The Humility Gap | Lisa Harper | Elevation Church

i love i love y'all so much um i i usually love every church i get to go to small big stiff wiggly i just love the house of god but some churches don't like me so much and i was in one of those not too long ago i won't tell you where it is just in case you have cousins there but um rhymes with pennsylvania i and i knew i knew i wasn't going to be warmly received because it was just it was just more of a formal setting and i'm not very formal and so when the women picked me up from the airport it was just it was crickets all the way to the conference and then we get to the conference and they had what they called the fellowship time which means you usually eat carbs and and cold coffee and make small talk in the fellowship hall before you go into the main part of the sanctuary and i stood around i thought they need to re-christen this the stiff and hateful hall because nobody's talking like nobody's chatting and and so i just kept kind of moving from group to group trying to find somebody who who would talk and finally somebody introduced me to the worship leader for that particular conference and she wasn't from that area and she seemed friendly and i thought cool we can be aliens and strangers together and so i introduced myself to the worship leader i'm going to call her wanda that's not her real name but i said wanda i'm so glad you're here you know i don't know anybody here and she was like i don't either and and so an effort to connect further i started to tease i don't know if y'all do that when you first meet people you kind of start teasing with them chunks you know and and i said well wanda you might want to watch me when you start playing a real uptempo song because i might just break out into a worship dance now i was teasing i know we've got a couple of dancers here and it's a it's a biblical thing it's totally biblical thing there's precedence in scripture david even says we should but i grew up half baptist my mom was baptisted a bone my dad was pentecostal so the baptist in me longs to dance um the pentecostal in me tries to dance but the old pale woman that i am can't dance and so it's just it's just a real juxtaposition for me so i was just teasing with wanda and i said you may want to watch me because i'll break out do worship dance and then you know when you're teasing with somebody you don't know and you can tell by the way they're listening to you they think you're being serious they don't realize you're you're kidding yet and i thought gosh i need to tell i was just playing because i don't want to think i was being disrespectful because there is literally liturgical dance in scripture and so i thought when we have a second i'll qualify that so she knows i'm not playing um well then they separated us then the conference started it was real very very serious and so i thought i'll talk to you at the end of conference but they took us our separate ways so the next morning i was like i've got to see wanda before it starts to tell her that i was just kidding about the whole dancing thing and um and so i'm starting to talk to her they lead us in it wasn't a house-like elevation it was a real real serious church um they had like you know polished pews all the way back and all the stained glass windows pipe organ and so they usher wanda nap to the front they had two little short diagonally opposed pews like big enough for i don't know two skinny keto girls or chunky chick with a bible so i was on one little diagonal pew and and one was on the other pu and so i lean over to tell her remember last night when i said about well why does i'm starting to explain it to her the lady who was hosting the event comes up she's very very serious we're hos and she was like wanda you know i need you to start worship now and so wanda's like okay hadn't got to explain it wanda stands up she's real perky worship leader didn't fit the whole setting but she stands up and she goes exactly like this holly to me she goes and then she comes up and and i don't know how to explain what i felt in that moment but it's just this deep sense of foreboding i thought just some about this doesn't feel good to me she walks up and chris they didn't have like a cool keyboard they didn't have they had one of those old upright pianos y'all remember those that has the high back and so wanna goes plays a song on the piano kind of a hymn and then she stops there's about i don't know 300 women on the pews very a lot of match outfits and and she leans out from behind the piano and she went ladies i have got such a treat for you this morning and then she gestures to me and she goes hey elijah she goes lisa is a worship dancer and then she grabs this package i hadn't noticed until that point she grabs this package on top of the pianos this long package comes all the way off the stage comes down to where i'm sitting i'm sitting where you are holly she unwraps this package and unfurls this massive like five by seven foot purple flag with the alpha and the omega and gold glitter on the flag and then she you know presents it to me with a flourish like we've planned this and then a second time she goes heads back up on stage now y'all the women are are stiff wanda isn't and is evidently a little oblivious the women are stiff she starts playing this real up tempo probably an elevation song a real up tempo song and then she goes like gestures to me like now it's time for your routine and i'm holding this massive flag and you nobody's even singing with her they're just and i'm holding this flag and i thought this is like a saturday night live skit like i don't i don't know where to go from here and then i have just a smidge of prodigal in me and i thought she's my only friend and these women probably need to be just poked a little bit and so i started to dance and the only thing i knew to do because the flag was