Loving Like Jesus | Small Group Lesson 3: Love Is Humble

What would you give to radically improve, even transform what matters most in your relationships? You can thrive in your career, acquire wealth, or build an excellent reputation. But if your relationships aren't thriving, nothing else matters. Let's explore and begin to practice six foundational principles, including how to give your relationships the highest value, love as Jesus loves you, and communicate from the heart so we can walk a practical path for fulfilling God's intention in all our relationships, especially the difficult ones.

We are well into our forty day journey toward loving like Jesus. On this forty day journey, we've been reading each day about the relationship principles of Jesus. We've been meeting each week or every other week in small groups to discuss our learning. And we've been practicing the principles of love. That is, we're putting into practice what we are learning.

In this study, we've been working our way through the attributes of love. First Corinthians thirteen:four says, love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. Love is not proud. Love doesn't say, look how great I am at loving others, I've outdone myself. The next lines say, love keeps no record of wrongs.

I would add, love also keeps no record of rights. When I keep a list of all the the the right and good and kind things that I have done, I feel pretty good about myself. I might want to share that list with other people. Real love's only concern is the other person. Humility isn't a feeling, it's a way of behaving.

I heard this definition of humility. Humility isn't thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking of others instead of yourself and acting in their best interest instead of your own. Today we're going to talk about four practical ways that you can practice humility. If you're thinking, I don't need this message, I've got humility mastered, then that's a sign you need this message.

The first way we can practice humility is this, practice giving preference to others. Think about the situations in your life that are difficult to give preference to another person. You let someone else go first. I thought of a couple scenarios and maybe you could relate to these. Imagine you're standing in the line at the grocery store at Meijer's and you've got the self checkout lane believing it'd be faster, but you keep looking over to cashier operated lines wondering if that would have been the better route.

Then all of a sudden you hear these words over the intercom, Lane 4 is now open. What are you going to do in that moment? Do you rush over pushing other people out of your way? Or do you let the people in front of you move first? Romans twelve ten says, give preference to one another in honor.

This summer Angie and I attended an opera at the Detroit Opera House. It's not a frequent thing for us, we're not that cultured. In fact, we're a little unfamiliar with where to park and how to find the Opera House. We were walking in the direction we thought the Opera House was in when we saw two guys carrying musical instrument cases. And we said to them, you guys look like you know where you're going.

We will follow you. We walked together a short way and Edgy asked them, is it a good show? And one of the guys said, well the orchestra is great, the rest of the show is only okay. How's that for humility? Within every orchestra is a built in humbling system of chairs in which the musicians are ranked according to ability.

For each instrument there is a first chair. That's the best musician who gets all the special parts to play. I remember a quote of Leonard Bernstein, was the famous orchestra conductor, when he was asked, what's the most difficult instrument in the orchestra to play? And he said, second fiddle. And I thought that's really true.

Everybody wants the top spot. There were like six violinists that night in the orchestra, but only one person could have that premier chair. Everyone else had to be backup. But without everybody else, there would be no symphony. It took all the parts, all the harmony, everybody doing their part to make it work.

Only one is going to have that preeminent place. How about the rest of us in many facets of life practicing being second fiddle? How do we do with that? To paraphrase the verse we just read, Romans twelve ten, from the message paraphrase, it says practice playing second fiddle. Just go ahead and find some categories in your life where you can let someone else get the spotlight and you give some preference and deference to them.

Far more important than which chair in the orchestra or the fastest line in the grocery store is getting ahead in life and finally one day living in the presence of God forever. Do you know how that happened? Because Jesus gave preference to us. Like a slave, like a servant, he laid down his own preferences so that you and I could get ahead. Philippians chapter two verse three to eight says, 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 the others.

And your relationship with one another have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in the very nature of 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. And being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Think of the humble life Jesus lived, coming from heaven to earth, born in a stable, on Palm Sunday when he was making his very public entrance into the city of Jerusalem, most Bible scholars of that day thought the Messiah would come in triumphantly as a military victor, maybe on the back of a white stallion. The son of God instead chose to come into the city on the back of a donkey.

Then he died a criminal's death. Why? Because in his death you and I are given the opportunity to have life. Jesus put our preferences ahead of his own. The second way you can practice humility is to practice learning from others.

Being open to their suggestions, being open to their correction, even being open to criticism. That's a major component of humility. Part of humility is teachability, being willing to listen and being willing to learn, willing to grow, not being a know it all. One of the main reasons we want to practice learning from others is that this is the way that we grow. Proverbs fifteen thirty two, those who disregard discipline despise themselves, but the one who heeds correction gains understanding.

