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If you put yourself up, you’ll go down. If you put yourself down, you’ll go up.
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[00:00:00] What if I told you that the key to living a fulfilled life is living a life of humility?
[00:00:30] Hey, everyone. Welcome to Shifts and Ladders. You already know who it is. It's Ryan. Hey, we talked about. In our last podcast, we talked about pride, and we were saying that pride, the Bible says that pride is focused on oneself, and there's huge, huge implications tied to pride. And that says destruction.
[00:00:56] Proverbs 13:18 says. Or 16:18, Excuse me, says, pride comes before destruction, a haughty spirit before it falls. So if you got pride, you're going for destruction. If you have. If you have haughtiness, you're going to fall. It's just a matter of fact that you're going to. Now, I want to say this and clear this up. There are areas in our lives that are. We're probably humble in, like, you know, I'm. I'm not that tall. Okay? But best believe there. There were points in my football career where I got humbled. Wicked.
[00:01:33] You gotta see this.
[00:01:36] You get. You get knocked on your butt, something happens, you get humbled somehow, right? So we might have life experiences that have humbled us in spaces, but there are areas in our life which do have pride in them. And usually in those areas, you're actually not having the best success. It could be relationships. It could be with your job, it could be with your relationship with your children. It could show up in other places. But I want to be mindful of that, because you could be winning in one place and actually losing in another.
[00:02:12] You may have humility on one side, but you have pride in another. And you have to examine the areas that are. That are dying or they're suffering, because perhaps there might be an area of wisdom and humility that you have not taken account for. That. If you had just taken a minute to say, I actually don't know what's happening here, and I need to look up something, you probably have better. A better experience. This is the thing. There are hella books out here. I mean, you go to the library, you go online, there are multiple forms. You have them in ebook, actual regular book, paper book. You have it in audio now. So there's. So you have it in YouTube. You can actually find stuff on YouTube now, or YouTube University, I like to call it. At times, you can find information to actually help you lose weight. If you're trying to lose weight, make money. If you're trying to learn how to make money, if you're trying to find a better study of the Bible or a teacher in the word of God, you can pretty much find anything you're looking for online, somewhere or in a format that you are able to digest. Information is golden right now. We live in the information age. The more information is at our fingertips, the faster we're able to create something with facts. Right?
[00:03:40] But how often do many people read books?
[00:03:44] How often are people looking for the thing that they're suffering in?
[00:03:48] Like, no one.
[00:03:50] I don't know. It boggles my mind sometimes that people are like, I don't know how to lose weight. But there's people on YouTube and they're muscular.
[00:04:01] Like, they have their story and their testimony of how they made a 180 on how they view their life. They got themselves out of depression and now create a business, a fitness business that is ran by Instagram or something along those lines. And we wonder if we have the information needed to make the changes. The information is right there. Like, no one, no one is putting in the effort to really dig down deep and say, I don't know what to do.
[00:04:40] That's what keeps a lot of us going. Not going to therapy, not getting coaching, not getting pastored, or going to having a broader community is because we're not willing to say we don't know.
[00:04:56] We're not humble enough to say, I do not know, and I need some help. Okay, So I want to get to the very topic that we're here to talk about is humility.
[00:05:09] Humility has a couple roots, but I want to talk about the first one. When it comes to humility, when you are humble, you literally don't have an answer. Okay. In fact, humility is actually a divine characteristic.
[00:05:30] It actually is depicted by God being in the center of it, and particularly in the case of Jesus. Jesus humbled himself, came from heaven, but was humble enough to go through the process of going through a baby being a baby being his creation. God decided to do what he desire to do in order for us to reconnect with Him. He basically sacrificed his glory in heaven to come down, be a human being.
[00:06:10] Bible says he's both God and man. So he left glory to come down and be what? His creation.
[00:06:18] To be his creation. The Creator dwelt inside his creation. You don't usually see that. I don't have Steve Jobs or Tim Cook in my phone. Like, that's wild to think about.
[00:06:35] So the thing is, humility requires you to actually think of others more than yourself. There's a reason why I'm just using Jesus in this example that he decided to humble himself and do what he did for us on the cross is because he loved us so much. John 3:16. That God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. That is the reason why you do some of the things you do. If you really love it, you will be humbled by it.
