Gentleness | Pastor Jonathan Scott

Let me just say this. Let me start by welcoming our online church family. Hey, thank you for joining this morning. And then, come on church, can we welcome all the men and women joining us from the correctional facilities? Hey, we love you. Thank you for being a part of our church family. And then, let me just say this. Happy Father's Day to all the dads, just in case you haven't heard that this morning. If you're a dad and you have your own kids, hey, we know it's not hard, or we know it is hard, to take these little monsters and turn them into grown-ups and fully functioning human beings, right? So, we celebrate you this morning. And then, also, happy Father's Day to all the men that are standing in the gaps for other kids that need some father figures. I'm talking about good neighbors, talking about little brothers, big brothers, uncles, and granddads. We celebrate you. Thank you. And then, let me just say this also. I know holidays like this can be bittersweet. For some of us, even, they're just bitter. So, I'm praying this morning that through the message, through the songs we're singing today, that even in the midst of whatever you're feeling today, that your eyes will be lifted up to heaven, and you would remember you have a Father in heaven who loves you so much and who is with you right now. Yeah. We have been in a series. This is week seven of a series we are calling Juicy Fruit. Have you guys loved the series? It has done so much work in my own heart. And Pastor Rebecca and Pastor Adam and Pastor Aaron have all had their chance to talk about the series. And it's finally my turn. And I'm excited. I said in the first service that I'm not nervous to speak, but this is the first time I feel like I'm a little nervous about some of the things I want to say. And I think that's a good thing. But this whole series, we have been in this one verse, Galatians 5 verse 22, the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. What a list. Can you imagine a world just full of people producing this fruit in their lives? Unfortunately, it's not the world we live in, right? Because we look around, and what we see are not the fruit of the Spirit, but we see what Galatians would call the works of the flesh in our world. But that shouldn't surprise us. Because what we've been emphasizing this whole series, what we've been saying is the fruit of the Spirit is not just hard to produce, it's actually impossible to produce without the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is not natural, it's supernatural. It's only produced in our lives when we live those lives close to Jesus. You know, one of my favorite things about being a dad is that my kids

look like me. And I don't mean physically, like thank God for all of us, right? Especially them. What I mean when I say they look like me, I mean they act like me. And they actually like a lot of the same things that I like, and they do a lot of the same things that I do. For example, my son just got his license a couple weeks ago, and one of the first places that he wanted to drive by himself was to the movie theaters. And he wasn't going to see a movie with his friends, he was actually going to see a movie by himself, which is kind of weird, right? But you know who else does that? This guy. This guy does that. My daughter loves to read, and I'd had to double check this morning. I wanted to make sure I got the numbers right. So far this year, this is less than six months, my daughter has read 42 books. 42. That's like, hey, let's be real, that's like 42 more than a lot of you have read this year, right? My daughter loves to read because her dad loves to read, and my kids look like me because they have spent their whole lives close to me. And this list in Galatians, these nine fruit, this is what Jesus looks like. And the Bible says if we abide in Jesus, if we stay close to him, if we remain in him, we will look like this too. We are going to dive in deep on one of these fruit this morning. It is the fruit of gentleness. Some people excited, not a whole lot of excitement in the room, which I honestly, I expected, because gentleness is not one of the cool ones in the list. I like to think of it, it's like the middle child of the fruit of the spirit, right? I can say that. I am a middle child. I only have two kids, and neither one are offended by that. But unfortunately, like if that's you this morning, like the fruit of the spirit listed in Galatians, that word fruit, it's singular. It's not fruits of the spirit. It is the fruit of the spirit. Words, it's all or nothing. This isn't like going to the grocery store and walking down the aisles and say, ooh, I like how that one tastes. Oh, I don't really like that. I'm not gonna get that today. It's all or nothing. Every single one of these fruit, all nine of these should be evident in the life of the believer. And the problem is gentleness sounds embarrassing.

Gentleness is a word we use for things like baby shampoo, right, and puppy dogs. It's a word we use for people that are weak and people that are afraid of conflict. And even in the church of this list, I would say that gentleness is probably the least most celebrated fruit. But it shouldn't be that way. We should celebrate it. We should desire it. And the reason is because this fruit might be the most Christ-like quality of all the other fruits. There is only one place in the Bible where Jesus says this is what my heart is like. This is the character of my heart. It's in Matthew 11, 29. And what he says is, I think, unexpected. Because if we took a poll today, we said, hey, how would you describe the heart of Jesus? We would probably use words like it's pure. His heart is holy. His heart is godly. His heart is righteous. This is what Jesus said, Matthew 11, 29. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Here it is, for I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls.

