things like that.
But now I'm supported by my church and got opened a door for
me to sit on the Pasco City Council.
The houses where I live in is in Pasco and that has a little bit
of income that supplements where I am.
So that just worked out. And my wife has a part time job
where she prayed Lord. I think it could be a secretary
at Calvary Christian School. She didn't ask anybody, tell
anybody or anything except God and me.
And the principal calls up say, hey, we'd like you to work a
couple days of work at the. Calvary Christian School be a
secretary for us and so God is miraculously providing you know
why am I telling you this? Well, I I was proud and I didn't
need God, you know, to build my business.
That plan failed and then I humbled myself and then God
built up the business. I created my God, created my
business in due time and his power not mine.
Then I got proud. Again.
And God, you know, I said, God, I could do this without you.
And that plan failed, which is a radical understatement.
And then I got humble. Then my wife got humble and he
showered us with grace. After that, we decided it was a
lot better to be humble than to be proud.
And so we fully submitted to God.
My wife and I had another baby, we had a daughter, Julia, and
God LED us to adopt two kids from Columbia in 2013.
We learned a lot about ministry, and we are still learning a lot
about ministry. The most important ministry is
to your family. You know what happens if you're
the leader in your home and someone is in rebellion?
They have all kinds of pride. You know if you answer them with
pride, that's that's going to be a total train wreck.
If you answer them with humility, that's not going to
work either. The prideful person in their
rebellion will probably just eat you for breakfast if you show
them. Humility.
And so you have to employ very disciplined leadership that
involves humility and no pride. But humility alone will not
resolve this issue. You know, there I'm saying that
just because I'm giving a caveat because there there are a lot of
men that need to stand up to their wives and the culture that
we're living in today. And you know you can't tolerate
behaviour in your family that you know is destroying your
family. Stop it.
So that's a different Bible study, but I just want to give
that that caveat, that humility. Is not the answer to rebellion
in your family. It's part of it.
It's a necessary component. When that happens, you need to
stand against the proud like Jesus stands against the proud.
So are you pursuing humility before God?
You know, one thing that God has done in my life to remind me
that I don't deserve anything that I have is that He uses this
number 5 in my life. God made work fall from the sky
for five months. He gave me a job for five
months. He provided for five months.
Then He blessed me with five kids.
That wasn't the plan. We were just answering a call
and then he called me into ministry and he broke me down
five times. And so that's a God saying, I'm
giving you a job that you don't deserve, I'm giving you kids
that you don't deserve, and I'm giving you a ministry that you
don't deserve. God has done a work in me far
beyond, you know, the personal testimony.
I still get mad at myself because I still have feelings of
pride. You know, God doesn't stop
revealing your pride to you. Pride gets revealed.
It's like looking in the mirror. You know you bring your sin to
the light. And God starts dealing with it.
You're looking in the mirror. You're cleaning yourself up.
Things look pretty good now. OK, I'm better.
I look a little bit more like Jesus today.
And then God brings some more circumstances and adversity to
your life, and he brings a bigger light.
And so then you look in the mirror, he goes like, you know,
he's like, Oh no, where'd all this stuff come from?
I didn't know I was there. And he just starts dealing with
it. That was how the Doing Ministry
Well conference went for me. You know, that's how God was
dealing with me when I was there two weeks ago.
Some of you were there. I was mortified for.
About a day at the pride that I sensed in my heart and I learned
again how I just need to be really humble before Jesus and
that Jesus humbled himself for me on the cross.
You know, thankfully I didn't act on my pride and embarrass
myself. You know, I've learned some
things being a Christian for a number of years now.
And being a hypocrite. For a number of years as well.
But I need to, all I needed to do was pray to God.
I mean, he, he is so faithful when you're just like, Lord,
please change my attitude. He's so faithful to do that and
bring you to that place of humility when you humbly ask.
I become overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude and hope
because I know that God's going to work out His plan for me.
His plan is the best one. I want God to give me everything
that I receive in my life. I don't want to be going out and
getting stuff for myself because I'll glorify God much better
that way. First, Peter 5 verses 5 through
7. Let's let's read through it here
and we can add 7. Likewise, you younger people,
submit yourselves to your elders.