[00:07:17] Or if. Let me say this again, let me say it a different way. If you really love it, you will allow humility.
[00:07:26] You will be, ooh. If you really love it, you will take on humility to serve it. There we go. That's it. If you really love it, you will take on humility to serve it.
[00:07:42] Another example here, kids.
[00:07:46] I keep going back to my kids. My daughter is one of those kids that, like, ask some very poignant questions and you're like, dad gone. And I don't even know the answer. I'm not even. I'm not going to even. I've had to learn to not just say just because I said so. You know, I know that was time in the day and all that kind of stuff. It was fine. And sometimes you got to do that, right? Because, you know, sometimes kids want to get into grown folks business, just keeping it a buck. But I will say this, it. We ended up losing our voice when we were young because pride got in the way of our parents at times giving us an answer. But also saying, I don't have an answer is also good too. But nobody knew that. Nobody was on that when I was growing up, at least. So you get because I said so, or you got cut off trying to explain something. And, you know, don't you find yourself, like, repeating some of the parental things that you did?
[00:08:53] Not all of them, but some of them that you experience in your own life at times. And I think it's incredible now that now that we're. There's more awareness on how children relate to parents.
[00:09:10] You almost have to humble yourself and be like, yeah, I was right. You're right, kid, I forgot to do this. Emory called me out on something and I was like, you know, I was trying to make an excuse. Like, you know, I didn't. And I was like, you're right, I didn't do it.
[00:09:31] And that was it.
[00:09:33] I'd have to lie about it. I'd have to make something up. I didn't have to get an argument, I just acknowledged it.
[00:09:42] And this is the thing about humility. Humility happens to turn on a light on you.
[00:09:50] And you actually have to be the one that verifies what you see because everybody's looking at it and they're just waiting for you to acknowledge it.
[00:10:01] You know, I forgot with Emory, she wants to know that I remember. I forgot. I didn't make no excuse that I was running behind like, no, I messed up.
[00:10:13] And that is the transparency that pride won't let you have. Because no matter what, pride wants to always look good.
[00:10:23] It wants to look flashy. It wants it. It wants it to be about itself, doesn't want to be about others. But humility does. So I'm going to pull some scripture here to read to you some of the humble scriptures.
[00:10:44] The humble bars of the scriptures you have. James, chapter 10 says, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up. Luke 14:11. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. There are. Listen, this is Jesus right off the gate. If you lifting yourself up, you're going to put yourself down. But if you put yourself down, you'll be lifted up. Another proverb, 11:12.
[00:11:14] With humility comes wisdom. We touched on that.
[00:11:19] So you have to put yourself, when you're humble in two ways.
[00:11:28] One, you have to put yourself in a state of dependence, and that is a dependence on God. Now, Proverbs, chapter 3, verse 5 and 6 says this. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all of your ways, acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths. This is a position of humility, because it's saying you need to trust God with all of your heart. And whatever you thought you understood, don't do it. Lean not onto it.
[00:12:07] It was great at one point. It may not be serving you now, right? So you can't even get held up on what you know, because you don't know. That's why you need to trust in someone who is greater than you, that can manage what's happening with you in a great and confident way and position you better than you really can position yourself. That's what most people suffer with.
[00:12:33] The other one is meekness.
[00:12:37] And it's. And meekness is not meek. Males, meek. Meekness.
[00:12:42] It's a word that people don't typically use, but meekness is a very interesting word. It's in. It's found in Matthew, chapter, chapter five, I believe, chapter five. This is where we find the Beatitudes on the Sermon of the Mount in Matthew, chapter six. Sorry, chapter five and six, chapter five, Starting chapter five, I should say.
[00:13:08] And meekness is actually strength under control.
[00:13:16] Strength under control. So let me give you an example here.
[00:13:21] You could probably bench. If I'm at the gym and, you know, back in the day, I used to bench a whole lot. So we'll just forget. For this example, let's just say I can bench 400 pounds, okay? Meekness says I'm actually going to do 295, but I'm actually going to do slow reps with it. Okay?
[00:13:48] That is strength under control.
[00:13:53] A lot of times if you've gone to the gym or you've seen on social media bloopers of people in the gym just throwing weight up with no control, they may look strong, but they don't have that strength under control. They're out of control. So whenever you're out of control, you risk injuring not just yourself, but those around you. Why? Because you have no control.