heavy was just to do kind of this big twirl with the flag and women are landing out of the way well wanda was charismatic so the song lasted like 17 minutes is one song and so i thought i can't hold it anymore like my what hanging down part is starting to cramp i was like i didn't know what to do and so i thought well this is probably my last public dance and so and this straight up truth i'll tell you if i was lying in church i went all the way over to the front of the of the church and i kind of got a run and start because i've seen people do this at joyce meyer events and i've always wanted to try it and i started running i'm going to have to do this to show y'all what i did i started running and then i just went [Applause] and did a grunge attack with the flag and y'all what was hilarious i probably should have worn a sports bra for that but um follows hilarious you can hear this collective gas people like all the women swept but i didn't think god was disappointed i felt like god was leaning over going jesus you've got to see what she's doing this morning i am young funny yeah that's funny i am so much more laurel and hearty than i am shakira and j-lo i do not have it all together um my life plays out more like a blooper reel than a press release but at 58 what i'm learning i keep saying 60 because 60 is just like a little over a year away from me and so i keep saying 60 so i'll get used to it the thing i love about this age isn't just the discounts at mcdonald's it's that i can look back over 50 years of walking with jesus and i can go you know what it's really not about my capacity it's about his compassion it's not about whether i have it all together it's about jesus what i'm learning and i'm a slow learner but what i'm learning y'all is if you really want to access intimacy with god if you really want to commune with god the key is humility and rick warren says it well i usually attribute this to c.s lewis because it sounds like something sir lewis would say it's actually rick warren pastor in california he says humility is not thinking less of ourselves i think in american christian culture we tend to think humility is oh no it's not about me well that's actually just narcissism and a nicer outfit that's not humility that's still drawing all the tension to yourself woe is me it's not humility rick warren says humility isn't thinking less of yourself it's just thinking of yourself less it's just being so preoccupied with jesus being so distracted so discombobulated by his kindness his goodness his accessibility that we're just not very focused on ourself anymore i think humility is the key to intimacy with god i think humility is necessary for worship my posthumous pretend theological boyfriend um a.w tossier says it like this he says it takes humility to worship god acceptably it takes humility to worship god acceptably so so it's it's the it's the the way that we commune with god it's the way we effectively adequately worship god i also think it's a harbinger for divine glory um it's kind of like this um you know the most common bread in almost all of southern hemisphere for the last i don't know four or five centuries i read this is the lowly tortilla chip because of or i should say tortilla because of the relative cheapness of corn and how how easily it's grown in hot humid areas and so they've got tortillas everywhere tutorials are no big deal they're just they're just common but but if you cut a tortilla into triangles and you deep fry it and if you're a christian you deep fried and lard and then you you dip that triangle into a vat of queso then well that that becomes the conduit for a life-changing culinary experience y'all that's humility humility actually leads us to glory the kind of divine glory that we read about in the old testament but we so rarely experience in our culture and i think it's because we've gotten a little too proud but we wrap verses around our pride and call it humble um so we're going to talk this morning just for a minute about true humility if you'll turn to first samuel i'm going to show you the the proof of why i think humility is to glory what chips and queso are to life change uh first samuel and we're going to be looking at chapter 2 verses 12 to 26. now the sons of eli were worthless men they did not know the lord the custom of the priest with the people was that when any man offered sacrifice the priest servant would come while the meat was boiling with a three-pronged fork in his hand and he would trust it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot all that the fork brought up the priest would take for himself this is what they did at shiloh to all the israelites who came there moreover before the fat was burned the priest servant would come and say to the man who was sacrificing give meat for the priest to roast for he will not accept boiled meat from you but only raw and if the man said to him let them burn the fat first and then take as much as you wish he would say no you must give it now and if not i will take it by force thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the lord for the men treated the offering of the lord with contempt samuel was ministering before the lord a boy clothed with a linen ephod and his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice then eli would bless elkanah samuel's daddy and his wife and say may the lord give you children by this woman for the petition she asked of the lord so they would return home indeed the lord visited hannah and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters and the young man samuel grew in the presence of the lord you probably remember samuel's story is it's one of the favorite stories i saw flannel graft when i was growing up baptistal and samuel was born to a woman who struggled with infertility named hannah the reason i love hannah is not only that she was patient which is