May 3, 2024 • 18 mins
In this enlightening episode of Hope in Him Today, our host, Gary Miller, delves deeply into the teachings of Zephaniah Chapter 2. He encourages his listeners to seek comfort, wisdom, and guidance from the Lord, not just through ritualistic reading, but by personally connecting with Jesus.
Throughout this episode, Gary stresses on three pivotal points to boost personal spiritual growth – seeking the Lord, embracing righteousness, and practicing meekness. He invokes engaging conversations about these pillars, emphasizing the significance of prayer and attentiveness in one's everyday life to align with God's will.
Gary highlights the importance of being obedient to God's commandments, and insists on viewing them as quickening agents towards a blessed life, rather than restrictions. He further underscores the value of meekness – a life principle emphasized by God through scriptures – offering relatable instances of its remarkable impact on personal growth and peace.
On sharing a personal experience, he showcases how choosing to serve rather than retaliate can transform circumstances and preserve peace. This soul-stirring episode culminates with an earnest call to action, inviting listeners to earnestly strive for righteousness and meekness. It caps off with a fervent prayer and an invitation to seek God's help on our journey towards humility.
Listen to this thought-provoking narrative from Gary, as he encourages listeners to harness religious wisdom for a life of blessedness and peace, highlighting the transformative power of gratitude and humility in daily life.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hey there, friends. Welcome back to the show. My name is Gary Miller.
This place is Hope in Him Today.
Great to have you here. If you've got your Bibles, open them up to the book of Zephaniah.
Zephaniah. We're going to be aiming our attention in Chapter 2.
While you're getting there, let me just say thank you. Thank you for listening.
Thank you for being here. If you have not gone out to HopeinHimToday.com and
(00:27):
checked out all the episodes, I mean, We've got it all there and we're adding
some new content out there that's not featured here on the podcast.
So it would pay for you to stay plugged into hoping him today.com.
Go out there. You can use as much or as little as you like. Of course,
all that content is free.
You can also send us a note. You can ask us a question.
(00:48):
You can leave us a review. You can follow us there and you can also support
the show by going to hoping him.com or hoping him today.com.
Hello, HopeAtHimToday.com and hitting the donate button and supporting the show
in whatever way you feel is appropriate for you.
We thank you for doing that. For those that are doing it actively,
for those that have done it, thank you for supporting, leaving a review,
(01:09):
donating all the stuff you do. We appreciate you. All right, Zephaniah chapter 2.
I want us to draw our attention to verse 3. It says, Seek ye the Lord,
all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment.
Seek righteousness, seek meekness. It may be you shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger.
We've got three things we can seek here that are going to keep you and I out of trouble.
(01:31):
Sometimes you've got to take Old Testament stuff and you've got to kind of be
a prospector. You've got to sift the stuff so you can kind of,
because as a New Testament believer, as someone under the blood of Jesus,
the rules are a little bit different for you and I.
But at the same time, God's truth is God's truth. Amen.
So we've got to shake some of this a little bit so that we can go,
all right, what's the practical application.
(01:53):
Well, there are three things that if we seek, what it tells me is it can keep me out of trouble.
Now, I'm not in trouble in terms of God's anger and wrath because I am what?
I'm under the blood now, amen, as a blood-bought child of God.
But I can still have all kinds of trouble through disobedience and through sin
and through choices and through doing stuff that's just upside down against God's word.
(02:17):
And so here are three things I can do that you can do to keep us out of trouble.
Three things that we need to seek. Look at the top part.
Number one, the first seek is seek ye the Lord.
Notice the word seek means I'm going out to find something.
So we seek the Lord, I believe, in just a few very simple and obvious places,
but you and I need more obvious taught to us so that we don't forget.
(02:40):
Obvious place number one is we seek the Lord in the scriptures. We seek him in his word.
And we're not just reading the scriptures. We're seeking him.
I'm looking for him when I go to the scriptures. I'm not looking to complete the reading plan.
I'm not looking to complete come follow me. I'm not looking to complete the
pastor's devotional. No, I'm looking for Jesus when I come to his word. Amen.
(03:04):
That's what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for completion of the plan.
Plans are great. They're fantastic.
We can automate it and check off the things and know what percentage you've
completed. All that is wonderful.
But I'm seeking God in his word.
And so that means we're actively looking. That means we're not just going through
(03:25):
it like we're zombies. enemies, we're actively seeking him. We seek him in his
word. Number two, we seek him in the secret place of prayer.
We seek his face in prayer.
Friends, I've never had a period of my life. You have never had a period of your life.
If you really are honest and you really look at it, I have never had a period
of my life where I was upside down and living outside of God's commands and
(03:49):
outside of his will for my life as laid out in scripture.
