Relationships Flourish Where Grace Is Present And Grace Is Present Where Humility Is Chosen

Welcome to Christ Community Church.

Glad to see you.

Glad you're here.

Christopher, another home run.

Thank y'all.

That's great.

Just great.

Colin, thank you for making the words appear on the screens.

Bless you.

Everybody that came early and helped us set up all this.

Thank you very much.

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There's a box right over there.

If you're not sure how you contribute to the church, you can put something in that box or you can go on what's the deal?

PayPal.

Pushpay.

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And do it that way if you want.

That's the way I do it, but I don't I it just happens automatically.

I don't even know.

Anyway.

Thank you for contributing to the life and the ministry of this church.

I'm very grateful.

If you're a student, you're dismissed.

Did I already say that everybody going?

Okay, good, good, good.

Um, bathrooms, if you're wondering, or that away.

Just go out and go that way.

Okay?

Anything else I'm forgetting, spouse?

I have no idea.

Oh, yeah.

Thursday last Thursday night was supposed to be our first Thursday night Bible study and prayer time at our house.

It was.

And um I was trying to be nice to the fearful, and so we didn't have it, and so we'll have it this Thursday night, six to seven, um, at our house.

In all honesty, our front steps, which are in the shape.

Oh, it was like glacier.

It's a bitcome glacier.

It was, it was, it was, I saw Frosty and the Abominable Snowman boat.

They were there.

Go by.

But anyway, uh, we're gonna do it this Thursday night, Lord willing, six o'clock at our house, and uh we ought to be done by seven.

And so uh come.

I'd love for you to join us.

Uh I'll send out something with something you can read to prepare for what we'll be doing.

If you'd like to receive that, if you'll text me, um I'll uh send that to you.

If you don't know where we live, just see one of the two of us after church and we'll tell you where we live.

Well, depends on who it is.

No.

Uh yes, if you just see us after church, we'll tell you how to get there.

It's a mile or not even a mile, yeah, from here.

So all right.

Uh I think that's I think that's it.

Okay, well, I'm gonna open this up today.

Please.

With the idea, an idea that I hold pretty uh strongly, you can please refute it later if you if you think something different.

But I don't think that throughout the course of history, throughout the course of time, I don't think that human beings have changed all that much.

And I don't mean like evolutionary or biologically, I just mean the human experience through the years, the centuries, the millennia.

Uh our oldest literature and our oldest texts, like the Bible and other texts that are ancient, uh, seem to say to me that the human experience hasn't changed all that that much, what it means to be a human.

In fact, Solomon offers in Ecclesiastes of a book that I like.

Um, what what has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again.

There's nothing new under the sun.

I think that's such an important idea that you're speaking about that people are some of you will not agree, that's fine.

Read your Bible and you'll you'll see.

Um but if you if you read the Old Testament along with the New Testament, what you discover is people aren't getting better, people aren't getting worse.

They're the same mean, selfish, uh, angry, fearful, greedy, lustful people.

Also kind and generous, but yes, we have moments of nobility and wonder and glory and courage and faith.

Absolutely, but one of the important reasons to read the Old Testament is so that we see ourselves in these characters, these characters throughout the Old Testament, we're watching them in the news today.

Nothing has changed.

People aren't getting better, people aren't getting worse, because oh, things are getting worse.

No, no, they're not.

So that's important that we see that.

It is, it is.

In fact, um, Ecclesiastes says again, Solomon says again, do not say where were the old days better, were the old days, why were the old days better than these?

But it's not wise to ask such questions.

Um don't change much.

Tribe kills tribe, brother kills brother.

It it's these are our oldest stories, and to Larry's point, our most current ones as well.

It's the same stories.

And the same questions are asked over and over.

I teach literature, you might know.

Hamlet says he wants to know what is man?

He asked it throughout the entire play.

What he's asking is, how do I choose to be here?

How do I live here?

What are my choices about being here?

Steinbeck puts it this way: what's man's story about?

What are we doing?

He asks.

Not who I am, what am I choosing?

What sort of person am I choosing to be?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And even Nicodemus says, it's active, right?

What must I do to be saved?

Um, here's the we're gonna, I'm gonna talk about humility today.

How about that?

And this is where a choice can be made between, often daily, minutely, between pride and humility.

Because see what our forefather Cain said is this.

He said, when God approached him, why did you kill your brother?

Why did you do what you did?

Whatever it is.

