Pursuit: Trivial to Intentional - Pursuit Requires Humility with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

MetaCurch, how you guys doing?

Yeah.

I love that.

All right.

Uh, it's good to be here.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

So glad that you joined us.

We are in week three of our series, Pursuit from Trivial to Intentional.

Now, if you did miss the first two weeks and you want to get caught up, all of our previous sermons are online on our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash metachurch.

We are in this series talking about how to pursue the life that God created you to live.

Now, if you're new with us, you need to know that one of the fundamental beliefs we start with here at Meta is that God created you on purpose and with purpose.

And it's no accident that you're here on earth.

God created you on purpose and that deep desire that resides in every human life to make something great out of our life, to live a life of meaning and power and impact, that that was placed there by God, and that we go to his word to help us learn how to pursue the proper life that we were created for.

We were reminded of the game Trivial Pursuit as we were putting this series together, a game that was so frustrating, maybe you loved it.

It was frustrating to me because I was terrible at it.

And I never really understood why the questions were so difficult until I learned what the word trivial means.

Trivial means of little importance or value.

In other words, in the game Trivial Pursuit, the questions you had to answer didn't really matter.

They were just random questions that no one should really know.

If you happen to know them, it was just by chance.

Now it makes for a very fun trivia game, but as we've seen in this series, it makes for a terrible way to live your life.

And yet, many people spend a great deal of effort, energy investing into trivial pursuits, chasing after things in your life that have little importance or value in this life, and if we take a spiritual worldview, have no value or significance in the next life.

So what we're doing throughout this series is we're in the Christian scriptures, we're looking at a letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians.

We're gonna go through the entire letter in seven weeks and find in that letter seven keys to pursuing the life that God created you to.

Already in week one, we saw that pursuit requires partnership.

We are not meant to live this life alone.

We are not supposed to be lone rangers.

We need other people around us who are also trying to pursue the things of God to encourage us and challenge us and hold us accountable.

Last week we saw that pursuit requires perspective, specifically what we call at MetaCurch a pilgrim's perspective, which is getting our eyes off of the here and now and onto eternity, where as believers, we believe our realist life begins, our eternal life with Jesus.

Now, this week we're gonna get into chapter two of the book of Philippians, and we're gonna get to really the literary core of the letter.

And I'll look at some beautiful, beautiful writing by the Apostle Paul.

But before we do that, would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you, and we thank you for loving us.

I thank you for Meta Church, for everyone that you've brought here today in person and online.

God, that you would speak to us, that we would humble ourselves, open our hearts and our minds to you.

I thank you for a movement like Meta that is for all people, regardless of where we might be on our faith journey.

And I just ask that we would seek you with all of our heart.

And your word is promised, if we seek you, we will find you.

So be with us today.

We pray all these things in Jesus' name, and everyone said, Amen.

Uh, there are countless reasons that we take all of our life, our energy and effort, and pursue trivial things.

We've already seen a few of those.

Uh, sometimes we pursue trivial things because we're just partnered with the wrong people, and the people around you have a great effect on your life.

Sometimes, we saw last week, we pursue trivial things because of pain.

When pain comes into our life, it destroys our pursuit.

We tap out of our pursuit and we tap in to things that are trivial in order to numb ourselves or self-medicate or deny or suppress.

Uh, the reasons for pursuing trivial things are almost unending.

There is one culprit that's really come to the forefront specifically in our society and specifically in the digital age, and that is our pride.

See, we'll surprise you to know that we are the most narcissistic, self-indulgent, individualistic society that has ever existed.

Now, not you, of course, everyone else, right?

We think about ourselves like per day more than probably any generation before.

We look at ourselves more than anyone in human history.

It's actually not the easiest thing to look at yourself for most of human history.

Making a mirror was a really difficult process.

You had to find a still pool of water, a reflective surface.

Now we are the selfie generation, and we have a desire, and the desire is to be the star of the show.

I don't know if we were just weird kids, but me and my sister, when we would watch movies when we were little, like movies we owned, VHS that we own, we'd watch them again and again.

And once the movie started, we would claim a character, and you know, you always want to be the star of the show.

And so the movie would start, and it'd be like, I'm Batman, no, I'm Batman.

And I'd be like, You're a girl, you can't be Batman, I'm Batman, right?

We would fight over who is the star character.

And if you're over 30, you heard this growing up at least 17 million times.

As a matter of fact, you can finish this sentence for me.

The world does not revolve around you.

