How to Use What God Gave You

Good to see everybody this weekend. Great to worship with you. If you're new around here, welcome. My name is Whit. I am the pastor here. Also let me welcome anybody that might not be able to be joining us this weekend. Maybe you're homebound or just traveling this weekend. Welcome. And then we have two churches in prisons, one at Dick Conner, one at Eddie Warrior, a men's prison and a women's prison. We like to say welcome to them every weekend. So can you help me by saying welcome, glad you're joining us. (audience clapping) We are in week six of this Life Lessons series. We're looking at simple biblical wisdom. How many of you learned simple doesn't mean easy. It just means doable. You can put it into practice. You don't have to have a master's degree in theology to be able to do this stuff. You just have to be willing to put it into practice. But if you'll do it, what happens is God blesses you. You learn what it looks like to start walking with him. And this is week six of this series. This week we're gonna be looking at some verses out of Philippians chapter two. You probably have heard these verses before. This is Paul writing to a church in Philippi.

And he's talking about what kind of culture they're going to have in their church. You know what a culture is? Culture is kind of how we do things here. You've ever been to another country. You know that maybe they do things differently in that country than say we do in America. We have our own culture. States have cultures, cities have cultures. Your home has a culture. Here's how we do things here. Maybe you ask people to take their shoes off at the door. Maybe there's a certain seat that's reserved for dad on Sunday afternoons to watch football. That's culture in a home, right? This is how we do things here. Well, there's a kingdom of God culture. How we do things in the kingdom of God. And Paul is writing about that culture here in Philippians chapter two. If you have your Bible open, you can follow along with me. Here's what Paul writes. So if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love and being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. But in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind, this attitude, this mindset among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. This is the word of the Lord. And we all said, thanks be to God. Our life lesson for this week is this. Greatness in the kingdom of God comes through service. Do you wanna be great? Become a servant. Last week, we started talking about agency. Really, we've been kind of talking about agency along. That is, the power to choose for yourself, the power to act. It's amazing that God has given us a free will. He's entrusted each one of us with a stewardship of power. I don't care who you are, what your background is, what you oversee or you don't oversee,

whether you're a CEO or a stay-at-home mom, it does not matter. You've been given a stewardship of power. You could call it authority or maybe use a more biblical term, dominion. Some kind of power has been entrusted to you. The capacity to make a difference, an impact, a mark on the world in some kind of way. The question is, what are you doing with what's been entrusted to you? If we're talking about agency, some of us are all too eager to begin to act. It's kind of in our nature. We're sort of type one people. We like to lead. We wanna start things. We're comfortable taking risks. Southerly of us, it's a little bit more challenging, a little bit more scary to be able to step out. Either way, the question is, how will we direct our agency when we begin to use it? If God has given us power, when I begin to use it and put it into practice, in what direction will it be aimed? That's really what we're gonna talk about this weekend, is what am I gonna do with this power that's been, we're gonna aim it in the direction of service. But I've broken this down into three thoughts. Let's start at the beginning. The first thought I have for you is this.

The power is a good thing. If we're gonna talk about power or how we use it, we have to first kind of confront our sort of negative cultural views of power. See, culturally speaking, we've been burned by power. And we've been told story after story, after story, after story of leaders, politicians, CEOs, corporate executives, people with power and influence in a position using their power to advantage themselves. We've been told of pastors who have been hypocrites behind the scenes. We've been told this story so much that we've begun to come to mistrust power and authority altogether. But lest we fall into the other ditch of somehow thinking that utopia or heaven looks like nobody having any power, we have to recognize that power in and of itself is not a bad thing. Authority in and of itself is not a bad thing. In fact, it comes from God. That's the first reason why we ought to respect it, why we ought to treasure it and value it. Is it comes from God? Let me give you a few verses that backed this up. Psalm 6211, once God has spoken the Psalmist writes, twice, I have heard this, look at this, the power belongs to God. Jeremiah 32, 17 puts it like this. Oh, Lord God, it is you who have made the heavens