Jesus said that in his heart, his character is gentleness and humility. And I think this whole series, like, honestly could be summed up in just one question. But I think specifically today, this question is so relevant to us. Do you want to be like Jesus? Yeah, amen. Like, do you really wanna be like Jesus? And I think most of us, if not all of us, in this room today would say, yes, I want to be like Jesus. But here's the thing, if that's in our heart, gentleness is not optional. So we're gonna look today, what does it actually mean to be gentle? What did Jesus mean when he said that he is gentle at heart? And how do we live out gentleness in our lives? And the first thing I wanna do this morning is just define the word gentleness. Because I think it is a word that we misunderstand all the time. You know, I didn't go to ministry school. I don't know, really, how to read Hebrew. I don't know how to speak Greek. I don't know any of that. But I'm pretty good with Google. And I don't know if you know this, but Google, like, you actually can learn some things

on the internet if you want to. It's not all memes and reels. And if you went home today and you said, hey, Google, what does that word gentleness mean? Where does that word come from? How do we translate that word? You would learn that that word we translate as gentleness comes from the Greek word praoutes, praoutes. And I got YouTube to help me pronounce that, so hopefully I'm doing it right. But it simply means strength under control. And this praoutes would have been a word that they used to describe wind in medicine. Like, if you, I was just standing outside, it was a mistake, because I got sweaty like within 10 seconds. Jacksonville, like, summer days are hot, they are humid, and they are muggy, but it is so refreshing when that breeze comes rolling through, right? If we contrast that with a category five hurricane, you got 150 mile per hour plus winds, like, that's destruction. This word was also used for medicine. Like, the right medicine in the right amount at the right time can take my 44-year-old knees and make them feel 39 again, right? Praise God. But that same medicine, an overdose of that same medicine will kill me.

What probably the most common way praoutes was used was to describe a war horse, a horse that had been trained for battle. I don't know if you know much about horses, I really don't, but I do know that a wild horse is actually pretty dangerous. But a horse that has been brought under discipline and trained and controlled, it no longer acts dangerously, even in dangerous situations. And here's the thing about war horses, like, they have not lost any of their strength. They are just as powerful as a wild horse. It's just that now their strength is under the control of the person holding the reins, right? We don't really have battle horses in our day, but what we do have are something called MWDs. I don't know if you know what this is. An MWD is this. It is a military working dog. So these dogs are so cool. I did some research into these. The most common breed used for MWDs are these Belgian Malinois dogs. Malinois, I had to get YouTube to help me pronounce that one too, but these dogs are so cool. Like they can literally learn thousands of commands. Thousands, like that's more than husbands can learn, right? And not only like they are so smart, but not only that, like they are so brave, they are fearless, they are so powerful and strong.

These dogs have crazy athletic ability. You may have seen videos of these dogs jumping up and climbing up the sides of walls. I watched this video, this world record holding Belgian Malinois jumped straight off the ground up into the air 15 and a half feet. That would be like if you came up here this morning, jumped from the ground and touched this silver metal truss running across the room, like that, a dog did that. That is crazy. And as powerful as these dogs are, they submit all that power to the person holding the leash, right? They haven't lost any of their strength. It's just all that power is under the control of a person and they now react differently in difficult situations. That is what prautes is. These dogs also have zero self-preservation skills, which means they kind of just ignore danger. They're not concerned with danger and they are willing to sacrifice their bodies. Why? Because they are so locked in on their mission that they are no longer thinking about themselves. And that same trait in a human, there's a word for that, it's called humility. And I don't know if you've noticed this in Matthew 11, 29, Jesus doesn't just say that his heart is gentle. He says, I am gentle and humble in heart. And gentleness and humility are always linked.