Yes, all of you be submissive to one another and be cold with
humility. For God resists the proud but
gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves
under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due
time, casting all your care upon Him.
For He cares for you when you know God's will, but you're
waiting for His timing. That can feel like God doesn't
care about you. And so Peter says God cares for
you, He loves you, you just need to wait on him.
You know when you have anxiety, when you have stress, when you
have trouble, when you have impatience, you just need to
give all of that to the Lord and He will do what's best for you,
casting all your care upon Him, for he cares for you.
Humility can be measured. You can know how humble you are
by this measurement. You can measure it by how many
of your problems you are giving to the Lord.
If you're giving all your problems to the Lord, that's a
lot of humility. But if you try to manage and
worry and solve. Those concerns yourself, that's
pride. Casting is not laying down.
Casting is a really energetic term when it talks about casting
your care upon him, and it doesn't.
Say you like like lay your cares on him.
This is not a something you just kind of do.
It should not be slow and methodical is the point.
You actually throw it away from you.
That's casting. If God wants your burden and he
wants it immediately dumped on him and the faster you get to.
The point where you realize I can't do this on my own, the
faster that burden is cast to God.
He cares for you. Most people don't have a problem
with realizing. And envisioning a good God, the
problem comes. The harder thing to accept is
that God actually cares for you, that He specifically loves you.
Peter, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is reminding
us of the character of God. He loves you and cares for you.
The key to navigating a crisis in the future is humility.
In the present. We're all on a continuum of
humility leading to pride. And so I got an ugly heart just
like everybody else. You know, I'm teaching a study
on humility because God is hilarious.
You know, We're having dinner with Nick and Faye.
Last night, Nick says, what are you teaching on?
I said humility. And they both look at me like,
really, I know, I don't know, it's just what I got.
All I can tell you is I am a proud person seeking humility by
the power of the Holy. Spirit, if you stop seeking
humility, pride will get you. Anytime you get attention for
service or your hard work, you're in a great environment to
cultivate pride, and we all have to be guarded against that.
In times where I acknowledge my pride, I'm listening to the Holy
Spirit and I'm going where He leads me, which is a path to
humility. You know, humility.
It's just an honest understanding of your ability to
serve according to how Jesus directs you through the Holy
Spirit. The key to humility is focusing
on Jesus's humility. Humility says that God is the.
Center of the universe. I am orbiting around God, and
there's plenty of room for people to orbit around God with
me. Pride is obviously.
Putting you in the center of the universe and everybody orbiting
around you. The key is not focusing on your
humility but Jesus's humility. This is Philippians 2 verses 5
through 11. It says let this mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did
not consider it robbery to be equal with God.
It just means that Jesus didn't cling to His deity like a robber
clings to his treasure, but made himself of no reputation.
Taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of
men and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled
himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death
on the cross. Therefore God also has highly
exalted him and given His, given Him the name which is above
every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of
those in heaven, of those on the earth and those under the earth,
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord. To the glory of God the Father.
Jesus committed the most humble act, and so he receives the
highest exaltation. Jesus is not fighting for
position here, He is humble unto death.
Without humility, Jesus would have never come to serve us.
In Mark chapter 10, the disciples James and John, they
ask if they can sit be seated at the right and left hand of Jesus
when he. Reigns and is.
His millennial Kingdom and that really ticked off the other
disciples. That's what happens when we show
pride. You show pride.
Everybody wants to knock you down.
That's everybody's mad about that.
You show humility. Everybody wants to lift you.
Up. But when you are proud, people
want to knock you down. A number of times the disciples
asked Jesus who is the greatest. People who have the ability to
lead. Are typically very driven and
they're always trying to get better.
They're always trying to win. They like competing, that it's a
fun thing. They want to get better.
They want to be the. Best at what they do.
And some of those guys are the types of guys that Jesus picked
for ministry. They're the same way.
Those kind of people, they really need Jesus and they need
his example of humility. If they don't get Jesus and they
start getting prideful, then the wheels come off the cart.
Really quickly, it turns into a really ugly situation.
If they do receive the humility of Jesus, that's a lot of energy
pointed in the right direction. Now, when they ask the question,
Jesus doesn't rebuke their desire for greatness.
He just redirects it and he tells them to serve.