He said, Am I my brother's keeper?

Am I responsible for you and you and you?

And the gospel resounds with the answer to this question.

Yes, yes, yes.

You are responsible, but he doesn't, he doesn't like that.

It's the question of Adam and Eve, we inherited this from them.

We inherited the Christ line through God and grace.

And from Adam and Eve, we and humility, and from Adam and Eve we inherited pride.

Because when God said don't eat of this, they said, basically, don't tell me what to do, you can't tell me what to do.

It's what a two-year-old says.

You can't tell me what to do.

You can't tell me what to eat and what not to eat.

You can't tell me how to drive.

When you quoted that verse from Genesis where Cain says, Am I my brother's keeper?

Am I responsible for my brother?

It just hit me.

Thank you.

What$50,000 grad school couldn't do, thank you.

Um people are always asking the same question.

Questions never change.

People don't change, questions don't change.

The real questions, because isn't that the very question that the Pharisees asked Jesus?

Who is my neighbor?

Who is my brother?

And Jesus had a very different answer than what they expected or wanted.

Who is my neighbor?

Who is am I my brother's keeper?

Jesus would say, Yes, you are.

And he's not talking about the folks that we invite to family reunions.

Which are hard enough.

Well, actually, they're harder.

But anyway, no.

Uh he's the circle is much broader in the eyes of God.

So thank you.

So you've heard me, if you've been around me much, you've heard me talk about the book, The Brothers Kermazov, which is a book I love.

And in it, there's a woman who comes to her priest, the father, and she says, her daughter is sick and not getting well, and she's sad about that.

And so she, as one would be, and she comes to her priest and she says to the father, um, I've lost my faith.

I'm upset about this daughter being sick, and I've lost my faith.

What do I need to do to get my faith back?

And his answer is remarkable.

His answer is love your neighbor as yourself.

And Dostoyevsky goes on, the the writer goes on to talk about two different types of action, two different types of love in this book.

Active love, which I'm getting to in a second, and love in dreams.

Those are his words.

Love in dreams.

Um today we're going to talk about active love.

Here's how Tolstoy is.

Wait a minute, before you move on.

Okay, okay.

I want to make sure I understood what you just said.

I've got more to say about active love.

Well, I know that.

But what you quoted earlier, just a minute ago, was that if I'm struggling to have faith, Dostoevsky would say that the way to create fresh, strong faith in my life is by actively loving, engaging.

That's exactly what he said.

Versus that what my experience with you and thousands of others is that when my faith is shaky, weak I'm struggling.

What I want to do is withdraw.

I want to hide, not engage.

But what he's saying is that when my faith is weakest, or when I'm searching for fresh faith, that's when I ought to charge into the lives of other people.

And and she's gonna address that too.

Yes, he says to her, to the woman, to get your faith back, you should actively love your neighbor.

And she says this, oh, but I do love, uh to your point, I do love.

I love the whole world.

But I don't like my neighbor because his goat eats my flower blossoms.

Right?

And so she doesn't actively, and we get that, I get that answer.

Don't you get that answer?

Neighbor's annoying, dog barks too much, they play loud music, and I understand.

My neighbor's dog barks way too much, and I'm struggling to love her.

Oh, yes.

My daughter lives next door to me, so yeah.

What that woman who went to her priest won't accept and doesn't accept throughout the course of the book is that she will love her neighbor and be kind to her neighbor, actively love.

Uh, but she has demands.

There are demands on that.

So if you meet my demands, then I will love you.

And her demands are direct and immediate.

You must do.

If you can get your goat to quit eating my flowers, I will love you.

If you will get your dog dog to quit barking, I will love you.

She demands immediate action and gratitude.

And without immediate action and gratitude, she says, I what she says is I cannot love.

If you don't immediately change and give me the gratitude I need, I can't love.

I what she's happening, what's happening with her is she loves the whole world, but hates her neighbor.

And what Dostoevsky says is that is a dream.

An active love is the reality.

And what we're I'm balancing that with today is love and dreams.

That's pride.

I love everyone.

I love everyone in the city of Middle East.

Well, it's the people in the Oscars.

It's the people in the Oscars.

I love I love all of y'all.

It's easy to love everybody that you don't know.

It's the ones we know.

That's the ones we struggle loving, right?

It's true, it's true, it's true.

So I'll toss it to you on this.

Um my question for us, our question for us today is how am I doing loving the difficult people in my life?