and the earth by your great power. And by your outstretched arm, nothing is too hard for you. God possesses the power to do what it is that he wants, what he pleases, he has all power. Revelation 411, worthy are you, O Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things. We just sang about this, for from you are all things, to you are all things, same idea. You created all things and by your will, they existed and were created. The idea is that all power belongs to God. We sing about this, we talk about this. So let me ask you a question. If all power is God's, where did you get your power? It comes from God. What power you have is on loan to you from God. If it all belongs to him, then do you possess a power that God does not have? No, of course not. What power you do have is on loan to you from on high. Now we get a clear picture of this, perhaps the clearest picture of this, in an interaction that Jesus has with Pontius Pilate. Do you remember Pilate, the proconsul of Rome who was responsible for having Jesus crucified? And as Jesus' standing trial, Pilate interrogates him. He begins asking him questions. And do you remember that Jesus wouldn't really respond

to any of Pilate's questions? And in John 19, John records this. Pilate says to Jesus, you will not speak to me. You don't want to respond. Don't you realize? Don't you know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you? And look at how Jesus responds to him. You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. All power, all authority, whatever it is that you lead, whatever it is that you manage, maybe it's just only yourself, maybe you're a young person right now and the only authority you've got is over your own decisions, even that authority, the free will that you possess is not yours. Your gifts, your intellect, we talk all the time about a self-made man or a self-made woman, no such thing. You have nothing that doesn't ultimately originate with the Lord. He created you. It all comes from him, your ability to think, your ability to lead, your ability to synthesize information, your ability to work with your hands. It all comes from God. It's on loan to you and you will give an account for it. One day you'll stand before the King and he'll ask you, what did you do with what I put in your hand?

So what you've been given has been entrusted to you as a stewardship. You're not an owner of what you have, you're a steward. The question is what will you do with what's been entrusted to you? Now we have to remember this. God gave us power and authority because we can use it for good. This is God's original intention. Too many Christians don't really know how the whole story of our faith or the story of God and man even begins. All we know is that we're sinners and that Christ died to save sinners. And while that's good, there's more to the story than that. We miss God's-- And this is important because God's intentions have not changed. Let's go all the way back to the beginning. The very first page of scripture. When God is forming man, we looked at this last week, but let's look at it again. God said, let us make man in our image. And after our likeness, in other words, the Lord is given mankind a kind of authority, a kind of power, a kind of position that is unique from all the rest of creation. He says it here in the next sentence, let them have dominion.

That's a kind of power, a kind of authority. Let them have dominion over the creation, over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Now, we don't like this word for being honest. Dominion, it's too close to dominate. That's how we think about power, power's bad. People use power to oppress others. That's what we hear all the time. And it's true. People do use power to oppress others, to leverage it for themselves, and to benefit and privilege themselves. But here, dominion is given not to oppress, not to dominate, look at verse 28, but to liberate, to lift up, to set free. God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful. Multiply, fill the earth, subdue it. Notice the language here of dominion is not speaking to domination and holding down, putting under the thumb, but rather to manage for the good of that which you lead, that which you've been entrusted with. So here's what I want you to see. The beginning of the Christian or the human story is not mankind sitting around naked and retired in a garden. God gives us work and assignment. He calls us to put our hand to something, to act, to use our agency.

That's the idea that you've been given a measure of power and authority and you've been given it because God expects something from you, a partnership that brings flourishing where you have some kind of authority. I don't know where you have authority. Some of us have bigger kind of assignments have authority than others. God doesn't give everybody the same thing. Have you noticed that? We're all of equal value, but we don't all get equal assignments. We don't all get equal gifts. That's not to say some gifts are better than others. They're just different and they contain a different kind of influence. We read about the parable of the talents. Some got five, some got two, some got one. How many you got is irrelevant. It's what you do with what's been put in your hand. And that's what we're talking about today, is stewardship. What will you do with it? The idea is that you can use the authority, the power, the influence that God has given to you. How will you use it to advantage yourself? Or will you use it to bless and to serve others? There's an interesting interaction that Jesus has with his disciples in Matthew's gospel, chapter 20. Maybe you remember this story. A couple of his disciples, James and John,