You know, valuing greatness is not necessarily a bad thing.
If they didn't value greatness, they wouldn't be able to value
the greatness of Jesus or the attributes that make Jesus
great. So Jesus responds in Mark 10
verses 43 and 45, he says. Whoever desires to become great
among you shall be your servant, and whoever of you desires to be
first shall be slave of all for. Even the Son of Man did not
become to be, did not come to be served, but to serve and to give
his life a ransom for many. Serving is a great way of
redirecting your energy and desire to be great.
If you want to be great, serve others.
Pride and selfishness, they make others serve us, and it's tough.
Because pride is how we win in the world.
You know, pride is really bad in the Bible, but it is talked
about favorably in the world. You know, we have a whole pride
month, right? You know, we don't have a
humility month and we're going to, you know, and I understand
it's a, it's a sexual morality kind of pride.
We don't have a purity month. We don't, we don't have a parade
where people wear 5 belts to make a point.
And you know, we don't have anything like that.
So, so, So what are some? Things you can do to express
humility. These are 5 actions that
demonstrate humility #1. We pray, you know, pray before
the confrontation, you know, pray before you walk into your
house, you know, you dad's getting home from work, you've
been beaten down by the man or. Whatever's going on, pray before
you walk through that threshold. You know when your spouse gets
upset with you, take the criticism to the Lord and pray
hopefully before you respond. You know if you disagree with
your spouse, pray anyway. Send the Holy Spirit to you.
Argue with your spouse. There's nothing wrong with that,
you know. Take your wife under your arm if
she'll let you, and invite Jesus into the conversation before you
start it. You know, seek His will and pray
from your heart, because that person listening to you pray is
listening to you reveal your heart to God.
It's an act of humility. And if you still can't figure it
out and you know, just keep praying together.
Number two, serve serving expresses humility.
You do the hard work even if no one.
Appreciates it and including including if your wife doesn't
appreciate it you know we always like to do that little chore
around the house and then oh, I did this one little thing and we
have to make sure that she knows about it go find your way go out
of your way to serve and be kind you know do something that makes
the other person's life easier that's.
Service take some stress out of the other person's day #3
humility. Humility gives grace giving
grace you. Know when you're having an
argument with your teenage kid and then you go and fill his gas
tank. That's that's grace.
You know, take the wife to dinner.
You know when you know you've got to have a tough conversation
with the kids, You don't do something, eat dinner, eat
dessert first, do something. It just kind of just kind of
lightens. Everything when you show grace
#4 apologize, saying I'm sorry, it's my fault.
That can radically change the trajectory of the relationship.
Don't give the legal. Briefing about how right you
are. Don't defend yourself.
It never works because it's pride.
Just apologize for the things that you did that were wrong and
forgive the things that the other person did that was wrong.
If they don't ask for forgiveness, move on.
You know, if you're getting bullied because the prideful
person is taking advantage of your humility, let them know,
hey, when you do this, when you say this, this is how I feel.
And as opposed to saying you know you're a terrible person,
you don't have, you know you. Have pride.
You need to say sorry #5 listen. Don't articulate your response
while they talk. Seek to understand.
Ask them to explain it again. Repeat what you are hearing.
Ask them. Ask them if you understand, you
know. Is this correct?
You know if you've listened and the other person is telling you
no, you're you're still not getting it.
Go back to the first four things.
Pray, serve, give grace, apologize.
So the five examples of humble actions, Pray, serve, give
grace, apologize. Listen, you won't be able to do
those things without some measure of humility.
Those are humble actions. But what if you're really not
humble? I mean, these actions are the
result of having some humility, but how do you actually get more
humility? And this is probably the most
important part of the Bible study here.
If I want you to walk away with anything, it's it's the last
kind of closing of the Bible study here.
How do you get more? Humility because when you break
down humility and pride in the Bible, you basically get these
three principles that show up. And the first one is that you
need to desire to spiritually grow, that you should desire to
grow spiritually in the love of God and seek humility.
When you stop growing, it's due to pride.
You know, pride says I know everything that I want to know
about this thing. You know I'm going to stay here
because I've made it to the top. Or I'm satisfied with what I
know or what I'm doing, so why should I do more?