Oh, some of you young people just heard that for the first time and you're better off for it.

The world does not revolve around you.

That is some like PTSD for me, man.

I heard that a lot growing up.

Your parents would tell you, your aunts would tell you, your coaches would tell you, your teachers would tell you, the world doesn't revolve around you.

Just a little reminder, you're not the star of the show.

And it's a good reminder because most of the time it's true, but we want to be the star.

And we see celebrities and we call them the stars.

It's this aspiration.

And at Meta, we believe that that is tied to the fingerprints of God that's inside of your life, not for you to be the star, but for you to live a life of deep meaning, significance, and impact.

We don't quite know how to play it out, and so we look at how the world operates around us, and we want to do something great, and stars get a lot of attention, and so we want to be the star of the show.

And yet, when I was growing up, there were very few stars.

There were celebrities, there were pro athletes, they had a platform that no one else had, they could get their voice out in a way that no one else could.

But now we live in the digital world.

And the digital infrastructure is built to convince you you are the star of the show.

Every social media app is built to convince you that the world does, in fact, revolve around you.

Now you have a platform, and we're all like maybe one person removed from somebody who's gone viral or someone's kid who had their page take off, and so we all feel like it might be possible for us, and we all see ourselves as these little faux celebrities, and all of this digital infrastructure is self-reflective.

So we think about ourselves now more than ever.

Here's what you will learn the longer you live is that prideful pursuits are always trivial pursuits.

Prideful pursuits are always trivial pursuits.

And so if your pursuit of more money is only about you, at the end it will have little importance or value.

If your relationships are only about your own satisfaction, then ultimately they will be meaningless.

If your career advancement is only about your own influence, status, or power, then ultimately they won't be of value to anyone or anything.

Jesus told a parable about this while he was on earth.

It says in Luke 14, he told a parable to those who were invited when he noticed how they would choose the best place for themselves.

When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, don't recline at the best place, because a more distinguished person than you may have been invited by your host.

And the one who invited both of you may come to you and say, Give your place to this man, and then in humiliation you will proceed to take the lowest place.

You see, when the scriptures were written, the world existed in an honor-shame culture.

Everything was about honor and shame.

And you took everything in your life and used it to your advantage to get more and more honor in society, and for you to be shamed or humiliated in society was the absolute worst outcome.

There are still honor and shame cultures today.

Many of these cultures prioritize honor and shame even higher than what is right and wrong.

That's how big of a deal it is.

And based on your status in society, during Jesus' time at a banquet, you would be sat at the table closest to the head of the table.

Jesus is saying if you try and exploit your position and take a seat higher than the honor you actually hold, someone will come take your seat from you.

This is like the ancient walk of shame, back down to the end of the table.

It's the worst case scenario.

Jesus said you would be humiliated.

It's really interesting when you look back at the ancient world because the opposite of pride, and pride is such a big deal because prideful pursuits are always trivial pursuits.

The opposite of pride, we know is humility.

And in our world, even though we're not a culture that exemplifies humility very well anymore, we still prioritize humility.

We see it as like the chief of all virtues, the one virtue that, if you can add it to your life, will lead to the other virtues you need to live a good life.

But in the ancient world, during Jesus' time and before Jesus, the word humility never had a positive connotation.

John Dixon is a researcher and an author.

He wrote a book called Humilitas.

He had an army of researchers with him, and for years they scoured the ancient world, all the writings they could find, the documents, the diaries, the journals, the artifacts.

They looked everywhere, and what they found is that the use of the word humility always, 100% of the time, was negative.

It's hard for us to even imagine because humility is so prized.

We want to have humble kids.

When you start seeing your kids get a little bit arrogant, you snap into action, you let them know the world does not revolve around you.

You try to set them straight.

When you meet someone who is truly humble, it's just so wonderful in our world.

For some reason, it's kind of a little shocking.

You know, they tell you never meet your heroes because some of the role models that you have at a distance, the celebrities, the stars, you meet them and you find out they're pretentious jerks and it ruins your whole image of them.

I've had that go both ways in my life.

I was at a gym one time, I told the story before, very early in the morning.

It was me and one other guy, and that guy was the admiral, David Robinson, you know.

And I don't like to bother people, so I thought, I'm gonna let him do his thing, I'm gonna do my thing before I leave.

I'll tell him I appreciate him, and then I will just run giggling to my car, you know.

Like that was my plan for my interaction.