something i've been praying for for five decades uh y'all remember she had a sister wife that was back when polygamy was the norm and she had to put up with his sister wife named penina who had all these kids she was fertile myrtle and then hannah struggled within particularly didn't have any kids and penina was a big braggart and when they drove to costco she's made hannah's life miserable and so hannah went to church i'm taking the tiniest bit of liberty with hebrews but this is what it would play out like now they they they go to church and hannah goes to the altar and is grieving with such drama that the priest eli who's mentioned here thinks she's had one too many mimosas before small group and so the priest chastises her and she says no sir i haven't been drinking i'm just travailing before the lord because my heart has been broken for so long and it has just devastated me that i've never been able to carry children and i know what that feels like because i didn't become a mom until the age of 50 through the miracle of adoption so i know what it feels like to travail especially on mother's day or christmas when you wish there was more than yours and your dog stalking hanging on the fireplace nothing wrong with dogs but um but that's all i had until the age of 50. so i identify with hannah and then she gets pregnant because our lord is so kind and she names her son samuel which means the lord hears and after he's weaned she takes him to the temple and dedicates him and says this is going to be like his boarding school and she says to the priest eli i want you to raise him up in the ways of god i want my boy to love god i want my boy to give his life for kingdom purposes well eli already had two sons so he effectively adopts samuel but he's got two older sons hofney and phineas and these boys are players these boys were raised in the house of god they were fluent in the ways of god but they flouted the will of god because they were more interested in satisfying their own appetites than they were in honoring god or serving god or submitting to god's will and so even though they were more than familiar with torah or people who are trying to be fancy and pressure dinner parties will say torah but that's just the hebrew version of the first five books of the old testament they were familiar with that and in the hebrew scriptures god very specifically said here's here's the the template i want you to apply to sacrifices and he said when people bring meat to church to temples what they called it back then when they bring meat to church as an offering i want y'all to use a three-pronged fork i've studied this i can't prove it i'm almost sure that's where we get the vernacular potluck supper because people would put meat in a pot and then the priest had to poke a three-four prong fork into the into the pot and whatever they brought up was their protein for the day and so hophny and phineas the sons of eli the priest whose lineage goes back to aaron the first priest of israel so they had very very impeccable blue blood when it comes to being priests i mean if these guys were living today mother teresa and billy graham and spurgeon and maybe stephen furtick although he's not dead would be on their 23amitry i mean just incredible legacy with regards to people who love god and their backstory but they they just ignored all that because they just said we don't want potluck we want to know what we're getting so they set up a system in the parking lot of the temple and they begin accosting worshipers so before they could even get to make their sacrifice they'd be like what you got that yeti let me see give me those flights give me that give me that kobe and they they set up a system where they took the meat before it was sacrificed they took the choices cuts they had traegers set up in the parking lot and and that's why god says they're worthless men and he says eli you are not teaching your sons what it is to bow their knees before me he said samuel is basically an orphan and samuel samuel and patting himself on the back and dislocating his shoulders samuel is not impressed with his himself samuel's impressed with me so god says samuel's growing up while your boys are growing out the word in hebrew for for weight is kavod it's the same word for honor and for chubby and god tells eli your sons are getting pretty thick brother because they're eating all that marbled meat and he goes on to chastise eli in verse verse 29 of chapter 2 he says why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that i commanded and honor your sons above me by fattening yourself on the choices parts of every offing offering of my people israel therefore the lord the god of israel declares i promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me but now the lord declares far be it from me for those who honor me i will honor and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed behold the days are coming when i will cut off your strength and the strength of your of your father's house so that there will not be an old man in your house then in distress you will look with envious eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed on israel and there shall not be an old man in your house forever the only one of you whom i shall not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out to grieve his heart and all the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men and this shall come upon your two sons hofney and phineas shall be assigned to you both of them shall die on the same day he we go on to read that hoffney and phineas their their destructive appetites led them to the point they spout to the point that they were actually getting jiggy with women who were coming in to volunteer at church so they added sexual abuse to their gluttony and these were these were bad guys you know they're sons of one of the high priests of israel we