[00:14:19] And because you have no control, the damages can be catastrophic to yourself and those you're connected to because you don't have control.
[00:14:31] But when you actually put a governor or a threshold or a limit on what's appropriate for now, things will be a little different.
[00:14:47] But you can control it in a way that you couldn't do when you were doing, like if you were maxing out at 400 or 405 technically is a whole different kind of workout. When you have, if you can bench 405, but you can actually control 275 or 295 with a degree of control. Like if you control it well enough, you're probably open yourself to more opportunities. You can do fast, you can do, you know, reverse grip. You can do all kinds of stuff. Once you know that you have that weight under control.
[00:15:32] This is the thing, pride. And I'm just realizing this, pride likes to show off in front of people. So if it looks hard, I have to adjust my seat because it's messing with me.
[00:15:48] This example is messing with me.
[00:15:51] If it looks hard to other people, we will typically, if you have pride, you will typically go after and start doing it because you want the accolades and you want the attention that comes with doing something hard.
[00:16:10] That's why most of us when we go to work at times, and don't get me wrong, I'm telling you, make, you know, work hard on your job, all those kinds of things. But one of the things that we typically do is we actually give more than what is actually required.
[00:16:27] So we're trying to get something out of our area of employment or out of our spouses or out of our children or our friends.
[00:16:38] And really what they need from us is this bit, just a little bit.
[00:16:47] They say, I just need you to listen. I didn't ask for no advice. You know, you got that friend that said you want them to just listen, but they're giving advice, they're telling you what they did, and they're telling their story to you like you didn't have. Like you. Like they weren't there for it. You know what I'm saying? Like, it creates this level of dissension because it's like, man, your story's cool, but you need to keep that under control because this is about me right now, right?
[00:17:14] So having that level of control, and that is actually a fruit of the spirit. Self control is fruit of the spirit. So you can't be humble if you don't have self control. So what you have to do is stay in a position of humility, knowing that you are not God of your own life.
[00:17:39] And usually that's what keeps people hung up, is that very concept, you are not God over your own life.
[00:17:47] And unfortunately, that was what sin was. When Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and Adam and Eve ate from it, it basically said, the serpent said to Eve says, if you eat of it, you will be like God.
[00:18:09] I'm gonna let that sit for a minute.
[00:18:12] He said, if you eat of the tree, you will be like him. But the crazy thing about it, they were already like him because they were made in the image and likeness of God.
[00:18:23] So there's this thing within us that wants to be able to say that we don't necessarily need anybody, but in all actuality, we really do.
[00:18:37] God made us interdependent people. I'm relying on the farmer to get the chicken to my table. If the. If the farmer don't do the way he needs to do with the chicken, I ain't got no chicken for dinner.
[00:18:52] If the farmers don't do what they need to do with the fruit of the season or vegetables of the season, and the truck driver doesn't drive the route and the grocery store. Now, again, I'm completely simplifying the supply chain, but, like, we need each other.
[00:19:13] But if you think you can do all of that on your own, you're going to be mistaken and you're going to be heartbroken because it's there at the space of humility that God can lift you up because he knows that, you know, you didn't get there by yourself.
[00:19:32] So not a sexy topic again. But it's necessary if you want to go to next stages. Because you can't receive help if you don't need help. If you don't think you need help. Let me say that again. You can't receive help if you don't think you need help.
[00:19:50] Bible says this about wives.
[00:19:53] He who finds a wife finds a good thing and finds favor with the Lord.
[00:20:00] God thought enough of you that he sent you help as a man. As a woman, you have a significant other. God sends you help. God sends you help.
[00:20:12] Because if you can't lift it, if that weight's that heavy, you're going to need somebody to help you.
[00:20:21] And it takes some humility to say, give me a hand.
[00:20:26] All right. So with that said, if you like this podcast, like it on. Well, listen to it on Apple Music. Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify. We're also on YouTube. Subscribe and share this with somebody. If you know that humility is the key to unlocking the potential in your life, and God ordains it clearly in his word. I think it's really important to share it with somebody because eventually we're all going to run into that place and have areas of our lives that we need to submit to God and say, I don't know, but I need your help. But until the next time, we'll see you.
[00:21:06] Let me say this again. Until the next time, we'll see you later. Peace.