come to Jesus with their mother. Their mother, interestingly, we can't say this for sure, but there's a likelihood, a good likelihood that this is actually Mary, the mother of Jesus, her sister, so this is Jesus aunt. James and John then being his first cousin. So this is kind of family dynamics at play, right? They come to Jesus and they say, "Hey, when you come into your kingdom, will you let one of us sit on your right hand and the other on your left?" This is a request for power. We want to be powerful. We want to have important positions. Jesus says, "You have no idea what you're asking. You have no idea what it's going to mean to be on my right and on my left." He says, "Are you able to drink from the cup that I am going to drink from?" He's talking about his suffering, his crucifixion. They say, "Oh, yes." Again, they have no idea what he's referring to. He says, "Well, you will drink the cup that I am to drink." And they did, they suffered. But here's what he says. He says to those positions to whom they're given is not mine to choose. Those are for who it has been appointed. Then the tin, the other disciples hear about this. They're indignant, they're mad.

And so Jesus calls the whole group together and he says, "Here, let's have a little lesson. Let me show you something about power in the kingdom of God. Let me show you how it works." And in Matthew 20, verses 25 and 26, beginning here, Jesus says this. He says, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them. Notice the language. Top down. Power to dominate. Power to rule. Then look what he says, "It shall not be so among you." Whoever would be great, among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be your slave. Even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and gave his life or to give his life as a ransom for many. Let's just make some observations here. Let's talk about this. Notice what Jesus doesn't say. Notice that when the disciples come to him and say, "Can we sit on your right and on your left? Can we have positions of power and authority in your kingdom?" Notice Jesus doesn't say, "Oh my goodness, guys, guys, don't you realize that in my kingdom there are no positions of authority? Don't you know that this is really just going to be like a commune, nobody will be in charge? We'll all just be kind of singing kumbaya, loving each other. There's no hierarchy here. There's no need for all these power, trips, and games. See, this is kind of like our secular sort of idea of utopia. Nobody will be in charge. We'll just love one another. I think some people get sort of high-minded ideas about that. We're going to create a flat organizational structure. Nobody will be in charge of anything. How's that working out for you? Good luck with that. Good luck leading a family like that. Power's not a bad thing. Power aimed in the right direction can be a really good thing. In fact, I'd put it this way. Think of what our world would be if it wasn't for people who took risks, if it wasn't for people who stood up to injustice, if it wasn't for people who said, "I have a dream," and envisioned a new possibility for the world, right? Like people

using their position of power, their voice, their influence to do something that benefits humanity has advanced us in ways that go like we think of where we would be. Think of how dark this world would be if people didn't use their power and their agency to serve others. Yes, power can be corrupted, but Jesus doesn't do away with power. He redeems it. He redirects it. He says instead of aiming it at yourself, instead of trying to get on top of other people to use your own power and position to serve and benefit yourself, I want you to serve others, and this will be the way of my kingdom. This will be how we're going to operate in the kingdom of God. That's exactly what Paul is talking about in Philippians chapter 2. Have this mindset among you that is yours in Christ Jesus. You're going to serve others. You're going to humble yourself. You're going to use your position of power to lift up other people. Henry now puts it like this. He says the way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility. What's the way of upward mobility? I got a claw and scratch and climb to try to get on top of this company, try to get on top in my team. Rather than serving those around me, I'm trying to climb over them so that I can get to the position that I want for myself. That's the way of upward mobility. Our world has invested so much in that way, but the way of downward mobility is the way of the Christian leader, and it ends with the cross. Here he says, we touch the most important quality of Christian leadership in the future. It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ has made manifest. Let's just stop and wrestle with this for a second, because it sounds almost like he's saying that real leaders have no power. Powerless is how, in fact, can you lead without power? He's not saying that leaders never make decisions. He's not saying that the way of Christ is just to sort of never, never stand up for anything, never stand up to anyone, never make any decisions, just constantly holding doors open, constantly washing people's feet, never really acting with any kind of authority or power. That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is that the way of the world accumulates power for oneself, that's this idea of selfish power and control. Powerlessness is to give your power away in service of other people, and that's what real leadership and strength looks like, not trying to amass power and position and influence for yourself, but you're constantly trying to give it away by lifting up others. This is how real leaders lead, as they serve other people. Now, that brings me to point number two, and that is that humble service is the mindset of the kingdom of God, the other kind of word I tried plugging in here, and I like it just as well, is the posture