How am I doing?

We're called to be a people of humility, and yet so often, we were maybe more often, maybe way more often, we respond with demands, which is the opposite of humility.

I will love you, I will forgive you, I will like you, I will help you.

But anything after the word but Dostoevsky, and I think the Bible would say is putting a weight um on you that's not humble and not full of grace because love is sacrificial.

Yeah, and that's the thing that I it demands of us something we that's difficult to give.

Yes, and the reason us learning to respond to life and people with humility.

The reason that's so important.

This isn't just some nice little Bible talk about we ought to be more humble.

There's a very practical reason why humility is so important.

And that is because according to Scripture, humility is the doorway to grace.

I will not experience God's grace apart from humility.

Have you ever thought about the fact?

I think Larry mentioned it just a week or two ago, when Christ would go to heal people, he asked them the question.

So here's a blind person that's been blind their whole life, or person that's been by a pool, um, a crippled person, a person that was born differently, um, that it's very obvious what he cannot walk.

And Christ always said, What can I do for you?

The reason for that is because we need that he needs us to respond, he wants us to respond in humility.

I can't do this without you.

Yes.

I can't see.

I need help.

I need help.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that, you know, that's I think of that, as you said that, that story of the fellow in the Old Testament, uh, Naaman, who had leprosy.

And he wanted to be healed of leprosy.

And so he hears that there's this God in Israel, a B team in his mind, a B-team country at best, uh, that has this God that can heal leprosy, and so he goes and asks, or or says, Hey, I'd like to be healed.

And the prophet responds with, Okay, go jump in the Jordan River seven times.

And he said, I'm not doing that.

The rivers in my country are better than the Jordan River.

I'm not doing that.

What he was really, the problem wasn't water.

The problem is he didn't want to take his robes off before he got in that water.

It's embarrassing, it's leprosy.

And I'm not gonna show anybody my leprosy.

So he heads off.

And you some of you that read the Old Testament know the rest of the story.

A little girl, sir, a little servant girl says, Sir, if he had asked you to do something incredibly hard, wouldn't you have done it to get rid of leprosy?

The thing that keeps you from hugging your child and kissing your wife, and getting a job, and having a fulfilling life, the very thing that's robbing you of everything that's good.

What wouldn't you do to get rid of that which robbed you of life?

He says, I'd do anything.

Then go take your robe off and jump in the river seven times.

Because he was willing to humble himself, he experienced the grace of God.

And I connection is is it vital.

Yes.

Absolutely vital.

And for us to miss that, that I don't feel close to God.

I don't feel God's grace in my marriage, in my parenting relationship, with my friends, with my parents, with my neighbors, I with my co-workers, I don't feel the grace of God.

And so the way we say this, where's God?

Where's God?

I don't feel him, I don't see him, I don't, I don't expect, I'm not experiencing God.

Well, the very practical, real answer to that is God manifest, where God manifests himself is through grace.

It's through grace.

And so if I want to experience God in a relationship, what I've got, if I want to experience and see the grace of God being poured out in that relationship, in that situation, the way to create that, we're waiting on God.

And God's waiting on us.

God's saying, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.

And all that means is just do what I'm telling you to do.

Just do what I'm telling you to do, and that is humble yourself.

Say you're sorry, say you were wrong, ask forgiveness, give forgiveness, go and do that kind deed.

Um what go and step into that uncomfortable situation.

Whatever it is that you know God wants you to do, which is probably that which your flesh is screaming out.

Don't do that.

That's hard.

That's risky, that's scary, that's uncomfortable.

But they were wrong.

That's fine.

Maybe they were more wrong.

Probably they were.

But we walk away and miss the grace of God.

I think of that lady in the New Testament, the um little Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus with her daughter in tow, and the little daughter is demon-possessed.

And she comes to uh Jesus and she says, Jesus, would you heal my or actually I think it's through the disciples.

And uh they say, Jesus, this lady is bugging us, she's bothering us, uh, she's got a demon-possessed daughter, do something.

And Jesus says one of the most uncomfortable, unnerving It's a hard statement, and we could spend days and days discussing that.

But the the the the simplest slash best answer is this.

Jesus says, Should I give that which is meant for children to the dogs?

And if that had been me or you, how would you have responded?

How would I have responded?

I'd have said, you go right straight to Hades.

I'm out of here.

Don't you call me a name, don't you degrade me, don't you demean me?

