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The scripture says God gives grace to the humble. And wouldn't we all like to have some grace? Amen. But the question is, is how do I know if I'm humble? Welcome to this next episode of Living Influence. So the question is, is how do I know if I'm humble, Bill? I mean, or you know, another question, I kind of laugh about this one. How do I become humble?

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And if there's a way that I need to do things to be humble, does that like rule me out from humility altogether because I just did it, right? Right, right. But it's kind of an interesting question. It is. And we're labeling this particular podcast, The Principle of Humility, but it comes off of the podcast where we talked about the purpose of our influence.

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Right. In 2 Timothy. And Paul says to Timothy, understand who you are, Timothy, because the influence of your life will be these following things in relationship to others. You, Timothy, can become a carrier.

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of my purpose for the benefit of others, he says in that passage in Timothy that God may perhaps grant them repentance. Who? Those you've influenced. And when God grants, it could read, and God grace them repentance. It could read, God give them repentance. The beautiful thing about this is God's always the initiator. It's our response to God that's critical.

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Humility begins with a proper response to God. Okay. 1 Peter 5, he says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Right. And so that begs the question, well then, who are the humble? Yeah. And how would I ever become more humble or less humble? Do I do it by like, woe is me, I'm just a sinner? Yeah, right. In other words, the worm theology. Right. Do I degrade myself?

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To sound more godly. Yeah. And by the way, that's not a main point in our talk, but I want to make this point really clear. God is never honored when I degrade myself. He paid an incredible price to give me a life worth living. Yeah. We don't ever want to forget that. Right. So back to this reality of humility.

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So humility, as you said at the very beginning, humility is sometimes understood as a Christian attribute that if you have it, you can never talk about it or you wouldn't have it. Yeah. That's kind of it. But what if humility was a relationship truth? What if humility was a relationship word? What if humility would be this? Trusting God with me.

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What if humility was trusting God with me? What if when God grants me the gift of repentance, I would receive it because I would declare that I need it? God opposes the proud because the proud will never receive what God has for them.

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They resist what God has for them. The humble are those who are able to receive what God has for them because they trust God. Humility is trusting God. Humility.

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And we're going to spend a lot of time on this throughout this whole season, trusting the person of God, trusting the provisions of God, trusting the person of Jesus, trusting the work of Jesus. Humility says, I need you, God. Yeah. This is an amazing truth of God. It's interesting because there's a nuance. It gets twisted when you try to teach this. Like when we trust God, he—

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He brings us to salvation and he changes our heart and he gives us a heart that's righteous and full of him. And people will like, wait, well, if I think I'm righteous, won't that make me proud? Excellent. Right? Yeah. Could. Except it would be a misunderstanding of righteousness.

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Yeah. But there's a biblical model for that. I just want you to know that. There's the Pharisee of the public. Jesus tells this story. This is how he starts the story. He said, this Pharisee stood before God and said, I thank you, God, that I am not like other men.

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Yeah. I thank you, God, that I am not like other men. It says about this person— So, relationally, he just starts, I thank you, God, that I'm here and not here. Exactly. And that's called pride. Yeah. Now, he's defining this person with these words. There's one who trusted in himself that he was righteous. Right.

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That's how he finds the Pharisee, a man who trusted in himself that he was righteous. And yet there's a declaration of this man's heart when he says this, and he treated others with contempt. Now, this is kind of an interesting way of seeing this. But when I trust in myself, it always changes the way I treat you.

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When I trust God, and with humility, he gives me something called my righteousness, it affects the way I treat you. Jesus' words here are very important. He said this, The world will know that you are my disciples because of the love you have for one another.

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That's what he said. Now, back to the Pharisee. He trusted himself and he had contempt for other men. Now, that means that he could not, because of his view of himself, love others right. Humility puts me in a place where I trust who God says I am.

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I trust what God has provided for me. I trust who God is. And the evidence that I'm actually trusting who God says I am is the way I treat you. And the way I treat you is with love. Now, we've used that scripture before, Scott, and I just want to repeat it. So often when I get confused scripturally about who God says I am, I'm not going to

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I will read even the words of Jesus differently. I'll read it as if he was saying, and the world will know you are my disciples because you sin less than they do. But he never taught that. Never said that. He never taught it. What he taught was there's a unique reality. I wish I could repeat it with a loud, loud, loud voice. Here's the unique reality. When I'm able to trust God,

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I will always experience God's grace. Now, who are those who trust God? They are the humble. Yeah. And therefore, this is a long answer to what you said a while ago. Therefore, when I truly understand that I am humble, I do not take credit for my righteousness.

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Right. Like the Pharisee. Right. When I truly understand that my righteousness depends on my trusting the one who could in fact make me righteous, there's no bragging in that. Right. There is in fact a reality in that. There's almost a surrender you have to do to receive that. Mm-hmm. To like – to take the leap off the cliff to believe that God really did change me. Amen. Amen.