Humility on the inside of a person comes out as gentleness on the outside. Humility, unfortunately, it's another misunderstood word. Humility is not having a bad opinion of yourself. It's not looking down on yourself. It's not walking around saying, I just have nothing to offer. I don't have any strengths, I don't have any gifts. What biblical humility is, is an accurate assessment of who you are in relation to God and in relation to others. I think Philippians 2, 3, and 4 does the best job of summing up what a humble Christian should look like. It says this, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves. Not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. I love that verse. You probably know this, but a humble person, they don't need to win arguments. A humble person doesn't feel the need to defend themselves all the time. They don't have to be the most important person in the room. They don't have to be the center of attention. Why? Because they are secure in who they are in relation to God, and that security frees them up to treat others and consider others more important

than themselves. That's what humility is. You probably noticed this, but prideful people, when they don't get their way, when they aren't treated the way that they feel like they deserve to be treated, it ends in explosive anger, right? I saw this at the DMV when my son was getting his license. This man, you wouldn't believe it, they had the audacity to ask him to stand in line with everyone else, and he lost it. Went into a rage, starts yelling, like, don't you know who I am? Why would you make me do this? And here's the thing, pride always spills out as anger, and it never produces gentleness. Gentleness only overflows from a heart of humility. So I wanna look at two examples from the Bible of what gentleness and humility look like, one from the Old Testament, one from the New. We're gonna start in the Old Testament, Numbers 12, verse three, says this. Now Moses was a very gentle man, more gentle than anyone else on the face of the earth. Some translations say humble. It's kind of the same word, two sides of the same coin, right? I love this verse. I think this is probably the funniest verse in the Bible because Moses wrote this about himself.

And I don't know if you're even allowed to do that. Are you allowed to say that I am the most gentle, I am the most humble man on the face of the earth? I don't know, but I also love this verse because this is Moses we're talking about. This is arguably the greatest leader in the Bible. Moses went toe-to-toe, stood up to Pharaoh. Moses was the one that led a million Israelites as they marched through the wilderness, and as they crossed the Red Sea, Moses is the one who went up to Pharaoh. the top of the mountain and talked with God. He got so close to God's glory that it says when he would come down from the mountain, his face would be shining, kind of like Rudolph's nose, and it would freak everybody else out. So Moses actually had to walk around with a curtain covering his face. Moses was not weak. He was not a weenie. Moses was gentle, and Moses was humble. In Numbers 12, there's some drama going on in Moses' family. Moses' first wife had passed away, and he has just remarried, and Moses' brother Aaron and his sister Miriam do not like their new sister-in-law. And the Bible says the reason they don't like her is because she was not an Israelite, and her skin didn't match their skin.

And so they're mad at Moses, and so they start going around to the other Israelites. They start going around the camp saying, hey, why do we listen to Moses again? Like, doesn't God speak to everyone? And they start challenging his authority and questioning his leadership, saying, why is Moses in charge? And do you know how Moses responds? You know what he does? Nothing. He responds in silence, because he knows he does not need to defend himself. He knows who he is. And God sees that. And God honors that. And God says, I'm gonna defend Moses. And God calls a meeting. He calls Moses, Aaron, and Miriam together and say, hey, we need to talk. Let's go outside the camp where we can talk in private. Uh-oh. And God says, hey, Aaron, hey, Miriam, your brother Moses, he's my man. And yes, I use other people. I will speak through other people, but Moses, God says, is my friend, and I talk to him face to face. And then he says this, by the way, Miriam, since you have such a problem with people's skin color,

I'm gonna change your skin color. You're now gonna be white as snow with leprosy. Which was death. Like, leprosy meant death. Because she couldn't come back in the camp. She was gonna be left behind out in the wilderness. She was going to die. And if I was Moses, do you know what I would have said in that situation? You should have kept your mouth shut, sis, you know? Like, you did this. Like, it's your fault. But Moses was humble. He was the most gentle man on the face of the earth. So you know what he did? He prayed, and he pleaded with God to heal Miriam, and he didn't stop pleading until God healed her. Moses was gentle, and as gentle as Moses was, he's got nothing on Jesus. Jesus is the greatest example of humility and gentleness for us. Philippians 2, again, just sums up, I think, of how humble and how gentle Jesus was. Philippians 2, six through eight, says, Jesus, who being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, keep reading,

and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on the cross. How gentle was Jesus? Jesus was so gentle that he went out of his way to have a conversation with a woman at a well. This was a woman that no other man would have been caught talking to, no other Jewish man, because of this woman's race and because of her past. But Jesus sought her out so he could have a conversation with her, and this woman walked away from that conversation changed and with a testimony that she could not wait to tell others about Jesus. Amen. Amen. Amen. Jesus was so gentle that all the kids wanted to be around him. And kids can be annoying, come on, we all know this. And the disciples got annoyed, and they're like, Jesus, get these kids out of here. And Jesus said, no, let the kids be kids, and if you don't like it, you can leave, right? Hey, Jesus was so gentle that literally just hours before he was gonna be betrayed and arrested at the last supper, Jesus washed the feet of Judas, knowing Judas was about to betray him. And I try to see myself in this situation,