of the kingdom of God. Paul writes this, let's look at it again. In the CSP translation, it puts it like this, "Adopt the same attitude." It's a perspective, a way of life. Serving people is not just something that I do occasionally. I think too many Christian people think of serving as something that you do when you're at church. When you volunteer, when you're serving down at the food bank or helping out a homeless person, I'm serving. We think of serving as like doing a good deed. And yes, it's good. We ought to do those kind of things. Oh yeah, we ought to serve other people when we can. The problem is to think of serving like that as to sort of separate it from our kind of everyday way of life. So we sort of have our job kind of attitude, our mindset in our career, our mindset sort of as we kind of navigate life. And then we serve in some key places, right? We have some time set aside where we serve. That is not, though, what Paul is talking about. And that is not the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus is a continual mindset of service to others. That in everything that I do, and whatever has been entrusted to me, whether I coach a team, whether I work with my hands, whether I work on a job site, whether I'm negotiating with contractors, leading a group of people, an organization, whatever it may be, or whether maybe I'm just raising kids, my mindset is service, continual service.

This is the way that I'm to think of myself. And the problem is that we kind of flip power upside down. That's the problem. We think that power is for us. Sort of top down, getting other people to serve us. Many people, this is the misconception that they have of powers that when you get in charge, well, then you get to be the one to call the shots. When I get to be the boss, I'll get to tell other people what to do. When I'm in charge, I'll get to make the rules. When I'm in charge, I'll get other people to serve me. That's how people think. They think that that's how power works. That is not how power is meant to work. Your power is not meant to serve you. You are meant to serve others. And it's a mindset. It's a way of life. Notice how we flip this around, though. We want to get on top of other people. Jesus put it like this. They lord their authority over others. They exercise authority over them. But notice the kind of reversal of language that Paul uses in Philippians two. Christ emptied himself. He took on the form of a servant. He humbled himself. This is lowering himself down so that he could lift others up.

And that's what real service looks like. Now the Lord had to teach me this lesson in a long and kind of painful period in my life. I tell the story of pastoral transition around here quite a lot because God did so much in me in that season. And I'm going to share a bit of that story again. For those of you that might be new, my dad, Willie George, started church on the move in 1987, pastored here for 30 years. And in 2017, the baton of pastoral leadership was officially passed to me right here on this stage. Now the transition, kind of behind the scenes, began three years earlier in 2014. And I would say the first six years from 2014, maybe seven to 2020, 2021 were incredibly difficult. Pastoral transition for a church is just difficult. There's no way around it, it's hard. But it's especially hard when the outgoing leader is something of a living legend in his community. Makes it worse, right? Makes it harder for the church to kind of go through that transition. And so there was quite a bit of what I might call like whitewater. You know what I'm talking about when you're rafting and the water kind of gets crazy? That's sort of what it was like. Just whitewater around here, a lot of tumult. And it was difficult in those years because as I began to kind of step into pastoral leadership,