I've never done that while having a robust prayer life and a consistent prayer
life, my most obedient times, my most peaceful times, my most blessed times,
my most tuned into discernment times have been when my prayer life is the most
robust and the most consistent.
(04:10):
And because it is both, it is a quantity issue and it is a quality issue.
And so when I am prayed up consistently and enough, I keep myself out of trouble
because I'm seeking his face. I'm seeking him in a conversation. I'm looking to talk.
I'm not going to prayer because it's prayer time. I'm going because I'm looking for him.
(04:32):
I'm looking for a conversation with him. Does that make sense?
The third way is we seek him by just looking around.
You know, Paul in his letter to the Romans makes the case that there's no excuse
for you not to really believe because all you got to do is kind of like look
around, look at nature, look at the sky, look at the trees, look at creation.
(04:54):
And you're going to see, listen, if there was a handiwork, there had to be the handyman, right?
As Pastor Jeff Arthur used to say all the time when he was preaching there in the holler.
Where is that? Bancroft, West Virginia? Great church.
But if there's a handiwork, there had to be the handyman. Somebody had to create that thing.
And so when we can see that, and if we're paying attention, we can see God all over our lives.
(05:20):
I think the battle you and I are facing is often not a heavy spiritual one.
I mean, I believe in spiritual warfare. And let me take a drink.
I'm fighting a throat sinus thing right now.
I believe in spiritual warfare. All that's real.
But the biggest battle that we face, I think one of them every day is just the battle for attention.
(05:44):
You and I are distracted constantly. Instantly.
Notifications, beeps, emails, slacks, phone calls, knocks at the door, errands, stuff, noise.
And in that distraction, we're not paying attention to anything that's around us half the time.
And in not paying attention, we're missing seeing God in our life.
(06:05):
We're not seeking him in the everyday moments of our lives.
And we miss when we do that. So one of the ways we seek is by actually paying attention to our lives.
Because then when we pay attention, we start being grateful.
We start being grateful.
We start praising him. When we start praising him, now we're in an attitude
and posture of worship combined with humility.
And then this now all kinds of super starts getting on our natural, amen?
(06:27):
So we seek the Lord. That's the way we stay out of trouble.
Number two, first of all, before I get to number two, notice what it says.
Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth.
When you're seeking, you're being meek. So when you're meek, you seek.
You're humble because seeking is the action of a person that knows that they don't know at all.
(06:49):
I said it, what, an episode or so ago. I mean, the fastest way to lose me in
a spiritual conversation is for you to be the person that acts like they have
an answer to everything.
We won't be friends. I won't fellowship with you. I won't be anywhere around
you because you're an outright liar.
You don't have an answer for everything spiritually. You don't have an answer
(07:12):
for everything in every situation of your day.
There is nothing that you know everything about.
Nothing. Me either. And so because I know that when we are in a space of meekness,
then I know we're seeking because there's going to be stuff that we need help
with or knowledge on or something.
(07:32):
But you want to run people away? Act like you have all the answers.
Nobody likes to know it all, friends, no matter how much spirituality you try to dress it up in.
Nobody likes to know it all. Nobody. you want to have a powerful witness,
be humble enough sometimes to go either, I don't know, or, you know, I'm not sure.
(07:56):
Let me check and let me get you an answer I could support or a really good one.
You know, this is what I believe with what I know right now,
but it is subject to change as I learn more.
Whoa. Now, now we're in a whole different kind of seeking mode. That's powerful.
(08:17):
But notice we got two more seeks. The next one is we seek righteousness.
Friend, not only will seeking God in a continual way and enough quantity keep
you out of trouble, but seeking good things, doing the right thing,
behaving in line with God's word, that'll keep you out of trouble.
You don't have to worry about the crazy stuff that happens on the road at one
o'clock in the morning when people have been out partying because you're not
(08:39):
out partying, you're at home sleeping.
You have protected yourself from trouble.
Do you see that?
If you want no other reason to pay more attention to God's instructions, i.e.
Commandments for the basics of our life, don't even do it for some cosmic, supernatural reason.
(09:01):
Follow it because he knows what's best, and you just want to keep yourself out
of drama and trouble. That's a good reason to do it.
That's why he gives it to us, by the way, is for practical application. location.
It's not because, you know, God's just like, I need to be obeyed.
Obey me now. I need everybody to obey me so I can feel great about myself.
That's not how this works.
(09:22):
Those commands are for you and I to keep ourselves out of trouble.
Because if he's trying to, let's say we're in the boat that he's trying to take
us off to this beautiful destination on the other side of the lake.
Listen, if we are following it, there are no holes in our boat and we can travel
fast across that water and get where he wants to take us.