And uh so we were we were in the gym and I was shooting hoops nervously, you know, and just a couple minutes later he came to my hoop and he said, What's up to me?

And he had a conversation with me.

And later we went upstairs and lifted, not together.

Actually, I finished my whole workout before he was done stretching.

So I don't know what that means, but that's just what happened.

And then I got my bag and I got ready to leave, and I was on my way out, and and I heard my name, and I was like, Is that the Lord?

You know, like what?

And he he came and found me to tell me, and I'm like, you don't have to do this, you know.

You're you and I'm me, so you don't have to do this.

And the humility, I mean, it it rocked me, you know.

I mean, it felt impossible for me to be prideful about anything for like a week, you know.

At the same time, about seven years ago, I got to meet one of my ministry heroes, a guy who has pastor and led tens of thousands of people.

And this was at a meet and greet.

Like, he should be ready for this.

That's what the whole scenario is.

He did not have the time of day for me.

He was short, disinterested.

It was heartbreaking.

Just to be completely real, it was heartbreaking.

And maybe this is my bad because everyone gets to have a bad day.

It colored how I saw him, like forever.

That's the power of pride and humility, but not in the ancient world.

In the ancient world, humility, which is from the Latin humilitas, meant to be made low.

To be made low.

Really, the only meaning of it was to be humiliated.

And the reason is because honor and shame.

And no one would ever make themselves lower in status, make themselves lower financially, make themselves lower relationally.

No one would ever choose to serve someone else of equal or lower status than them, because it would bring them shame.

They could not even wrap their minds around our idea of humility where you intentionally lower yourself.

It wasn't even a concept.

And we know this because one of the things that Stoics and philosophers and emperors and kings did in the ancient world is they literally just wrote lists of virtues and lists of vices, and humility was always a vice, never a virtue.

It was Jesus and his movement that changed this.

It changed the world forever, and this is one of the ways that it created that change.

Let's get back into Paul's letter to the Philippians.

I want to trace his thought from last week.

If you weren't here, I'm gonna get you caught up really quickly.

In chapter one, verse 27, we see the heart of his message.

As a matter of fact, it's the only command in the entire letter.

It goes like this just one thing.

As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Here's what Paul was saying.

If you only get one thing out of this letter, remember that your home is in heaven.

You are not of this world, your eternal life is your realist life, therefore, do whatever it takes to spread the gospel and the movement of Jesus.

That is the heart of his letter.

So, why does that matter?

And what does it have to do with pride?

It matters because last week we saw that if you don't have the right perspective, a pilgrim's perspective, living daily with the reality that this world is not your home, heaven is your ultimate home, you will not pursue the things of God and meet your potential.

Today we're talking about pride, and these connect because pride distorts our perspective.

Pride distorts our perspective.

And it's not difficult to understand.

If our eyes, like scripture says, are supposed to be fixed on Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, pride takes our eyes off of eternity, off of Jesus, and onto ourselves.

Pride gives you the most limited perspective available to you because you cannot even see past your own self.

Pride distorts our perspective, and perspective is essential for you to pursue the life of power, purpose, and impact that God created you for.

Which is why, right after Paul gives us his one command in this letter, he begins to talk to us about the importance of humility.

Here's how Philippians 2 starts if then there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, and intent on one purpose.

This is uh an unbelievable, striking example of rhetorical genius.

This is some of the most beautiful prose in the ancient world, but it's actually quite simple.

He's really just expanding on his idea.

He's saying, considering that you have everything that you need from God, you have all the love and all the mercy and all the encouragement, then together as the movement of Jesus, actually pursue the life he created you to pursue, and here's how to do it.

In verse 3, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves.

Everyone should look out, not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

In humility, consider others as more important than yourself.

In an honor-shamed culture, this statement could not be more shocking.

At the risk of driving this point all the way into the ground, let me remind you that in all of recorded history, humility is only a vice.

To purposefully pursue humility is embarrassing.

To the ancient mind, this would make you a fool.

Paul says, You want to live a life worthy of the gospel, you must do it in humility.

Imagine something that is a vice, like lying.

You've known your whole life lying is a vice.

You're not supposed to do it.

Your parents knew that, your great-grandparents knew that, your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandparents knew that.

Everyone knows lying is bad.

Lying is a vice.

Imagine coming to a Sunday service and I do a whole sermon trying to convince you you need to start lying more.

You wanna please God?

You gotta be a liar, you know?

Y'all would all get up and leave.

That's so wild, by the way, that's a hypothetical.