the church kind of sort of coincided with a decline, a leveling off of sort of our best days. We'd been on kind of an upward growth trajectory from our inception in 1987 to somewhere around 2013, 2014. But as I got to be more involved, the first behind the scenes, things started cooling off. There were other churches that were sort of coming up around Tulsa that were gaining momentum. And as I was stepping into leadership, we could just sort of see a leveling off in our attendance. Now the hope was that in 2017 when my dad said, "Hey, whit's going to be past for that," that would kind of signal a sort of new start, a new beginning, that there would be kind of new growth that would begin to happen. That was the hope. I know that was his hope and it was certainly my hope, but it didn't happen that way. For those of you that were here, In fact, it accelerated after the transition. Things didn't get better. They got worse. And in those years where I was trying to kind of get my feet under me as pastor, you find yourself in a kind of desperate situation. You realize that you're much more insecure than you at first thought. When you really examine your motives, and I think if you'll do the same, even in your own life,

you'll find that your identity is tied up in your performance a whole lot more than you'd like to admit. You don't realize that until your performance starts to not be so good, or all the things that you used to be able to rely on, that you could kind of muster up your own strength and kind of muscle it up right? Things would go better and it doesn't work anymore and you're like, what gives? And you start doubting yourself and questioning yourself. You start to get desperate. I find this happens for pastors. I hate to say it. I love the church and I love pastors and I pray for my brothers who are leading other churches, but it's a vulnerable thing to stand up here and do this. You feel kind of very personally responsible for how big the church is, how quote unquote successful it is. And it's so easy for your ego to get tied up in all this. Like how big the church is is somehow a reflection of your capacity as a leader. And you would never say this. I never would have said it. I wouldn't have wanted to admit it, but there was a part of me that kind of judged myself based on how full this room was. The more people that were in here, the better I felt about myself.

The more I felt like I kind of measured up to my dad as a leader. And this is the problem, right? This happens with pastors. We so desperately want to win. We want to succeed because it makes us feel better about ourselves that we're sort of trying constantly to get something from you. I don't know if you've ever been to a church like this, maybe you've experienced the American church sort of feeling this way. Serve more. Give more. Get in a stupid group. Where are you going to join a small group? Have you felt that before? You need friends. My God, you need friends. Have you felt that from churches? It's like we're so desperate to have so many people. I'll take you, can I tell you why? Let me tell you why. Let me tell you a little dirty kind of church secrets because we go to conferences where there's lots of pastors and rooms and the atmosphere is electric and this pastor whose church is booming and growing stands up and says, we have more people than small groups than we have actually attend our church on the weekend and you go, we don't, we don't have that. That's the secret.

I got to get that going so that our church can be big. And it's not because here's the dirty little secret. We mix our motives, right? It's not all selfishness but there's a degree, a percentage of selfishness in there that is, I want this church to grow so that I can feel better about me so that I can feel like a real leader, so that I can feel like I'm successful, so that I can feel like I'm somebody. And so we're constantly just trying to get something from you. Maybe you've been to a church that feels that way I need you to serve more, I need you to give more. I need you to get on board with the vision of the house. Have you heard that kind of language before? It's constantly trying to get you to come over here to where I am at to do what I'm doing. As if and kind of the attitude and I hate to admit this but this is sort of the attitude that goes behind all that is what I'm doing up here is really important and what you got going on in your life is a very little importance. In fact, I kind of love it if all y'all would quit your jobs and just come here and serve me and this church all the time. That would be the most important thing. Do you know that holding a door open on Sunday is the most important thing you'll ever do on your life? That's how we kind of frame this whole thing about serving and giving, like it's everything. It's a part, but it's not everything. But we do that because what we want is energy and passion.

What we want is a vibe. We want our church to feel good. We want people to be talking about us. We want it to grow and pretty soon, here's what happens. I'm just telling you this, like confessions of a pastor. We care more about the people that we don't have at the church than the ones we do have. We care more about the empty seat than the one who's filling the seats we have. So our whole orientation is around more, more, more, and here's what happens. A lot of pastors burn themselves out. You want to know why they're having a fairs? This is why, because they're exhausted. Because it's a dog and pony show every week. I got to preach an amazing series. I got to have some incredible message. And you want to know why we're putting, like, the show on every week? And I'm not saying that 2020 was a blessing, God knows it was a terrible time for so many people and a lot of people lost, but here's how the Lord blessed me in that season. It didn't feel like a blessing at first, you know what He did? He took everything away from me. There were no more meetings, no more services to beg you to attend, no more groups that you could join, no more places to serve, all I could do was serve you. And it dawned on me, wait a minute, this is what pastoring is, and it seems so obvious. I feel like a moron even standing up here telling you this, that my job is not to try to get you on board with my vision, but that my job is to be with you as your pastor to love you and to serve you and to preach the word to you and to care for you, that's my job.