Paul writes after being saved. For 30 years and leading the
ministry of the church. He says this in Philippians 3
verses 12 through 14. Not that I have already attained
or am already perfected, He's saying.
I'm not the picture of Christian maturity or humility, but I
press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has
also laid hold of me. You know, I know Jesus has more
for me, so I'm pressing on to go get it.
Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended He has an
apprehended humility or spiritual maturity.
But one thing I do know, you know, this is what I have
apprehended. This is one thing I do
understand. Forgetting those things which
are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.
We make a lot of mistakes in our pride, but you can't give up,
you know, forget about your past sins, receive forgiveness from
Jesus and move forward. He says, press toward the goal
for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
In second Timothy 4, Paul writes from prison.
This is at the end of his life. He's about to be beheaded.
I think he understands that this is his last stop here.
And he writes to Timothy and he says.
Luke is the only one who's still with me.
Bring Mark. I have use for him.
I sent to Caicus, to Ephesus. But Timothy, when you come bring
the books and he says especially the parchments, you know, Paul
still wants to grow. You know, he still wants to have
those moments where he reads the Scripture.
He says, wow, I've read this 100 times and I never saw that
before. He wants to continue to grow.
The gap between what we teach and the way that we act should
always be narrowing. It should never be widening.
We can't be deceived by the temptation to measure our
spiritual maturity based on what we know you know, It's actually
based on how much knowledge is applied.
So to increase humility, you need to desire to grow
spiritually. The second thing is that you
need to be teachable, express a willingness to be taught.
Apollos is a great example of that in Acts 18.
I'm going to read to you Acts 18 verses 24 through 28.
It says now a certain man named Apollos, born at Alexandra
Xandra. He's from Egypt, an eloquent man
and mighty in the Scriptures came to Ephesus.
This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being a
servant in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of
the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John.
Apollos is a he has expert knowledge of the Bible, and he's
probably inspired by John the Baptist.
We know that he knows about the ministry of John the Baptist.
But apparently he's been living under a rock, maybe all the way
back in Egypt, in some part of the world where he did not know
that Jesus came and died and was resurrected, Verse 26 says.
So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue, and Aquila and
Priscilla heard him. They took him aside and
explained to him the way of God more.
Accurately, you can even tell like the way that Luke writes
this, this is a sensitive situation.
Apollo's had to humble. Himself to receive their
teaching he's there's a a humble couple in the audience listening
to Apollo speak. And they say we need to talk to
you about your teaching. And Paul says, really, Are you
guys teachers? Well, no, we're we're tent
makers. OK, well, what do you have to
say? Well, we need to explain that
your message is not quite. It needs to be more accurate.
There's some things that you. Need to know, verse 27 says.
And when he desired to cross to Akaya, the brethren wrote,
exhorting the disciples to receive.
Him, and when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had
believed through grace, for he vigorously refuted the Jews,
publicly showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the
Christ. And so if Apollos doesn't humble
himself, his ministry stops to growing, and so does he.
But now, because he humbled himself, the disciples are
telling the. Other disciples, they said you
need to receive this guy. He can.
He can explain the gospel as well as anyone.
He's teachable. Teachableness is a mark of
maturity. So humility is to desire growth,
desire spiritual growth #2 be. Teachable.
And the third one is probably the one that a lot of us get
hung up on. Let God pick the teacher.
That's the third one. Be willing to be taught by
whatever instrument God chooses to use.
It's easier. To be humble and humble yourself
before God because he's God. He.
He's in control of everything and is all powerful and knows
everything. We have a natural fear of God,
so being humble towards God just kind of makes sense.
But what about to the man that God wants to use to teach you
and. What about your pastor?
You know, are you going to try to outsmart your pastor or are
you going to humble yourself before your pastor?
You know, sometimes submitting to a pastor is easy and
sometimes it's not. You know, pastors have a lot of
things to share and we look at them as leaders and so humbling
ourselves are not that bad. But what about if you have this
person in authority that that has not earned your respect yet?
You know what if you know more than the person in authority,
maybe you know a lot more. Apollos didn't know anything
about Akula and Priscilla. He knew way more about the
Bible. He has expert knowledge and can
explain explain the scriptures all pointing to the coming of
this Messiah. He's going to come.