That's not gonna happen, right?

I'm just saying that's how shocking it would be.

You want me to be made low?

You want me to bring shame on myself on purpose?

Dishonor myself and my family.

This teaching about humility from Paul is not just unique in all of ancient history.

It's scandalous, it's diametrically opposed to the entire worldview that everyone lived with.

In humility, see others as better than yourself.

Stop just looking narrowly at your own interests because prideful pursuits are always trivial pursuits, because pride distorts your perspective and get your eyes off of eternity and on to your very finite, small, limited self.

What had to happen for the vice from all of ancient history to now be promoted as the cornerstone of virtue?

What had to happen to make this shift?

Paul tells us, and most scholars believe that this next section is one of the earliest Christian hymns, that this was a poem that was memorized and either just repeated or maybe even sung in the earliest churches all the way back in the first century.

It goes like this Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.

I want to pause there because the word exploited isn't that's an obvious vice to us today.

You should not be exploiting other people.

In the ancient world, this was expected.

If you had some power, if you had an advantage, if you had a gifting, if you were given a position, it was the right thing for you to do to exploit that, to bring yourself more honor.

That's the way the world worked.

Paul is saying, Jesus, who by the way is God, existed in the form of God, is equal with God, that's just him saying, hey, Jesus, Jesus is God.

So when I, as a human get a little bit of power in the ancient world, I'm supposed to exploit that power, take advantage of that power, jockey for position, move up to a better seat at the table, get to skip the line, be served by others.

He's going, guys, Jesus has all of the power.

All of it.

Like, here's the crazy part.

We grew up grew up, and everyone reminded us the world does not revolve around.

The world actually revolves around Jesus.

He has all the power.

John 1 says that Jesus is the agent of creation.

That's how much power he has.

Everything that was created was created through him, and not one thing that was created was created apart from him.

That's the power of Jesus.

And with all that power, he did not see it as something to be exploited.

Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.

And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross.

Remember, to an ancient mind, humility was to be made low, to be forced, to be humiliated.

There was not even a conceptual category of someone choosing to lower their own status.

Paul says he emptied himself.

No one made him do it because no one could make him do it.

No one can force God to do anything.

Nobody could force God out of heaven and down into our broken, pitiful world.

Nobody could force the God of the universe up to a cross.

He humbled himself, he became obedient even to death on a cross.

What did Jesus say?

I did not come to be served.

To us, we love that.

We write books about servant leadership.

If you're gonna be a great CEO, you gotta serve the people.

It's like we get that.

The ancient world didn't get that.

You got status, the people under you serve you.

That's how it works.

Don't mess with the system.

Jesus said, I didn't come to be served.

I came to serve others and to give my life away to them.

Jesus was introducing an upside-down kingdom.

He is introducing a kind of pursuit with our lives that not only will be a little bit different than the way everyone else pursues their life, it will be upside down.

It will be diametrically opposed.

To really pursue Jesus with everything you have, you have to be okay with your life looking different.

You have to have the strength and resolve to fight against the narratives of what our current culture is offering us, because the paths offered by our culture will mostly be focused on you.

Prideful paths that end up with trivial outcomes.

We see this.

You can even be successful superficially in the world pursuing trivial things.

You can get the money, you can get the job, you can get the influence, you can get the followers, and still be completely empty inside because at the end of it, it's trivial.

It has no real value, it helps no one, and you cannot take it into your life to come.

Jesus is the ultimate example of the ultimate pursuit.

Every millisecond of his life, he was pursuing the life that God created him to live.

And because of it, he changed the world.

And he did it all in humility.

Really, what scripture reinforces again and again and again is you will be humble or you will be humiliated.

It's a choice all of us get to make.

And your humiliation likely will happen here on earth.

Proverbs, the great book of wisdom in the Old Testament, says that pride always goes before a fall and arrogance before destruction.

You'll be humble or you will be humiliated.

Let's build a hypothetical where you're never humiliated on earth, you have all of the money, you have all of the women, you have all of the status, you have all of the followers, you have everything you've ever dreamed of.

Someday this life will end.

And when this life ends, your next step is standing before Jesus.

And Jesus is gonna ask a relatively simple question: what did you do with the life that I gave you?

And if pride pulls your perspective off of Jesus and onto yourself for your duration of time on earth, you will have nothing to show for the life you've lived.

And even if you are a child of God, you've put your faith in Jesus, you have eternal life with God ahead of you, no one can take that away from you.

