Well, at the beach today we're going to be in Philippians chapter 2 verses 1 through 5.
Glad you could be with me today.
Paul writes,
Look at how much encouragement you found in your relationship with Jesus.
You are filled to overflowing with his comforting love.
There's one thing that I found in my life.
It's when I understand the love of God, that's where all the energy comes from.
That's where all the overflow comes from.
That's the source of the output that you have in your life.
When you just understanding God's unconditional love for us really is a game changer.
And so Paul's reflecting here thinking back saying,
Wow, thank you for how much you love me, how much you care about me, the good things that you have for me.
Out of that comes the encouragement that we can get for our life.
That's where the oxygen for our soul comes from.
It comes right from understanding how wonderfully loved by God we are.
And so he also says,
We've experienced a deepening friendship with the Holy Spirit and it felt his affection and mercy.
So see, when you understand how much God loves you, that you don't have to earn anything,
you don't have to quit giving all this effort to get God's favor, to get his love,
you start to relax and then life really turns around, really opens up.
And you start to be who you really are, who God really designed you to be.
And there's a lot of comfort in that.
There's a lot of peace in that when you're just yourself.
You allow God when you understand a deepening friendship with the Holy Spirit.
Man, you can talk to God all day long no matter what you're doing.
When you wake up in the middle of your tasks, middle of reading, the middle of listening to a song,
you can listen to and understand God's love and be ministered to by the Holy Spirit literally at all times.
Pretty much all the time throughout the day.
I'm just having this continuous, trying to have this continuous conversation with God and being led by the Holy Spirit.
And I can say this, it gets deeper and it gets better and it gets more profound.
You'll find God putting things on your heart and impressing upon you things you never even considered.
That's the deepening friendship that we have with the beautiful Holy Spirit.
And he uses the words affection and mercy.
You'll feel so much love and peace from God the more that you talk to him.
And I want to encourage you in your life today.
Talk to God more.
You'll experience more peace.
You'll experience more joy.
It has nothing to do with where you live.
It has nothing to do with where you work.
It has nothing to do with the stage of life that you're in.
If you'll just learn to conversationally talk to God more and lean into that,
that's where all of the joy and all of the peace comes from in our life.
The less we talk to God, I have found, the more my anxiety goes up,
the more my stress goes up, the more I walk in my own strength,
the more I talk to God, the more I relax, the more peace I have,
and the closer I feel to him.
And it's a beautiful thing.
I encourage you to do it.
He says, so I'm asking you my friends that you be joined together in perfect unity
with one heart, one passion, and united with love.
That's what God desires for every person that follows Jesus.
There's a unity that comes through humility.
And he's like, I want you to be unified in your love.
He says, walk together.
He doesn't say to walk by yourself.
He says you walk together with the important people in your life.
You walk together with your wife, walk together with your close friends.
Iron sharpens iron.
So does one man to another.
I know in my life, I try to walk closely with my wife
and closely with wise, godly, trusted, loyal friends in my life.
I've had the same close group of friends for a very long time.
They're all very humble.
They're all very loyal.
They're very smart.
They're all very godly, very blessed.
I feel like I have the closest, bestest friends that anybody
could want to have in their life.
Look, it walked together one purpose, and you'll
fill my heart with unbounded joy.
Then he gives some practical instructions here.
He says, I want you to be freed from pride-filled opinions.
We live in a day and age where everybody thinks
they know everything about everything.
How are you supposed to have humility in your life
if you think you know everything?
Well, you can't.
And what that leads to is pride-filled opinions.
And not only do they ruin your spiritual life,
but it's pretty obnoxious to just be around people
that think they know everything all the time about every subject.
And what draws people to you would be the small possibility
that you don't perhaps know everything in the universe.
The Bible references that as humility.
Now, we all have strengths.
Humility isn't denying your strengths.
Everybody has strengths and gifts.
The Bible teaches that.
But the reality is we just get a few.
You get a couple gifts.
You get a couple strengths.
That's what a humble person understands.
A prideful person thinks that they have all the strengths
and all the gifts and all the knowledge, and you don't.
You don't have all the knowledge.
You don't have all the gifts.
And you don't have all the strength.
Humility is just an accurate understanding of the things
that you're good at and the things that you're bad at.
When you understand that, again, you relax
because you'll be asked questions.
You'll be like, I have no idea what the answer to that is.
This is not my specialty.
And so you're able to maybe point someone
to a different direction.
He says, for they will harm your unity.
So pride-filled opinions harm our unity.
Look at this.
Don't allow self-promotion to hide in your hearts.
Wow.
Well, we certainly live in a self-promotion culture now.
And you'll have to take it to God if you engage in that.
You'll have to say, all right, Lord, show me.
Speak to me about this part of my life.
The Holy Spirit will, because we just
read that there'll be a deepening relationship
with the Holy Spirit.
Did you know you can ask God questions about yourself?
God, am I that way?
God will tell you.
God will show you.
And if not, you go to one of your trusted friends
and ask them, hey, am I this way?
What's been your experience with me?
What's been your experience with me
and how I handle these particular situations?
And your good friends will give you great feedback.
He says, but in authentic humility,
put others first and view others as more important
than yourselves.
So you have to ask yourself, am I building a life that's
just blessing me, or am I trying to build a life that
blesses my wife, my family, my kids, my friends, the people
that I'm trying to impact in this life?
Well, that's a question you have to think very deeply about.
And over time, it's not just a quick, oh, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, I do that.
Well, maybe.
I mean, you might want to give that some thought,
some reflection, some meditation, some consideration.
And I have found the more that we line our life up
to trying to be a blessing, putting others first,
the more peace, more joy that we experience.
He says, abandon every display of selfishness.
Well, that's convicting.
How do you abandon every display of selfishness?
So see, that's the standard.
We're supposed to abandon every display of selfishness.
Wow.
I'm going to have to go and think about that,
even as I've taught it today.
Possess a greater concern for what matters to others
instead of your own interests.
So trying to put the interests of others,
trying to put their needs before your needs,
and consider the example that Jesus, the Anointed One,
has set before us.
Let his mindset become your motivation.
So what's really exciting is tomorrow,
when we get into the next part, Paul's going to lay out
how Jesus is the standard.
He's kind of leading us into this.
This is very exciting.
Just to be thinking about the encouraging words
that God can have us to help us have more peace
and have more joy, relax more in our life.
Thank you so much, as always, for joining me.
Until next time, I hope you have a beautiful.