Who could argue with that response?

No one.

But if she had done that, she'd have been right, she'd have been justified, she'd have been validated, but she would have gone home, and her daughter would have spent the rest of her life demon-possessed.

Just like Naaman.

Go on home, biggin.

You're right.

Your rivers are probably better than ours.

Don't take your robes off.

You don't have to.

That's not justified.

That's not warranted.

You're right.

We'll always find a valid reason for not doing what God says.

Go on.

Will God still love you?

Of course.

But if he'd have gone back home without doing what God said, he would have spent the rest of his life eaten up with leprosy, and he would have never hugged his wife or kissed his children or had experienced anything great in his life ever again.

So that's the that that's the it is costly.

We say, you know, I hear all the life that all the time that grace is free.

We gotta be careful with that.

Because I would say, I'm not saying that's not true, but that's not the whole story.

I would suggest that the Bible declares that grace is incredibly costly.

And where I want to experience grace, am I willing to pay the cost?

Am I willing to do what God's telling me to do?

Do even though it's uncomfortable, costly, unjustified, but I do it not because I feel led or I it feels good, but I do it because I know God wants me to, out of the belief that if I do what God tells me to do, even though it's uncomfortable, I will experience grace.

So I spend a lot of time actually talking to students about um about forgiveness, and I teach mostly seniors, and they're about to go to college and all that, and and she'll come in and she's mad or sad or depressed or anxious, or and there are other things to be done, but um she'll tell me at the heart of it, I'm still just so mad at my dad for leaving.

I just I hate my father for what he did.

Or I'm just so mad.

You'll laugh at this, but it's it because it's girlish, but it's true nonetheless.

I'm just so, so mad at those girls that kicked me out of the friend group in the ninth grade.

I still I I hate them.

I'm I'm you know how that feels, or on and on and on.

And um I will mention to them that forgiveness is such a hard word to define, but to that that humility can set that down.

Humility can set that down and not hate you anymore.

And then you the but what they want, you see, is what we all want.

That's so hard to do because I want justice.

I want justice.

I want my dad.

He left, not me.

He should come back and apologize to me.

What?

But that's probably not going to happen.

So are you gonna be 65 years old and still mad at death?

Maybe.

But here's what Tolstoy says about it.

Tolstoy says this about this active pursuit of love that only comes through humility.

He says, everyone thinks and dreams of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

That could almost be in the Bible.

Well, it is in the Bible in principle, makes me think of uh one of my heroes that I read quite a bunch of, G.K.

Chesterton.

And um he was a newspaper man in London.

And uh he uh the new the London Times wrote a um uh uh an article, and in the article they asked the question, what is wrong with the world today?

And they asked people to write back in answers.

What is wrong with the world today?

G.

K.

Chesterton, who's one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, wrote back this Dear Sirs, I am sincerely G.K.

Chesterton.

What's wrong with the world?

I am.

Not other not you or you, I am.

And when we can see that, when we can see that, that my response to the disappointments and the pains and the wrongs and the wounds of life which no one is exempt from.

We know this.

Is either going Yes, with justice makes our flesh celebrate.

You wronged me and you got it back twofold?

Yes.

Who who can be upset about that?

Only problem is you miss God's grace.

Grace does not come through justice.

In fact, grace would flee from justice.

So what do you want?

Do you want justice or do you want grace?

Because I can tell you right now, at the end of the day, what you're the part of you that belongs to God, you don't long for justice.

You long for grace.

What your mate longs for from you is not justice but grace.

What your children long for is not your justice, but your grace.

And grace comes when we are willing to humble ourselves.

I think of uh Abraham and Lot.

Abraham was the one that heard from God.

Abraham's the one that took the risk.

Abraham's the one that moved his whole family, Abraham's the one that created the family ranch, Abraham's the one that multiplied the flocks and the herds.

Abraham did everything.

And little sidekick helper Lot came along for the ride.

We don't see him doing Jack.

But when they became so large that they had to divide to conquer, it would have been very easy, justified, right, good, understandable for Abraham to say, hey, I'm responsible for all this.

I get first dibs.

And no one could have argued with that.

I don't think Lot would have argued with that.

But Abraham valued a grace relationship with Lot more than he valued being right.

And so he said, you pick first.

And whatever you don't pick, I'll take that.

But Abraham, you gotta look out for yourself, you gotta watch your back, you gotta stand up for what's right, you gotta protect your interest.