But when you stand before Jesus and he asks, so what did you do with the life that I gave you?

What did you do with the salvation that I gave you at cost of my life?

If you have nothing to show, you will be humiliated.

We have the opportunity to choose humility.

Paul says, adopt the same attitude of that as Christ Jesus.

Think the way he thought, live the way that he lived, live to serve others and give your life away.

Live, not to make your own name great, but to make the name of Jesus great.

And the hymn's not over.

Here's the second half.

It says in verse nine, for this reason, for this reason, specifically, because Jesus humbled himself, God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Here's how things work in God's eternal upside-down kingdom.

The way up is down.

The way to greatness is through humility.

The way to purpose is through suffering.

That's the life that Jesus modeled for us.

That's the life that is available to us today.

All of human history saw humility as a negative until the most scandalous thing happened.

God got low.

And you are screwed up, you are very far from God, and so you gotta follow the religious prescripts, and if you do it enough, then maybe things will shake out at the end of your life, and you'll get to join your deity in paradise.

That's the religious model.

The model of Christianity is that God loves us, and in our rebellion and our sin, we broke that relationship with God, and our God is bigger than big, and yet his love for us is so great that our God, who is bigger than big, came and got small.

He humbled himself, he emptied himself.

He did not exploit his power against us as rebels, instead, he emptied himself and served us to love us and bring us back into relationship with himself.

God got low.

And because Jesus got low, he is exalted to the highest place.

Scripture says, humble yourself.

Remember, in ancient writing, that's wild.

No one thinks that.

You humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.

And when the time is right, he will exalt you.

That is a promise in Scripture.

All of this shows us that pursuit requires humility.

You can be in partnership with other believers, you can be really trying to do it, you can be in your word, you can do all the things, but if you continue on prideful paths, pride will distort your perspective and your life will never be bigger than yourself.

And you were meant for something more.

You were made for something great.

To join with Jesus in the rescue and redemption of humanity.

God created you on purpose and with purpose, but to discover that, you must walk in humility.

In the next section, Paul closes this out for today, casting vision for what our lives could look like if we did these things.

He says, Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence, but even more in my absence.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who is working in you, both to will and to work according to his good purpose.

Do everything without grumbling and arguing, so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God, who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world.

By holding firm to the word of life, then I can boast in the day of Christ that I didn't run or labor for nothing.

But even if I'm poured out as an offering, I am glad and I rejoice with all of you.

And in the same way, you should also be glad and rejoice with me.

Once again, Paul encourages them to live in light of the salvation that they have been given.

As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ.

This is a long form of the call to partner with others, have proper perspective, humble yourselves, and pursue God.

And he says, if you do that, you will shine like stars in this world.

Isn't that interesting?

At least when we're young, we all want to be a star.

We all have something inside of us that longs for greatness.

And maybe the world has kicked you around enough where you've settled for the status quo.

But at some point, you yearn for more.

And so the world convinces us that the path to that greatness is to focus on ourselves and prioritize ourselves and exploit what we are given when in reality the path is to trust God, to humble yourself, and to serve those around you.

My mentor, John Whitdy, he has what I think is the greatest definition of humility.

He says, humility is an accurate assessment of yourself.

It's not trying to exploit the things you have to make yourself seem far greater than you are.

It's also not the reverse side of pride where you buy the lie that you're not good at anything and you're not worth anything and you can't take a compliment because you just have no self-esteem.

That's also pride, believe it or not.

It's an accurate assessment of yourself.

And that starts with seeing what God has to say about you.

And for some of you, you don't really have a starting place to assess who you are because you haven't yet fully realized how much you matter to the God of the universe.

You've been looking for your value and for your worth in prideful pursuits instead of looking to your heavenly Father, who, if you ever wonder how valuable you are to him, you have to look no further than the cross of Jesus Christ.

Who emptied himself, became as a man, humbled himself, and was obedient even to death on a cross.

Scripture is clear.

It was the love of God that compelled Christ to his cross.

This is how we know that Christ loves us, scripture says, that while we were still in rebellion, he died for us.

The greatest love anyone has is to lay his life down for his fellow man.

And that is what Jesus did for us.

Mediturch, your life matters far too much to continue pursuing great amounts of your time and energy on trivial things.

As a movement of people, this movement matters far too much for us to be investing massive amounts of time into trivial pursuits.

And if we want to break free from the trivial, we have to get intentional.

Throughout this series, we've been handing out what we call the quick start guide.