And wouldn't you know it, the church started to grow. Wow, how about that? Because I stopped focusing on growth. Growth is a byproduct. Paul said, "I planted, Apollo's watered, God gave the increase." This is the metaphor of gardening. Your job isn't to make something grow. You can't make anything grow. You can't make a tree grow, you can't make a flower grow. All you can do is care for it. And then let it grow. God's the one that makes that process work. You can only cultivate the soil. You can care for the plant. You can love and water and nourish it, and that's my job. And so for the last six years, I just stopped caring about all that stuff. That doesn't mean that I don't pay attention to how many people show up on a weekend. I do, I'm aware of how many people are here, but that is not my focus. My focus is not to come out here and preach a word that more people will like than they did last year and therefore will have big crowds. I could care less. That's not my goal. My goal is to love and serve you. Growth is the byproduct. Let me give you another one. Money is the byproduct of you serving other people. Did you know that? Some of you, your whole mindset is how can I get more money, wrong question? You should not ask yourself in your business, how can we get this business to make more money?

Wrong question. That is a kind of inherently selfish question. How can I get more money? Lord knows you may need more money, but inherently that's a selfish question. You don't ask, how do I get more money? You say, how can I provide a service to people that they would be willing to pay for? How can I bless the people that I am trying to serve? Now, that's the right question. You know what I've noticed? People don't mind paying for a service that they found value in, but they resent every penny of some fake fee that you put on them just to get a little money in your pocket. We resent that stuff. Why? Because we know it's not real. There's no service in it. You're just lining your pockets. It feels like greed. You're asking the wrong question. You don't put money first. You don't put growth first. You don't put position first. You don't put power and prestige first. You put serving first. And when you serve first, God sees to it that you have what you need. He sees to it that you are exalted, that you are lifted up, but you stop seeking your own position and power and influence and trying to gain more and more and more and more. And you just say, how can I serve others? The question I think we ought to ask is how are you using the power that you've been given? Are you a parent? Think about how this plays out in the home.

Gosh, I've been guilty of this so many times. How often do we discipline our kids not because we are loving them, but because we're angry with them? What is this? We're using our power to advantage ourselves. Can I just have one night where you're not fighting with your sister? You ever said something like that? I'm tired. Can't take it anymore. I've said that more than I care to admit. I am not serving my kids when I respond to them in anger that way. I may be disciplining them. I may be addressing a behavior that's not good, but I'm not doing it for the right motive. You know what I'm after? My own rest, my own space. I'm not truly loving them. I'm just trying to get something for me. It's even just a little peace and quiet, but this is using your power in the wrong direction. Do you understand how this works? You've been given a measure of authority. You've been given a measure of power. How you use it is everything. Power in and of itself isn't bad. What you do with that. Each has received a gift. Use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Point number three is this. Connection to Christ is what makes, and really the key phrase here is true service.

I probably should have underlined that one. True service possible. So as good as serving is, and as virtuous, a kind of quality as it is, it is truly impossible. Neither is it tenable or sustainable, apart from a connection to Christ. How is that? Because our relationship to Christ is what gives us the power to continue to serve others. Notice what Paul says in Philippians chapter two. He says, "Have this mind among yourselves." And then notice this that I have highlighted. Which is yours in Christ Jesus. In other words, the mindset, the attitude of service is something that you received when you were now in Christ. It's a gift from above. Something that's been given to you. This is more than just looking to Jesus as an example of moral virtue. An atheist can look to Jesus' example and try to be kinder. Many do. There are a lot of people who aren't Christians who think of Jesus as a very virtuous man and they like the qualities that he demonstrated. They may seek in their life to put those into practice with varying degrees of success. But the motive underneath of it is what's important