tend to think that legacy we equate legacy with effective leadership legacy without humility is destructive legacy without humility leads to entitlement which leads to lunacy i love that chris said don't always give your kids what they want when they want it i'm not going to talk about parenting i've only been a parent for 10 years and missy is now a teenager and so i can't say anything i'm afraid i'll be struck by lightning um because we're just starting to have a little emotion at our house even though she's an amazing kid much easier parent than i am deserving um but i'm not going to talk about parenting i am going to talk about our calling as christ followers if you had the privilege the undeserved privilege of having christian parents goodness gracious that does not mean that you're going to be a great leader it means that you should every single day go thank you jesus thank you jesus thank you jesus thank you jesus that i had legacy in my house that i heard these stories when i was a kid without humility legacy becomes entitlement and that's what we're seeing all over culture i'm not going to name names but how many businesses have you seen absolutely fall apart when the sun takes over and the dad led really really well the dad built it from the ground up and then the sun takes over with his bentley and his whatever addiction and within 10 years they're no longer traded and when another 10 years their their belly up now that is sad when you open up wall street and read about those kind of businesses sadder still are churches when you see a pastor who loves the lord and he's got a team of men and women who love the lord and there's honor and there's integrity in the house and then you see a young leader come in and i'm not against youth goodness gracious i pray for a young man on eharmony so i am not [Laughter] at all opposed to youth but if you see a youth begin to lead and they get a platform before they have the scaffolding of humility they will topple because legacy does not equate to leadership legacy and humility leadership we've got to be aware that we've all got clay feet we've got to be aware that the hope doesn't rest on us it rests on jesus hoffney and phineas completely forget that they flout the ways of god and the paul harvey part of their story the second half is heartbreakingly sad flip over a page to chapter four a man of benjamin ran from the battle line this is first samuel four verse 12. with his clothes torn with dirt on his head when he arrived eli was sitting on a seat by the road watching for his heart trembled for the ark of god do you remember what the ark of god was young talk back i'm not your pastor do you remember what it was remember harrison ford chased it ark in hebrew just means box fancy word but just means a box and the ark of god or sometimes you call it the ark of the covenant for the israelites the israelites were god's chosen people that just means god set his favor on this motley crew of people group and he said i'm going to set my favor on y'all and for the rest of of time people are going to look at you as a symbol of the kind of intimacy that people can have with me so i'm going to set you apart i'm going to i'm going to call you a theocracy fancy word that just means he set his favor on them first and then forevermore people will go oh god actually wants a relationship with us previous to the theocracy of israel people thought god was the sun that was the roman egyptian idea they thought god was the sun you can't commune with the sun don't wear sunscreen the sun will fry you and so the hebrew god who began judeo-christianity said i want actually real relationship with you so israel i'm going to set you apart i'm going to communion with you i'm going to actually talk with you there's going to be boundaries for you to live a blessed blessed life they're not rules i hate it when people call the ten commandments rules they're like the the bumper reels at the bowling alley that keep your ball from going in the gutter they're they're they're felt bumpers i'm going to give you these parameters because i love you because you're my people i'm going to institute something called sabbath that's not so you can't wear you know shorts on sunday that's not so you can't have belly rings that you show preferably not in church unless you're really lean um that as that's not a punitive decree sabbath was given to a group of people all they knew was slavery they've just come out of slavery that's all they know and god says you're not going to understand this now but i'm giving you something called shabbat and that means one day a week i don't want you to work i want you to gather around the table and i want you to eat carbs because quito is from the devil and and i want you to look at each other's eyes and i want you to enjoy each other and i want you to have fellowship and i want you to remember how much i love you sabbath shabbat is about relationship i'm a relational god he's always been a relational god and so he's told them from the very beginning i love you i'm for you i love you i'm for you huffy and phineas just said nah we want to do it our own way y'all they knew those parameters they knew who god what they had heard their daddy praying and they just didn't care they wanted to fill their own bellies how often have you stopped in a moment or i better said as the holy spirit stopped you and you went what do i want to do the holy spirit said actually your will isn't quite as important as god's when you went it is today and you are oppositionally defiant even though you know god y'all i am a grace girl through and through i love the unmerited favor of god that's the only reason i'm here i am a grace piglet i love the unmerited favor of god but i'm also a word woman and if you study scripture god doesn't play god does not allow willful sin to continue indefinitely there is a point where god