Humble people are always learning because they're open to correction. They ask questions and while it stings a little, you'll be wiser if you're open to correction. So who do you have in your life that will tell you the truth about yourself? Do you have the courage to go to the people who know you best and ask, what do you see in my life that needs improvement? What is out of line in my values and priorities?

What lessons do I need to learn? It takes enormous courage to humble yourself and learn on that level. In many ways God wants us to be like little children, not to be childish, but to be childlike. Whoever humbles himself like this child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Why does God want us to be like children in our humility?

Because children are teachable. They're open to learning, they're open to learn, they're not defensive. They don't say, I don't need to learn to walk. I don't need to learn to talk. You can't teach me anything about reading.

Children are teachable. You and I have a choice. We can humble ourselves and learn from others or we can live in arrogant ignorance. Another way I can practice humility is by admitting when I'm wrong. Now this comes a little easier for some of us than it does for others.

The truth of it is all of us make mistakes and we do so with great regularity. Our instinct is to deny our fault or to turn it back around. Yeah, I was wrong but you. Or I'm really sorry but if only you had. Or we start this excuse making because of this or because of that.

And it's all sugar coating when in fact what we need is brutal humble honesty. I own it. I was wrong. I am sorry. It's so difficult for us these days to really just come out with the hard news of what's going on in our life, the truth about who we really are.

An old story kind of illustrates this. A woman was traveling out of business away from her husband and kids and left him home to hold the fort down for her children. She called back one night to see how things were going and she said, and he said, not so good. The poodle died today. She said, that's bad news but what's worse is the way you delivered that news to me.

You could have kind of eased me into it, kind of built me up to that news. Let me get ready for it. Like the first night I call home you could have said, honey, somehow the poodle got up on the roof. And the next night I called you could have said, the poodle fell off the roof and isn't doing so well. Then the third night you could have said the poodle died.

That way I would have been ready for the bad news. And he said I'm sorry, I'll try to do better next time. She said well let's change the subject. You're home with the kids watching over the house. I know my mom came down for a visit.

I know you don't like her very much. How's that going? How's mom doing? And he said, she's on the roof. We try to sugar coat the bad news but honesty and humility go a long way.

The Bible talks about this, Proverbs 2eight 13, whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy. I don't know your background, some of us might have grown up in homes where we didn't hear people say I'm sorry, no one ever admitted I'm wrong. So now we're imitating that behavior and we find it a challenge to ever come clean in the workplace or the classroom or the home and to say I was wrong. Somehow we believe if people came to know that we're less than perfect our esteem in their eyes would diminish. But guess what?

They already know you're not perfect. The first step in healing relationships will always begin with humility. James five sixteen Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The fourth way you can practice courageous humility is to practice surrendering your plans to God. James chapter four says, But He gives us more grace.

That is why the scripture says, God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. Submit yourselves then to God. God opposes the proud. Opposes, that's a strong word. I can think of a lot of people I don't want opposing me.

I don't want Mike Tyson opposing me in the boxing ring. I don't want Bill Gates opposing me at an auction. But I really don't want to be opposed by God because there's no way I'm gonna win that battle. The bible says that when I'm prideful I am in opposition to God. God opposes me.

So he says surrender yourself to God. What does it mean to surrender yourself and your plans to God? Romans six thirteen says offer every part of yourself to Him as an instrument of righteousness. Surrendering means God I'm going with your plans for my life not my own. God I've got my plans, I've got my dreams, I've got my goals, I've got ambitions but I know that you put me on this earth for a reason, for a purpose.

And God I'm gonna intentionally choose your plan for my life instead of my own. I know you're not gonna reveal it to me all at once, it's gonna come a little bit at a time, so I'm gonna take it a step at a time, but I wanna go with your plan, not mine. That's humility. That's called being humble, surrendering your plans to God. Have you done that?

Did you know the word humor and humility and humanity and human all come from the same root word? Humility is when you take God seriously and you don't take yourself seriously. Most of us do the exact opposite. We take ourselves way too seriously and we don't take God seriously enough. Humility is being in touch with your humanity.

It's not putting yourself down, it's realizing that you are both a bundle of strengths and weaknesses. It's just about being honest about your humanity. I hope you have a great discussion with your group. More than that, I hope you will practice true humility. Real love is humble.

Thanks for listening.