and the power that animates it is what's truly important. I was sitting down with a friend of mine some months back who I don't think, best I can tell, is a believer. He's a virtuous guy, he seeks to kind of live by a certain moral code. And he seeks to instill that moral code in his boys. He tries to teach them about honor and integrity and honesty. And so he was talking with me about how he was training his sons, you know? And he knows that I have five kids and he's kind of watched how my kids have been, how I raise my kids and this kind of thing. And he's like, here's what I'm doing. I'm telling my sons integrity and honor and honesty and he's saying things like this. I'm just telling them, man, you want to live like this 'cause it'll open up doors for you. It'll, like people will treat you with respect. You'll get a better job. Like life will go better for you if you'll live like this. Well, that's true. Life does go better for you if you live like that. But I want you to pay attention to the underlying motive. Who is it all for? If I'm being honest and if I'm acting in integrity and I'm acting honorably because it opens up doors for me. If it provides advantage for me, who am I ultimately doing it for? Me, here's the question. Can you really be serving other people

of really at the core? All you're really trying to do is serve yourself? This is what I started to realize about my good deeds. This is what the gospel wrecks. It strips you of all your trophies. All of those little things that you kind of treasure in your mind and heart that tell you a pretty decent person. It robs you of all of that because the scripture says that your righteousness, your good deeds, your good behavior, any whatever altruistic motive you may think you have is like filthy rags before God. What I started to realize was that I not only needed to repent of my sins but that I needed to repent of the right things I'd done for the wrong reasons. Of which there were plenty. I had been good to advantage myself. So many of us are. Our service of other people is sort of transactional. Have you ever found that? That you kind of make a determination to be good, to be kind, to be patient maybe with your spouse and you give it a good try but your spouse doesn't respond to you immediately in the way that you want and you find yourself descending right back into the same attitudes and patterns of behavior that you've always had? Yeah, it's because our willpower is weak. We don't have the strength to keep serving other people

when we get nothing in return. In fact, the whole ideas that we're gonna get something in return and yet how can you serve those who give you nothing back? Which is exactly what we're called to do. How is such a thing possible? Won't you be exhausted? Absolutely you will be, unless, of course, you have a connection to an infinite source. Unless, of course, you are attached to the vine unless, of course, you're being nourished from somewhere else. That's the idea is that in Christ Jesus, How the Lord served me, how He gave Himself for me, how while I was still a sinner Christ died from me, how when I turned my back on God, He did not abandon me, how He'd been patient with me, how He's gone before me, how He's walked beside me, how He's carried me every step of the way. Here's what I've noticed. It's hard to be selfish when you're filled with gratitude. It's hard to be impatient when you're filled with gratitude. In fact, I would tell you this, when you're impatient, unkind, short, and demeaning to other people, it's because you feel no gratitude from what Christ has done for you yourself. You cannot demean others. You cannot treat people in the service industry. You cannot treat contractors with disrespect and disregard if you're filled with gratitude because you know you're a sinner too. Hard to do. The only way you can do it is that you've forgotten what Christ has done for you. So what do you do? You live in a constant state of gratitude. How? By continually reminding myself that Christ emptied Himself, that He took on the form of a servant, that He died from me. And the more I could consider that, the more I get on my knees, not just figuratively, literally, and remind myself of who I am in Christ and what He's done for me. Now, I suddenly have a different posture toward my family. Can I have a different posture toward my wife? Can I have a different posture toward my kids? Can I have a different posture toward my team? Can I have a different posture toward the people that I lead the organization that I'm a part of no longer? Am I trying to claw and scratch and get my way to the top? But rather, I'm humbling myself, serving others even when it means that other people get the notoriety