He's going to die, Apollos. And then?
So like, you know, he doesn't know.
He was a way better teacher than they were, yet his ministry
became more fruitful because he humbled himself.
Probably a bit of a difficult pill to swallow.
For Apollo's, you know, Okola and Priscilla, they're not
teachers. But they know that Apollos's
teaching is irrelevant and radically outdated because he
didn't know about the most amazing event in world history.
And so if we're seeking humility, we can't just be
willing to be taught by those who excel and know and
experience more than we do, but by those who know less and have
experienced less than us. We can't say God, I received the
lesson, but I have the problem with the person that you're
using. To teach me the lesson, it's
actually a lot. Easier to just not care about
it, not care about who God uses. It's a ton of work.
It's a waste of energy. Pride is always a waste of
energy. And you're just fighting the
teacher. It's it's don't fight the
teacher that God picks. So you desire spiritual growth.
You're teachable and you let God pick the teacher.
Pride will RIP away. Humility and kill your ministry.
It's so dangerous because it's so well hidden.
You know, sometimes the prideful guy gets a pass.
It's not this grievous sin like you see in some other
situations. And when we give that guy the
free pass, it turns out to be a train wreck later on because
nobody stopped it. Then it's too late.
Pride is the most dangerous thing because once it gets
established, we become too proud to recognize it.
Humility is undervalued and ignored in the culture, but it's
the quality that makes the church and you attractive to the
world. It's humility.
We all love the humble guy. Humility pleases God.
It sets us free from pride. I'd never be where I am without
continually practicing humility and choosing to continually
practice humility. Humility determines where your
spiritual maturity is going to end.
And the ultimate way that God tells us to remain in humility
is to remind people of the gospel.
The gospel is that God made you to have a relationship with Him.
But we do things that are wrong. We fail to do things that we
know are right every day. And so God loves you.
He made you for a relationship much like a a husband and a wife
will decide to have. A child, they want to share
their lives with that child, a different kind of relationship
than with anybody else. They want it to be a family.
That's what God wants to do with you.
He wants to bring you into his family.
And then we have this sin problem where?
When we're like the only species on the planet that knows right
and wrong and continually chooses to do what's wrong, and
there's something radically wrong with us.
And we sin, and then we can't stop sinning, even though we
know it's wrong, it's a curse and we have no hope because we
understand that people who do things that they know are wrong
deserve a punishment for those things.
And so we are without hope, sinning and continually sinning
and waiting for judgement. And So what God does is he
writes himself into human history.
Jesus comes to the earth, God the Son, always teaching, always
loving, always giving. He came to reveal God to us.
And then he goes to the cross after living a perfect life and
dying a sinner's death. He bore the wrath of God in our
place. We did not.
He did not deserve the wrath of God.
We did. We're the ones doing things that
we know are wrong. But he went to the cross in our
place, suffering the wrath from the of the Father in our place.
Then he died. He was buried.
He rose again on the third day according to all the scriptures
that foretold He would do, so that when you receive Him, He
brings you into relationship and you receive eternal.
Life He comes back and he says I love you, I've always loved you,
I'll never stop loving you. All I want is a relationship.
With you and and that gospel and we receive eternal life.
We get heaven, we begin living our eternal lives now we get the
Holy Spirit. Everything changes and that
brings us to a place of humility where we can humbly go suffer
for Christ, serve Christ, love him, do battle for him, lose
battles for him. We don't care.
We're just doing what his will is and and we're humble when we
do it because of what he did for us.
Let's pray Lord Jesus, we love you and again Lord, we thank you
for the tremendous sacrifice that you made for us.
Lord, it was this ultimate sacrifice where there's nothing
we can do to to. Trump, what you did, you just
did it, and it's the most. Amazing act, you leaving your
place in heaven to humble yourself, become becoming a man
here. And Lord, we're so grateful
because you saved us. You saved us from hell.
We are eternally grateful and we just give all of our lives to
you. Lord, we want to be filled with
your Holy Spirit to be poured into us so that we can go out
and pour on to other people around us.
Lord, I pray that you bring great blessings to this church
and to this ministry. Lord, we know you're going to do
it through humility. Thank you Jesus, we love you,
Lord, Amen.