brings a consequence not because he's mean but because he's merciful and he doesn't want us to get so far removed from him that we can't find our way back hafny and phineas goodness gracious of all people who knew god's will they were the ones who shouldn't have wandered their father was in the ministry this man of benjamin he came back to eli and eli was scared because he didn't know what had happened to the ark of the lord the box that carried the relics that proved that god loved the israelites y'all remember what those relics were in the big box a jar of barbecued potato chips we would call it manna and then the staff that had budded miraculously pieces of the ten commandments those were relics that proved so they were like hey we weren't smoking something medicinal this really happened he really gave these words to moses on top of mount sinai he was really with us in the wilderness that ark of the covenant was precious to them i trade bibles usually every 10 years but my dad wrote in this one and my dad passed away in 2012 this is precious to me it's precious to me i don't care if i lose my purse i care if i lose my bible i care if i leave my bible in in an airport or a hotel um the the ark of the covenant that was that was the crown jewel of israel and so eli is afraid because the philistines who were the arch enemy of of israel they always wanted to steal the the ark of the covenant and when the man came into the city and told the news all the city cried out when eli heard the sound of the outcry he said what is this uproar then the man hurried and came and told eli now eli was 98 years old and his eyes were set so that he could not see in other words he was blind but he can hear everything and the man said to eli i am he who has come from the battle i fled from the battle today and he said how did it go my son he who brought the news answered and said israel has fled before the philistines and there has also been a great defeat among the people your two sons also hophni and phineas are dead and the ark of god has been captured as soon as he mentioned the ark of god eli fell over backward from his seat by the side of the gate and his neck was broken and he died for the man was old and heavy he had judged israel for 40 years holly how long have you and stephen been leading elevation 16. so 40 years double what you've plowed here 40 years eli has been leading israel he's been there their spiritual leader and this is this is his epitome he's standing on a chair waiting to hear about the ark of the covenant and because he's a chunk because he's been eating all that meat he's not supposed to to eat he's heavy and he's so flustered when the messenger comes back and says i'm so sorry the ark has been stolen and your sons both died in battle and he remembers the prophecy of god saying your sons are not going to live you're not going to have any old men in your family tree he falls off the chair and breaks his neck that's not jerry springer that's the bible that's called consequence that's consequence of not going yes sir not my will but yours which even jesus said in the garden of gethsemane i don't know why we think we can shirk that anymore and our jesus is my bumper sticker society i know humility isn't trending because we're so preoccupied with my brand and my choice and my preference y'all it never stopped trending in scripture god tells them over and over again you're my people i love you you're my people i love you you're my people i love you i made a way for you to be reconciled with me now i'm god you're not i'm god and you're not humility humility is it is key to intimacy with jesus phineas one of the fat dead boys wives she's pregnant and when she hears her husband has been killed in battle and she sees her father-in-law topple over and die she spontaneously gives birth she has a spontaneous birth and she's so traumatized by what has happened that she doesn't immediately bond with the baby the women around her have to care for the baby and they say but but you need to rejoice you need to rejoice you had a son we know you lost your husband you lost your father but you had a son and she says name him ichabod ichabod means where has the glory gone one word in english is in glorious the name kavod in hebrew means glory glory kavod also means chubby chubby same word for physical weight as for glory y'all the bottom line of this jerry springer tale is our shoulders are not shaped to carry divine glory when we think it's all about us if you aren't careful it will crush you our shoulders are not shaped to carry god's glory i worry sometimes in the culture we have that's so focused on platform and entertainment i think oh lord protect them because when we start thinking i'm the conduit for god's score i'm like no baby you better get out of the way you had better get out of the way because god doesn't play with human pride he just doesn't and if human pride leads to an appetite that says my stomach is more important than god's will yeah we are going to have some consequences that that we haven't begun to to fear i'm i'm usually not a fire and brimstone kind of girl again i love the grace of god but at the age i am sometimes i look at culture and i go we have forgotten we have forgotten the glory of god and we're taking too much of it for ourselves i watched a documentary recently and it was about dennis raider the btk serial killer and he had a killing spree over about 20 years they know definitively he killed 10 people one of them a nine-year-old little boy but the whole time he was doing these heinous things in the dark he was a leader in his church and they asked him about that duplicity and he talked about pride he just said i wanted people to know who i was i wanted people to be impressed with me i wanted to be a big man on campus and i thought we have no idea what our pride leads to it leads to destruction if i could