I'm gonna go, yeah, I probably, I would have washed Judas' feet also if I was Jesus, but hey, remember that miracle where Jesus. turn water into wine, I would've done like, hey Judas, come here, put your feet in, all this in that water, nice, and like bam, battery acid, right? That's me, that's what I would've done. But Jesus was gentle. And this, we have to remember, this is God in flesh. This is the one who is in the beginning. The word of God gets down on his knees, picks up a towel, and washes the dirty, stinky, traitorous, backstabbing feet of Judas. And Jesus was so gentle that when they did come to arrest him, and Peter kind of lost it and pulled out his little knife and chopped off the guy's ear, Jesus was like, Peter, stop. And he went and picked up the man's ear and put it back on his head. And he said, hey everybody, you got two ears now, listen, listen Peter, if I wanted to fight, I would call down legions of angels and no one would be able to lay a finger on me. But all my strength, all my glory, all my power, I have put it under the control of my Father in heaven and he has a plan. Don't you wanna be like Jesus? And there are some people that will say,

yeah, I wanna be like Jesus, but I wanna be like Jesus when he started flipping over the tables, when he finally lost it and showed us how to really treat sinners, right? And they use this scene, Jesus flipping over tables, they use this to justify their cruel thoughts and their cruel words and their cruel actions. And they're missing the point. Because even in that moment, Jesus is being gentle to the poor and to the Gentiles who were being stopped from worshiping in the temple. He did not lose his temper, what he is doing is prophetically letting everyone know, hey, this whole temple business, it's about to be flipped on its head. Because Jesus was so gentle that he let them lead him to a cross, he let them nail him to a cross, he let them spit on him and curse him and mock him. And fully capable of getting himself off of that cross, instead, Jesus, gentle Jesus prayed, Father, forgive them. And gentleness won at the cross. And this is what blows my mind in this series, like this same gentleness that was in Moses' life, this same gentleness that Jesus lived out, the Bible says, can be in us through the work of the Holy Spirit. The verse right before these verses, Philippians 2.5 says, in you relationships

with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. What's that mindset? He didn't think, he humbled himself. He became obedient even to death on the cross. So what does this look like for us? When I knew I was gonna talk about gentleness, I actually had an illustration pop in my head that I was a little nervous about. And I ran it by Pastor Adam and I got his approval. I forgot to run it by Pastor Rebecca, so ladies, I apologize in advance, but it is Father's Day, so just bear with me. But when I think about gentleness in our relationships, I think of toilet paper. You know, it's Father's Day, hopefully, dads, you got some new tools this morning. But I happen to think toilet paper is one of the greatest tools ever invented. It is like right up there with the wheel and the bathroom candle, right? And what's great about toilet paper is it only has one use. It's only job is to clean up a mess. You know this, people are messy. Our world is messy, which means every single relationship we have is messy. And most Christians wanna deal with that mess in one of two ways. The first way being they want to be ultra soft. And they do everything they can to make sure

they don't offend or hurt anyone. And they smooth out all the rough edges of Christianity. They even compromise some of the hard truths of Christianity because they value softness and not hurting anyone over everything else. And what that does is it takes their witness, it takes their testimony, and it makes it fragile, and it rips, and it breaks apart. And no longer, not even, they don't clean up the mess, not only that, but now they also have the mess smeared all over their hands too, gross, right? The other way most Christians deal with this is not by being too soft. They wanna be ultra strong. They don't care who they offend. They don't care who they hurt. They're going to speak the truth as loudly, as bluntly, as rudely as they can, because all they care about is letting everybody know what a mess they are. And hey, sometimes that might actually work, but if you've been camping, it makes me think of a pine cone, right? It'll get the job done, but it hurts. It hurts in both of those ways, ultra soft, ultra strong, like they don't produce the results that we want. But thank you, Jesus. You have shown us that there's a third way. There is a better way, and that way is being ultra gentle. It's the perfect combination of soft and strong. Hey, Christians, we have to speak the truth. We cannot compromise, but when we speak the truth, we do it with so much love. We do it with so much grace, and we do it with just a little bit of aloe vera mixed in, right? And here's the thing. We don't just clean up the mess. We leave people healed. So what does this look like in our lives? I think there are two areas, two types of relationships where we need to be soft and strong, where we need the fruit of gentleness to really come out in our lives. The first one is with the people closest to us. I'm talking about our family. I'm talking about our friends. And Pastor Aaron last week asked permission for this,