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And that I can't do it myself. There's a surrender of like, you mean I can't do it myself? I mean, I can go to the gym and lift weights and I can lift more weight. But I can't do this righteousness thing by myself. Exactly. I have to have God do it for me. Exactly.

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Well said. So for me, there's another piece that's interesting because you said humility is relational. And so the other piece is, OK, this is something that I can only have but I can have as a gift of God. I can receive it.

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And you can too. And so can everyone I meet. Absolutely. And so it's like I'm here and maybe this is a really cool place to be. God's made me righteous. He's changed my heart. He's given me a new heart, you know. And that's awesome. And –

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And it's true for everybody I meet. Absolutely. And so it's like it lifts every – instead of I'm here and you've got to climb up here, it's like God's put me here and he'll put you here. He'll put all – we're all in that same spot. And so it changes the way I view people. Absolutely. And the minute you use that analogy, it changes the effect of your influence. Yeah. It takes – because we can smell it.

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when somebody is putting us down. We can feel it when we don't, quote, measure up. Scott, I grew up in a group of Christians who really still believe that they were sinners, and the more godly sinned less. But an interesting thing happened in the more godly who sinned less. They became critical of the rest of us who were still sinning a lot.

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I did not feel their love. I felt their contempt, to be honest. And so what did I do? I hid from them. I didn't ever want to be known. Now, when you just use that illustration, imagine that it's possible that Jesus at the cross made me righteous.

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If it's true for me, man, do I want you to have it. See, it's like an amazing thing about grace is that grace creates in us a desire to give away, not get. The humble do not need to be honored. They are fulfilled within themselves.

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They are the people who are looking to honor others, to treat others well. And so when we come back to this, that God may grant them repentance, imagine my having an influence on my neighbor, let's say, you having an influence on your employee to the point where

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The context of the influence of your person is causing them to begin to imagine what God has for them. Yeah. And God wants to do something for them, just like he did for us. He wants to give them, grant them, give them the reality that repentance leads to life. And so the humble are willing to receive from God.

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As we will say again, we say a lot of things over and over because their context is so important. Here's the deal. The Pharisee in the story, in Luke, he does something. He begins to show God how righteous he is. He begins to show God that he tithes more than he ought to. He does this more than he ought to. He's better than this. But he makes a huge mistake—

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And we'll get to the second character in the story. But he makes a big mistake, which often can happen, Scott. The mistake is this. What if humility is letting God be the initiator? Yeah. What if the Pharisee is the example of the religionist?

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Yeah. I'm going to be the initiator and I'm going to change my life and I'm going to make myself good. And I'm going to let – I'm going to please God. And I'm going to please God. I'm going to please God. It's like he's showing off to God. He's talking to God but he's showing off. He's saying, God, dig me. Yeah. Dig me. Now, all of that – And there are people –

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I mean I've met these people. I'm not one of them. But there are people that set their mind to be a certain way by what they do. Absolutely. And they pull it off except they don't pull it off without the cost, which you talked about earlier. Exactly. And the cost is they judge others. Yeah. And now – yeah. That's a good point. It's like imagine my effort –

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creates my disappointment in you. Oh, wow. Mm-hmm. Just think about that. My effort creates my disappointment in you. His grace creates in me the miracle of you, someone I can love, care for, come alongside, and you with me.

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See, humility is trusting God, and I want to add this to it. Humility is trusting God and others with me. Living into a reality, I need God. But listen to this. I need my friend Scott. I need to let you know...

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That I believe, Scott, and by the way, I do, I believe that you have been designed of God for my best. Yeah. I believe that. So you begin to look at people. For what they can give to me. That they're a gift to you. Instead of what they're going to take from me. Yeah. Yeah.

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Just think about the potential depths of understanding humility. One of the questions you asked at the very beginning of this little talk was, how can I become more humble? How could it? It's like, let's catch that. Let's not let that go. Let's catch that. How is that possible? Well, here's an interesting truism.

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I trust God with me. God discovers somebody he can trust with love. When I trust God's love, when I trust God's truth, when I trust God's purpose, guess what God's discovering? He's discovering someone that he can trust with his love, his truth, his purpose for the benefit of others. Amen.

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How would anybody know that their life is actually being maturing, that they're actually in their humility, they're maturing? It sounds too simple, but it's true. I can know that I'm maturing by the way I treat you. Yeah. In other words, the focus of the Pharisee was on himself.

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When individuals with humility trust God and others, the focus of their life is for the benefit of others. So, God gives grace to the humble. Yes. Who are the humble? The humble are those who trust God and others with who they are.

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is that I now am maturing because God is discovering a person whose name is Bill. That when I trust God, I experience His grace. And in His grace, I experience His love. I experience His truth. I experience His purposes. And when those things become my reality, you are always the benefactor of my life.

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Yeah. You become a gift. Amen. We all become gifts. Amen. Amen. That's good. Thanks, Bill. Let's begin to imagine that you and I are discovering the benefit of trusting God and others with ourselves. And that will make us humble, ready to receive God's grace. Thank you for listening to the podcast.

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