That's who could argue with that?

Who could argue with that?

You just miss God's grace.

That's the rub, that's the issue, that's the question.

Do I want to live a life and walk in a life of grace or not?

And I always read the gospels every day.

And almost every day I finish the gospels with this thought.

Man, I'd love to walk.

I've walked with Jesus.

I would love to have walked through life.

Seeing him and feeling him and hearing him and watching him and learning from him and participating.

Gosh, I would have loved to have done that.

You know what that is, don't you?

Wherever Jesus was, that was just a little spot of grace, because wherever Jesus was was grace.

And if I choose to walk in that mindset of grace, that that mentality that I'm going to willingly lay down what I want for the good of someone else, God sees that and God begins to pour out grace into my life and into that.

The problem with it, of course, is that it is so illogical.

Yes.

It's the opposite of culture.

Of our culture.

Of the lot most cultures, maybe all, I don't know.

It's human nature, right?

Who thinks who would think that it would turn the other cheek, go the second mile, the the the last shall be first?

Absurd.

Craziness.

And yet I have a student at the moment, the most sad, most anxious person I know who's still angry at a person who has died.

And she's seventeen years old.

And and the tragedy of that is for her to be 37 and 57 and 77 and still be mad at that dead person.

And without humility that brings grace into her life, without accept forgiving something that can absolutely cannot be reciprocated.

I understand that.

But she is a she's miserable.

And to your point, I hope she doesn't come to the 50th reunion.

Well, if she comes to the 50th reunion, I won't be there.

But if I hope she doesn't come to the 20-year reunion and um still miserable.

But she probably will if she doesn't understand and accept the fact that she can move in humility that leads towards grace.

Yes.

Even in an unfixable situation.

And she will win.

She will glory.

Yes, she she will win.

That's that God wants us to win.

That's the whole point of this lesson.

God's not saying, oh, I want your life, your big picture life, to be a life of losing.

He wants our lives to be a lot to be lives of winning.

But in God's economy, we win not by beating people, but by yielding and putting their best first.

I want you to tell that story before we run out of time.

That's the whole butt most important thing for me today.

But I just want to, there's two different times, one in James and one in 1 Peter, where the Bible, I'm summarizing, but basically this is what it says.

James and Peter both say, put on humility.

Like you would a coat.

Not wait for humility or let humility fall down on you like some kind of a, I don't even know what it would be.

Put on humility.

It's active love.

And you see, I love what you read at the beginning.

How do you put on humility?

What I want, God make me humble.

God make me humble.

What I'm learning from you today, and I mean that sincerely, what I'm what I'm learning from you today is the way I put on humility is by actively, sacrificially putting other people's well-being, their good, first, in spite of what I want.

And if I do that, I will experience the grace of God.

And then in both verses, in 1 Peter and in James, it says something very significant to me.

It says, you ought to do this and I ought to do this.

We ought to put on the grace of God.

Why?

Because God is opposed to the proud.

You know, if you watch CNN or Fox News, boy, I hear about all kinds of things God's opposed to.

He's opposed to that group, and he's opposed to this group, and he's opposed to Russia, and he's opposed to China, and he's opposed to the police, and he's opposed to the opposite of the police.

I don't even know how that all lines up.

But he's opposed to the Republicans, he's opposed to the Democrats, he's opposed to the rich, he's opposed.

I hear all kinds of things God's opposed to.

But James and Peter tell me that you know who God's opposed to?

Me.

Oh, but God's for us.

Who can be against us?

That's another facet.

I'm not, but yay! I'm not denying that.

Yay! But James and Peter both say, put on humility, for God is opposed to the proud.

How many of us go through life?

And we're living life, we're making decisions, we're experiencing situations, we're going through things, and it is in spite of God instead of with God.

Because I will not humble myself.

I will not humble myself.

You think about that going through life in opposition.

God is opposed to what I'm doing.

He is fighting against me as a parent.

He's fighting against me as a husband.

He's fighting against me as a worker.

He's fighting against me as a pastor.

He's fighting against me in my friendships.

Because it's not that he doesn't love me, it's that he is trying to shake me into saying, Larry.

All those relationships will only flourish where there's grace.

And grace will enter those relationships where you are willing to humble yourself.

So a couple of practical examples as we get to the end.

How does that look in real life?

What's that look like in real life?

So I I actually wish this were like the month of November, but it's not.