so I'm going to also ask. Church, is it okay if I step on your toes a little bit? I'm a little bigger than Pastor Aaron. My feet are a little bigger, so it might hurt a little bit more. Hopefully not. I'm going to try to be gentle. Let me just say this. Please hear this. Please hear my heart. Nobody cares. No one is impressed, especially not God. If you have walked in this room this morning, and you worship your heart out, and you sing at the top of your lungs, and you lift up your hands, and you give your tithes and your offerings, and you take really good notes during the message, and you come up for prayer at the end, or maybe you even come up and lay hands on people and pray for them, nobody cares. If you leave this room, get in your car and treat your family like garbage. Gentleness has to start at home. Husband, wife, your spouse should not be getting your spiritual leftovers. That fruit of gentleness is for them. Parents, kids are messy, but if their mess causes you to respond with anger and rage, that will never make them look more like Jesus. It won't. Dad's yelling louder and longer than everyone else in your family is not a spiritual gift. And kids, like your parents, are messy because everybody's messy. Don't respond. Don't let them rage bait you. Don't respond to their mess with your mess. There's so much wisdom in the Bible about how to deal with people, but when it comes to your family, I think this is probably the best verse. It's the one closest to my heart, Proverbs 15, 1 and 4. A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. In other words, you can throw fuel on the fire, or you can throw a fire blanket on it and put it out. The gentle tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit. For my family, as a husband, as a dad, I want to be a tree of life. I don't even know what that means, but it sounds like what I want to be, right? Not just for our families. We need to be gentle with our friends. The older I get, like I've always known, like friends are the people you want to be around. People that like the same things you like. People that you love hanging out with, that you laugh with. As I get older, the number one trait I'm looking for in my friends are people that are willing to dive into my mess and confront it with truth and love. I need people that will get up in my face and tell me when I have missed the mark, and when I'm away from Jesus, I want them to help point me back to him. Galatians 6, 1 says this, brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you may also be tempted. This verse is a friend. This is what we should want to be as a friend. This is the kind of friend

we need in our lives, because we're all going to make a mess, and we need friends in our lives that are going to help. restore us gently. This word restore in the Greek, it's the same word they would use for when a doctor reset a bone, and that hurts a little bit. But if you don't reset a broken bone, that joker's gonna get infected and you're gonna die. And what we need are some people, some friends that love us in our life that are gonna come in with gentleness and care and even precision and help snap that bone back in place so that we can heal. We need friends who point us to Jesus with gentleness. But gentleness is not just for those closest to us, gentleness is also for the world that is watching us. And you know this, hey Christian, churchgoer, the world is us. They are looking to see do we really believe what we say we believe. They are looking to see how we handle criticism. They want to know how do we treat people that aren't like us, people that don't look like us, people that don't act like us. They want to see how we treat people when they're in sin. Because here's the deal, the world, they might not even know this, they definitely probably won't admit it, but they got a void in the middle of their soul and the only thing that can fill that is Jesus. So they are searching and when they look at us, they are expecting us to be harsh. They're expecting us to be mean and combative. Why? Because that's what they see most of the time. And I kind of get it because the thing is that we're right. The Bible is the truth and the world is trying to tell so many lies and we know we're right. And sometimes it's harder to be gentle when you know that you're right. But we have to be gentle. I love this quote right here, it's dangerous to do the work of Jesus without the character of Jesus. There is a wrong way to do the right thing, right? And the world is lost. We know this and they're looking at us and they're lost. Come on, we cannot let our pride push them even further away. We can't let our pride point them in a different direction than Jesus. Philippians 4-5 says this, let your gentleness be evident to all the Lord is near. When people think of Christians, the Bible says this gentleness should be so evident that that's what they should think of. I know a lot of Christians and I can probably name on half a hand how many of them I would say are known for their gentleness, right? And the world is like, I get it, the world is so dark. There's so much darkness, so many lies, and we have to fight back against it. We have to push against it. We just don't use the same