hang my hat on one thing that i've had the privilege of witnessing in 30 plus years of vocational ministry was something that happened about 15 years ago at an event in orlando there's a women's conference it wasn't in a stiff stained stained glass window kind of church thankfully i was actually in a holiday inn and we walked into this holiday inn and it was leaders from all around the country all women and i had the undeserved privilege to be one of the teachers at this event and we were all in the pre-event time griffin and grinning time and there was one woman i wanted to meet more than anybody else in the room because she was carrying a baby and i've had baby fever since i was probably 30 years old didn't think i'd ever become a mom because uh my history romantically is a train wreck because i was just scared slammed to death of intimacy a lot of abuse in my background so that was kind of my it's kind of where i i'm my default setting has often been set on abusive men and the good guys like y'all um i you know god protected y'all from me um that was just hot mass express anyway i i went up and i told this woman i said i want to meet you but i need to confess my ulterior motive i'm really coming over to meet your baby and she grinned and she said well my name's molly and then she gestured down and she said and this is elijah she said his name was elijah and yeah sometimes a mama says their child's name and even with a child or a daddy if the child is sleeping they wake up when they hear their parents voice when she said and this is elijah he just went he just woke up and my first thought was what a pumpkin because he had this shock of just white hair you know sometimes caucasian babies no matter how much spit the mama uses they just can't get their hair to lay down he's had this like little mohawk of white hair and then huge blue eyes and i thought oh what a beautiful boy and then my second thought was i wonder if this has been a difficult season for molly because it was very apparent elijah had down syndrome and she began to tell me her story she's my age much older and she said they didn't plan on the third child she has two grown kids but she said we trust god we trust god as sovereign we we know that he wove our family to include elijah but then she said but it's been a tough season she said she hadn't slept through the night since they had brought elijah home from the hospital because he had a lot of medical issues and he wasn't sleeping much they were struggling a little bit financially because of those medical issues and she just said it's it's it's been a tough season you know we trust the lord but it's been a hard season and i was so grateful for her honesty because i think sometimes our pride is just a smoke screen because we won't say i'm struggling i think some of the no i'm good is actually we're afraid if we go i'm i'm not so good we're afraid somebody will pull the string and the whole sweater will unravel and y'all that's not church by the way church is i'm dying today will you take a corner of my mouth and carry me to the roof and lower me to jesus neediness neediness is actually a spiritual necessity and so some of y'all aren't prideful because you're arrogant you're prideful because you're just scared slammed to death somebody's going to look under the hood um so molly said it's been a tough season she wasn't modeling she ain't going on didn't hear any dirty laundry she was just honest well then all of a sudden the conference was over it was a friday saturday conference saturday afternoon i'm out in the foyer the hotel talking with some women molly comes walking up and asks me if i'll sign a book for her and i was like oh sure i'd love to was i'm writing in her book the women i'd been chatting with continue to converse and i accidentally wrote one of the words they said out loud into molly's book in black sharpie because i have a little bit of a dd and i was like oh snap because i've written this mistake word in her book and big black magic marker i didn't know how to fix it and i thought oh man i really liked her i so enjoyed the conversation last night i've totally defaced her book and then from seemingly out of nowhere i remembered a verse that included the mistake word and i was like score you know make this all like pinteresty and do it up around it make it look like i meant to do that word in there which is exactly what i did i closed the book we talked a minute more i hugged her she left i didn't think i'd ever see her again we live four or five states away um maybe 10 minutes later i see her turn back in the lobby and start walking toward me very apparent she's been crying and she walked up and she went lisa i've just got to tell you um what that verse you wrote in my book meant to me and i said oh god come it because sometimes i get the addresses mixed up of verses or sometimes i'll read like a really resonant bumper sticker and i'll quote that as a verse i don't mean to but you know how you'll just get things mixed up and i thought i'll probably you know put something there from people magazine or something and um and she said do you remember last night when i kind of told you our story about elijah and i said oh i remember everything and she said well i didn't tell you the whole story she said it's been more than a hard season she's been more than hard she said i feel like my prayers are hitting the ceiling i i know the theology in my head but emotionally i feel like that is a million miles away she said i'm just really really struggling and she said my husband told me i really needed to come to this event but i didn't want to come she said i just couldn't do perky i just couldn't do it so she said finally we made a deal and told him i would come but i wouldn't drive with anybody else i didn't want to make small talk and she said the whole way here she's a four-hour drive and the whole way here