One of the ways I have seen this actively happen in my own life was years and years ago, but um during the Christmas season, during the holidays, my mother, when we all, my brother and I, when we all first got married, we'd have this wonderful, beautiful, lovely, fancy Christmas meal.

And it was she brought out all the stuff, and it was great and beautiful.

And Martha Stewart would have been, you know, envious, and it was just spent months, not weeks, months, reading every Martha Stewart type article.

It was great.

To make a plan, I mean to do a Christmas, a brand Christmas spectacular.

And it was It was great.

It was it was great, but as time went along and a bunch of kids got born and people became less and less compliant uh over the years or whatever, um it was not an easy move, and I'm gonna give you that.

But my I watched my mother loosen up and give up to this point now almost entirely, all of that expectation, all of that perfect brand extravaganza for the greater out of love.

But that's your belief.

She did that after years of fighting.

That's true.

She would get no one could live up to it.

You had to be there at a certain time, it started at a certain time.

There were 19, uh, what do you call it?

Different parts of a meal.

Courses.

There were 19 courses and games in between each course.

It was it was it was mind-boggling.

It was it was too much.

And by the end of it, everyone was so weary and frustrated and on and on edge and tense.

And this went on for a long time.

And now that's it, and that's it.

And so You went to her and talked to her.

That's the thing.

That's I finally had a meeting with my mother.

And we just sat down together and and talked.

And I said, what can we do to loosen this up?

What can we do?

Like Nicodemus, what must we do to be saved?

To be saved.

That's exactly right.

We're going under.

And um I gave two or three different options.

I said, Mother, I'm gonna support you on all.

I love you, and we'll support you on all these options, but option number three is maybe we should loosen up.

Make things more flexible, not so.

Make lens more flexible.

And it would have been so easy for your mom, who had spent thousands of hours, I'm not exaggerating, thousands of hours.

And her dad had spent mountains of money and energy and time, it could have been very easy for your mom to say, you know what?

We're doing all this.

Y'all are the beneficiaries of all this, we're doing all the work, we're spending all the money.

You be thankful, you be grateful, you show up with a smile on your face and get in line and march to the beat of the drummer, and everybody better get a happy smile on their face and enjoy this.

And that, to be quite honest with you, I I've got the best mother-in-law in the world and I adore her, but that is her personality.

That's a great point.

Humili I I thought of that earlier.

Humility is was not a her strong suit, okay?

Humility is not a personality trait.

Exactly right.

It is a choice.

It's a choice to alter one's behavior.

But because she, and I'd be honest with you, I was not ex- I was not expecting the best.

I thought that meeting was gonna go south, and it was not gonna go good, and you know, I but Sherry Walk came home and I said, I had to go.

She goes, You won't believe it.

It was incredible.

Nanny responded with humility and she said, I see what you're saying.

I will listen to you.

I'm gonna make the and she, I don't mean she made a few little minor uh incidental changes.

She made huge sacrificial changes for the good of the group.

Now she's got twenty two people.

There's a bunch of people, twenty-two people who wouldn't miss this.

She changed dates.

You can't imagine how she changed it, and because she was she was willing to not cling to it, she laid it down, and she now has experienced along with the rest of her family the grace of God.

Yeah.

I just think that's an amazing deal.

Do we have time for one more?

Please?

One more, and then I'll be done.

A long time ago, uh we I had a very difficult experience in a church that we were a part of.

And it was very hard and um hard on me, hard on us, hard just it was a terrible experience.

Think of a terrible experience you've had.

We've all had them.

Well, I had one.

And one of the persons who made this very difficult for me, though, no, let me say it like this.

There was a person, a number of persons, but one, who made this very, very difficult for me.

So that's it.

The thing fell apart, everybody kind of went their way, everybody was kind of licking their wounds.

And all of a sudden I start to think about or read about forgiving one's enemy, doing good for one's enemy.

Well, that is very easy to say until one has an enemy.

Who's just out there being an enemy?

What if posting, doing, saying, whatever enemies do, it's easy to love a person until they become the enemy, and then all of a sudden it's like the worst.

Anyway, so I was thinking about that and praying about that.

How does one love one's enemy?

And in this particular case, I didn't even see the enemy anymore.

Never saw this person again.

So I don't even know how to forgive or how to move.