weapons the world uses. The works of the flesh will never beat darkness. That's what the fruit of the Spirit does. You don't beat darkness with sticks and stones and angry words and judgment. You beat darkness by shining the light of Jesus so bright. I love this quote from Madeline L'Engle. She says this, we draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, not by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light so lovely they want with all their hearts to know its source. Gentleness feels weird. It feels strange. It feels like losing and it feels lame sometimes, but that's the point. It's counter-cultural and when we respond to the world's mess with gentleness, they take notice. It's like the Bible says, it's like we're a city on a hill shining bright. First Peter, he actually writes, hey, we should live our lives in such a way that we should expect people to come up to us and say, what's wrong with you? Why are you the way that you are? How are you the way that you are? Because I treated you one way. I expected you to return the favor and treat me the same way when instead you handed me the most tasty and the juiciest fruit I've ever had and I want some more of that. First Peter says in that moment, we should be ready with all gentleness and respect to point them to Jesus. Evan and Casey, you can join me up on stage. Which just brings us back to this question this morning. Do you want to be like Jesus? Gentleness is not optional. You know, when I was reading about these Belgian Malinois dogs, the coolest thing I read about them... And one of the most interesting thing was I was reading about how they choose which of the litter of the puppies they're gonna actually train because they don't train all of them. And it's around the age of one that they can tell which dogs are most suited to become a military working dog. And they are looking for this one specific trait. And it's not smart. It's like all these dogs are smart. It's not strength.

They're all incredibly strong. It's not how athletic. It's not how brave. They're all athletic and brave and fearless. The one thing they are looking for is obsession. They are looking for the little dogs that are obsessed with their treats and their squeaky toys. Isn't that crazy? Because it's this obsession with a reward that drives these dogs to learn thousands of commands. It's the fuel for the engine that lets them, these little dogs put all that power and control in the hands of the one who's holding the leash. And when I read that, I thought of Matthew 5.5, probably the most famous verse on gentleness in the Bible. Words of Jesus, blessed are the gentle for they will inherit the earth. And if I'm being honest, I read this verse and I go, man, that's hard to believe at times. Because we look out and it doesn't seem, it doesn't feel, it doesn't look like gentleness wins. It doesn't look like gentle people are inheriting anything on this earth. But it's a promise from God and I know it's true. But honestly, it's not that promise that I'm looking at in this verse this morning. It's that word inherit that lights a fire in my soul. Because we know what an inheritance is. It's when a father takes what is his and he gives it to his children.

An inheritance is for a son. An inheritance is for a daughter. And this verse reminds me of the reward that I already have through the blood of Jesus, through the cross of Jesus. I have been adopted into the family of God. And yeah, this verse sounds nice. This is gonna be a nice surprise one day to inherit the earth. But it feels kind of like that bonus fry at the bottom of a McDonald's bag. You know what I'm talking about? That's awesome. I'm more excited about the large box of fries overflowing that's already in my hand. I am so obsessed with the reward that is already mine. I am a child of God. And that obsession drives me to want to be near Jesus. Because like we sang earlier, I called and he answered. And he came to my rescue. And Jesus, I just wanna be near you. I just wanna be where you are. And I wanna look like you, Jesus. And I wanna lay down my pride. I want you to take my pride and exchange it for your gentleness, God, and produce that in my life. Because I wanna shine so bright that the world notices that they look at me and say,

hey, what's different about you? And I wanna tell them it's Jesus. It's always Jesus. That's what I'm obsessed with this morning. Does anyone else wanna get obsessed with that today? Come on, let's stand to our feet. Fortunately, I talked a little long, so we're not gonna sing. But I just wanna pray over us this morning. And Jesus, thank you, God, that through the power of your Holy Spirit, even though it feels weird, even though it's different than what the world is offering us, God, even though it just feels unnatural, thank you, Jesus, that you produce the fruit of gentleness in our hearts. So God, we cry out this morning, God, make us more like you, Jesus. We wanna be like you, Jesus. God, we are obsessed with that, Lord. Thank you, God. I'm gonna call the prayer team down front. And if you're here this morning and you don't yet know Jesus, hey, today is the day. He loves you. He died for you. He wants to know you. And our team would love to pray for you

if you're here this morning and you're hurting, you're walking through something. Maybe it has to do with today being Father's Day. Our team would love to pray for you and lay hands on you and just remind you how good God is, even in the midst of whatever you're going through. I wanna challenge you, church, as we go out of here today. Surprise your family. Surprise your friends with some gentleness. Don't react. Maybe there's gonna be a situation that you always do this. Maybe you react today with gentleness and just shock the mess out of them. They're like, who is this? Maybe tomorrow you go to work. Surprise a coworker with gentleness because that's what Jesus did. And we wanna be like Jesus. Hey, we love you, Rise Church. Be blessed today. We will see you next week.