If you don't have one, they're up here, both corners, the front of the stage.

Please come grab one after the service.

We try to keep our ministry model very simple here at MetaCurch.

What we see in the first century of the church is just very simple.

So we say you need three things.

You need to meet Jesus.

That is your starting place.

Jesus gives you your eternal life by you simply putting your faith in him.

That is the starting place for coming under an eternal perspective and living for something beyond this life.

If you've done that over the course of this year, we've had well over a hundred people raise a hand to put their faith in Jesus.

Your next step is to get baptized.

This is where your church family gets to celebrate your relationship with God and we get to support you in your journey.

The second thing is you need to partner up.

We all need people in our corner.

We have easy ways to do that.

We have volunteer teams where you can know people and be known by them and use your gifts for the gospel.

We have life teams that meet all throughout the week that just apply Sunday service into their life.

The third thing you need is to get healthy.

We all get stuck.

It's easy to become unhealthy emotionally, relationally, financially, spiritually.

Any of those areas where you are unhealthy can sabotage the significant life that God has given you to live.

And so this has been years in the making.

We finally compiled all these programs and processes into one thing called the Meta Movement Academy.

It starts in September.

There's an info session, August 13th.

If you feel stuck, unhealthy, trivial in your life, please come out to that and learn more about what we have to offer over the course of this semester of programs.

We've had about a hundred people go through it.

It really has the capacity to change your life.

And remember, humility is an accurate assessment of yourself.

And one of the problems is a lot of us don't really know ourselves.

It's one of the things we'll help you with in the Academy.

Your life matters, it matters to this movement, it matters to me, and most importantly, it matters to Jesus.

And so let's exit the rat race, seeking attention and prideful paths.

Let's humble ourselves and see just what God can do through us.

Would you pray with me?

Right where you're at, if you'd close your eyes and bow your head, there's nothing magic about it.

Just create a little bit of space for reflection, for prayer.

We come to Metachurch to get honest.

We're not here to waste our time.

We're not here to check some religious box.

And so it's no surprise to you that we live in a very prideful culture, self-obsessed, self-indulgent.

But I want you to make it personal.

What are the areas in your life where you have been pursuing things out of pride?

Focused on yourself, limited perspective.

What are the things in your life that maybe you've tried to exploit, take advantage of for your own gain?

And what would it look like for you to choose humility?

What would it look like for you to take all that God has given you and use it?

Not to make yourself known, but to make God known.

As always, I want to talk to anyone in the room or with us online who's never taken that first step.

And the first step is having a relationship with Jesus.

Christianity is not another religion to join, it is an offer of relationship with your Heavenly Father.

And it comes through the work of Christ.

Religion says you work your way to God.

Jesus says, I came down to you.

He did all the work, and all he asks is for your faith.

There are no magic words, there are no hoops to jump through.

You don't have to get every aspect of your life cleaned up.

Jesus, in this moment, will meet you exactly where you are.

He knows you better than you know yourself.

He knows the sin in your life, he knows the pain that you've caused, and he will meet you where you are and give you eternal life today.

All he asks is that you believe in who he is and what he's done.

So if you're here and you've never had a moment in time where you've put your faith in Jesus and you're ready to do that today, then with everyone's eyes closed, I want to ask you right in your seat to just lift your hand up where I know who I'm talking to and who I'm praying with.

Amen.

By raising a hand, you are saying, today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Praise God.

Amen.

Listen, for those who raised a hand, I want you to know that Jesus sees your faith and accepts it.

Which means your sins, past, present, and future, have been forgiven.

That you have been given eternal life, and you have been adopted into the family of God.

And so we want to celebrate with you, and first I want to help you really simply acknowledge this decision today.

And so if you raised a hand, I'm gonna ask you to voice this prayer with me, and I'm gonna ask everyone else who is a believer in the room to repeat this as well.

So let's pray like this: Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God, that you died for my sins, and that you rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Now let me pray over you.

Jesus, I just stand in amazement service after service as you continue to do the work of calling people home, calling people back into relationship with yourself.

I thank you for every hand that was raised here and online.

God, I ask that today would be the first day of them finding out all that you have for them.

God, through the ups and the downs, the triumphs and the struggles, that they would grow closer and closer to you.

They would learn their next steps and they would take them.

We love you.

I pray that you would help us to choose humility, to adopt the same attitude that you had, Jesus, to live to serve others and not be served, to live not to make our name great, but to bring glory to you.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit.

And you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.