And one day in my school, we have chapel every day, and uh so At the end of chapel, we say uh it's an episcopal school, we say a prayer, and you can kneel and say the prayer, and so I'm always nailed to say the prayer because that's not my practice in my church, and I I like the practice.

So I kneel to say the prayer, and all of a sudden, you know how when you've had a thought from the Spirit of God and you know you're supposed to do something.

Have you ever had that experience?

God said to me, I just felt this, look over there.

Well, I sit up front, and across the aisle are the littlest ones, the sixth grade girls, the littlest ones.

And it's all these little girls just doing the St.

Mary School prayers, very sweet.

And God said, if you can't love or pray for your enemy, pray for her children.

And it and I did, and I do.

And it was an inroad into breaking down a stronghold of hurt, not hate, hurt, in order to move toward loving a person who'd been cruel by praying for a person she loved.

I think part of humility is this.

Putting on the opposite of what doing, the opposite of what an enemy would do.

Yes.

Yes.

Whatever an enemy would do to you, do the opposite.

And perhaps that's a tiptoe into a life of humility.

Or a or a big uh dive into a big old honkin' river of humility, maybe.

Maybe not a tiptoe.

Can you imagine your family operating where everyone responded to each other the opposite of the way enemies would respond?

Can you imagine this city, what this city would look like if the police operated in humility, if the people that are opposed to the police operated in humility?

Can you imagine what our world would look like, your world, my world, if we respond when we're driving on the highway, when we're in the grocery store.

Treating people the opposite of the way an enemy would treat an enemy.

That's where we're going to experience grace.

And that's what I want.

I want a marriage of grace.

I want a family of grace.

I want to be a grandfather of grace.

I want to be a pastor of grace.

I want to relate to my neighbors with grace.

Oh, that my little cove was a cove filled with people that were experiencing the grace of God.

We don't have to ask for that.

That's the great thing.

We pray for revival.

Pray for healing.

Pray for a double portion of the power of Elijah.

Pray for yay.

God bless you.

Keep it up.

Pray that stuff on me too.

Are you doing it for yourself?

But you don't have to pray for humility.

You put it on.

I want grace in my marriage.

Put it on.

Don't ask for it.

Put it on.

I want grace in my relationship with my mother-in-law.

Put it on.

Don't pray for it.

Such a powerful concept.

We're to put on humility.

Because it's the doorway through which we experience the grace of God.

I'm not sure that's an amen lesson.

More like an O me, but that's okay.

That's all right.

Thank you.

Amen.

Karoon Annie, would y'all come help me, please?

We're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper.

And I just gonna ask you something before we proceed.

I cannot fathom.

Maybe, maybe there's somebody here.

You know, people say there's a Sasquatch and, you know, a Loch Ness monster.

Who am I to say there's not?

Maybe there's somebody here who doesn't have a face and a name that's right there.

Right there.

That's the person that I want a relationship of grace with.

Maybe you're Mother Teresa or Billy Graham.

God bless you.

But for the rest of us humans, those of us that are humans, there's probably a name and a face right there.

And you know that's the person that God wants you to show humility to as a means of experiencing grace.

Well it's active love.

That's a word I like.

I like your word.

I've never heard that phrase before.

Active love.

Before you come up here and take that wit, before we come up here and take the symbols that represent the greatest expression of active love.

Why don't you just take a moment?

Lubies and the Piccadilly will wait.

They'll be there when you get out.

Okay?

Take just a moment.

Do we dare to just humble ourselves before God?

And just in silence ask him, what do you want me to do?

I know what my flesh wants to do.

I know what's justified.

But what do you want me to do?

And I believe he'll show you.

If you want to know, he'll show you.

And when you're through doing business with God, and you feel like you're good, then you come up, and um what I'd like you to do is to come to the center.

There's open glasses of wine and there's covered these deals right here.

And then I've got bread right here if you'd like a piece of bread.

And uh we're gonna eat and we're gonna drink, just uh remind ourselves there's nobody in this room that can say no one's ever loved me.

No one in this room can say no one has ever given me that active love, that that humble love.

No one's ever done that for me.

Yes, they have.

Probably a bunch of people.

But I know one person, it's that fellow that Chris told us, he stands here with holes in his hands.

He's shown us all what active love really looks like.

And because, according to Philippians 2, he humbled himself, therefore we can experience the grace of God and a relationship with him that is full of active love, active grace.

So when you're ready, you come and then go back that way to your seat, if you will.

Okay?

All right, Christopher.