i've just been begging god for that you know sometimes you you want that tangible thing maybe pastor steven's and you go oh my heavens he's been reading my emails he knows exactly where i am you just want that that personal personal message from the lord and she said the conference has been fine but i didn't get it she said quite frankly when everything concluded i was a little disappointed because i just didn't get that that word i felt like i needed to to kind of carry on should i feel like i'm at a knot at the end of my rope and i just needed she needed something to help me hang on and i just didn't get it and she said i was going back up to my to my hotel room just get my suitcase and she said when i got on the elevator there were three other women on the elevator and i didn't want to talk i didn't want to make small talk so she said i just opened your book so they wouldn't say anything to me i just pretended like i was reading and she said i when i opened your book i saw the verse she wrote in the front and she said i was so surprised that the verse you inscribed is the verse i chose when i was in campus crusade in college as my life verse she said lisa i haven't thought of that verse in 25 years she said that was so long ago i i forgot i saw it again that that was the verse i chose i was just trying to look spiritual and i chose kind of an obscure verse and she said out of all the verses in the bible you could have written in the front of my book you wrote that verse and she said through that i sensed god's presence on the elevator going molly i'm right here nothing in your life is hidden from me i'm right here i see you i've got you she said i just had to come back and say thank you and i said oh molly it's a it's a bigger miracle than you think and i told her i was not being a good bible teacher at that point i wasn't being a sage prophet all i was trying to do was cover up a mistake truly that was my only motive was to cover up a mistake and our god is so kind and he's so good and even in our pride was so redemptive that he used even my mistake as a bridge to embrace to encourage this beloved exhausted daughter of his y'all it has never ever been about us i could stand up here for a week it's done sundays and tell you miracle after miracle after miracle that i've seen in 35 years and none of them are connected to anything i carry it's usually my lack and it's god's largesse it's where his mercy seeps in the gaps it's where his his mercy covers it's where his kindness compensates it's not all about us we are not [Music] we we are not containers of glory we're colanders of grace it leaks through us it leaks through us um can i ask you to bow your heads and close your eyes pastor jonathan is going to come up and close us i feel like an aunt in this house i have such a deep affection for you i'm older than most of you and i wish i was smart enough to have concise words to say don't ever think less of yourself but be preoccupied with jesus be preoccupied with jesus our shoulders aren't shaped for glory y'all it does not matter how many followers you have it does not matter who's singing your praises it doesn't matter how many accolades are on your press release it doesn't matter what matters is is intimacy with jesus and if people clap lovely it's fleeting it won't carry you and it doesn't honor god when we're preoccupied with our reputations and our appetite be preoccupied with him [Music] lord jesus i pray for this house this amazing anointed church that you love that you've blessed that you've poured favor on lord i pray that their dna would would not just be a lord a house where people are safe in a house where people hear your gospel in a house where people praise jesus i pray humility would be in their dna the people would be slow to take offense and quick to say i'm sorry that people would be quick to step out of the way so that you would be the biggest thing in the room so that you would be the name on everyone's tongue lord thank you thank you thank you that your mercy covers our weakness thank you thank you thank you that where we are weak you are strong thank you thank you thank you that you don't turn your face from us when we're face down on the floor thank you thank you thank you lord jesus that even though you know we're dust you call us a royal priesthood lord imbue in this house humility and gratitude humility and gratitude that we would be quick to fall on our face and just say thank you thank you again thank you again i remember jesus i remember i remember what you saved me from i remember the days you saved me from myself and my appetite oh lord jesus i want to be hungry for you before i'm hungry for anything else bless these people lord jesus give them more of you increase their hunger for you we love you jesus thank you that you never remove yourself from us we love you jesus thank you for watching the elevation church youtube channel don't stop here join the e-fam our online extended family and join us live every sunday subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a single video or live stream and share this with a friend you can also support the ministry by clicking the give now button to help us continue to reach people around the world for jesus christ thank you again for watching god bless you

Channel: Elevation Church

Views: 412,105

Keywords: Elevation Church, Evolution Church, Evolve Church, Steven Furtick, Stephen Furtick, Steve Furtick, Steven Furtik, Steven Furtick sermons, Elevation Church sermons, 2022 sermons, Pastor Steven Furtick, Lisa harper, pastor Lisa Harper, Lisa hopper, true humility is key, humility is key, humility, pride, arrogance, entitlement, legacy, relationships, god’s glory, glory, carrying weight, look at me, consequence, humble, sermons about humility

Id: XX1dcfAxGwc

Length: 45min 0sec (2700 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 03 2022