and acclaim and not me. I'm not worried about that. Why? Because I know I'm not doing this for them anyway. I'm not trying to please men. I'm not living to be the special conference speaker one day and a big church conference where all these pastors will show up and listen to me. That's not my goal. I'm living for a different well done. I'm living for a different applause. I'm living for the affirmation that can come from only one. And that is my king, my lord, my father. That's a whole different perspective. When you live like that, you open your hands and here's what's cool. When you do that, then the Lord can exalt you. He sees to it that you're exalted. He sees to it that you get what you need. Jesus said it like this in Matthew 633 and we'll close right here. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, his ways, his culture, his attitude, his way of living and all the other stuff will be added to you. Greatness in the kingdom comes through service. Would you bow your heads? Close your eyes. Heavenly Father, thank you for the truth of your word today. A lamp to our feet, a light to our path. Lord, we are stewards, humble stewards and servants. What we have is not our own. The life that we have, the air in our lungs, the money in our bank accounts, the abilities and gifts and talents, even the will, the agency, the consciousness to act is a gift from you, for from you, through you, and to you are all things. You uphold us by the word of your power. We can't get through a day apart from you sustaining life in this universe. You are it's animating force. Apart from you, we can do nothing. Help us, Lord, to live with that kind of, that kind of awareness that what we have is a stewardship. If we don't own what we have, that one day we'll stand and give account for it. Help us to use it to bless others, to serve those we lead, to love our families, to lay our lives down. Lord, I pray for husbands in this room that would lay their lives down for their wives as they lead in their homes, that their leadership would be one that brings life, that it's not about control or putting everyone under your thumb, getting people to serve you or grab what it is that you want for yourself, rather that I am to lay my life down for them as Christ has done for the church. I was to get a grasp of what this truly means, where we've been given power and agency and authority let us not use it for ourselves, not to advantage ourselves but to love that you will exalt us in our humility. This is the way of the cross. We die to self and we let you bring new life. Thank you, Lord, for life and fruit that would come

because we have a new way and a new perspective. The mindset of Christ Jesus himself, emptying ourselves, humbling ourselves, becoming servants so that others might be lifted up. It's the way the kingdom, it's the way of the cross, it's the way of Jesus, let us live like it and let this community, church on the move. Tulsa, this one right here. Let this church be filled with that culture. Serving and loving one another. Let us live this out so that by the way, we love one another all and then we'll know there are disciples of Jesus in that church. Let it be so. In Jesus' name we pray and everybody said, amen. At the close of the service, our prayer team's gonna be down front. Perhaps you have a prayer need today. We would love to be able to stand in agreement with you and pray with you about whatever it is you might be facing and maybe you're here and you're wrestling with God. Maybe you've made a commitment recently just to yourself or to the Lord that I'm gonna take my faith seriously good. Our prayer team's down here for you too. We have a book, a little guide we wrote, just called, what does it mean to be saved? We would love to be able to give you one of these. This is not like trying to get your information and rope you into coming here and serving here

and all those, this is really just a gift. We wanna give this to you. So at the close of the service if that's you or if you're just curious about what's in here, come down front and say, hey, can I get one of those books? The Pastor Wood talked about, we'll give you one of these and we'd love to be able to help you take whatever step maybe is next for you. Stand to your feet. It's always such a joy to be able to worship with you each and every weekend. One of the amazing things about what God did in my life over the last 10 years is that He's given me a heart, not for the stage, but for the people. And that's an amazing thing if you know me 'cause I ain't Pastor Lee, right? (congregation laughing) So when I say I love you, I mean it. I love you guys, I really do. All right. Before I lose control of the room here, let's close with this blessing out of Numbers 6. Are you ready? The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you.

I love you. I'll see you next week, you're dismissed. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for watching this message from Church on the Move Tosa. We really hope it encouraged you to take a step toward Jesus. Church on the Move is a family of churches and Northeast Oklahoma, each with its own in-person pastor. We love our Bibles, learning a community and taking steps toward Jesus. If you live in the area, we would love for you to join us in person. For more information, check out our website at churchonthemove.com or we've got a few videos we think you might like. Check them out here. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)