Prosperity, blessing, favor, all kinds of good things. But if we are trying
to get across to that destination with a boat full of holes and it's taking
(09:45):
on water and our engine's stalling out because we're weighed down and punctured
with sin and disobedience, it's going to be very hard to get us where we want to go.
Commandments aren't a restriction. They are a pathway of acceleration to the
best things that God has for you and I. Amen.
So we keep ourselves out of trouble when we just don't do dumb stuff.
(10:06):
Now that's not good grammar, but you understand what I mean.
Life is so much less dramatic when we don't do dumb stuff, right?
And dumb stuff being, i.e. doing things that God very specifically said, don't do.
Not because he wants his thumb on you, not because he wants to hold you down,
(10:29):
but because he wants to raise you up, right?
He wants to raise you up in a better marriage, a better family,
better finances, better health, better business, better relationships,
better ministry, not less.
Good night. If we will do the right things and strive unto them, we're going to miss.
(10:50):
That's why we have repentance. That's why we're finished and covered in the blood.
But listen, friends, we're going to try because we'll have less trouble than
more trouble if we strive and seek righteousness.
Number three, it says, what is it again? Seek meekness a second time.
If he says it twice in the same verse, friends, do you think it's important?
(11:14):
Conceptually, it's very important.
Meekness. Think about how many arguments, contention, discord,
trouble, relationally in your life up to this point that could have been completely
avoided if you would have been meek.
If you would have let the other person just go first.
(11:36):
If you would have just let the other person be right, even if it just meant
they thought they were right and they weren't really, but you just let them
be right. You let them go first.
You let somebody have the last word. You let that person pull into traffic before
you. You let the person go in before you.
You allowed that. You allowed that other person to get promoted before you.
(11:59):
If you put on that position, if I put that position on a meekness,
how much discord would have been removed and will be removed in our lives?
For those of you that are married, just try this on. Our natural man wants the
last word so bad. Our natural man wants to be right so bad that we will do it,
even if it causes us more drama.
(12:22):
And we got to fight against that. Seek meekness, friends.
Meekness. What is meekness? This again is a humility exercise.
I don't need to be first. I don't need to be right in this situation.
God's going to promote me. God's going to take care of me.
God's going to make sure that I'm where I need to be. I am not trusting in this
(12:42):
natural arm of flesh. I'm not trying to manipulate this social situation.
I am going to be meek because he told me that the meek will do what?
They'll inherit the earth. That sounds like some provision right there.
He did not say the egomaniac who wants to insist on being right.
And you say, but Gary, I'm right in this situation. Yes, but there's a long way to be right.
(13:03):
I recently had to sit in on a conversation with somebody very close to me.
And they i happened to be in the room when they said some really really horrible things.
And my natural man, I wanted, I mean, not only could I intellectually take down
everything they said, and I could have done it in such a way and made it so
(13:27):
cutting, I could have finished them off and they would have felt two inches tall.
I wanted to do that. I mean, friends, you don't want to know how much I wanted to do that.
I really, really wanted to do it. You pray for me.
That's why, listen, I love that you're here and I love that you listen to this
podcast, but we should call it hoping him today hosted by the biggest center on the planet.
(13:51):
I'm doing it much worse than a 12 pack of beer, friend. I'm doing it in attitudes and in thoughts.
And in a moment like that, where I just wanted to tear that person to pieces
intellectually, I wanted to break them down.
See, that's, that's why I still got a lot of work.
That's why we got to be praying for each other because we need that help.
But I did not do that. And that moment I sat, then I removed myself and I went
(14:14):
and I, the person, my sense was, is that they had been on kind of a rough, a rough go.
And it was, I don't know if it was the spirit or just thinking in the natural,
I won't try to sound like I was too woo here, but I, it occurred to me that
this person needs, just as soon as I walked away, I said, they need to eat.
(14:34):
And i'm not talking about hangry. I think they were They they hadn't they had
been really tripping out and they they'd not tripping out on like acid here
relax but like they had been on this bender of emotion and i'm like I My and
they were burning so much adrenaline.
I'm like, I think they need to eat. So I got them some food and I came back
and I I walked back in that room.
(14:55):
It's fully expecting the brace and Of here it goes again and they gave me a
death stare like you wouldn't believe leave.
And I put it together on a plate and got a napkin and a drink.
I sat it down right in front of him. I said, is there anything else I can get you right now?
There weren't any words there. There was still kind of a glare.
(15:15):
And they said, no. Great. I walked away.
Before I left the situation entirely, I came back about 15 minutes later.
I walked in, sat down right in front of him. I said, is there anything else I can get for you?
Is there anything else you need? So they they just broke down.
I'm so sorry, they said. I don't know what I was saying.
(15:37):
My meekness. And I have not apprehended humility, friend.
Just have me sit through a bad talk and you'll see how much I don't grasp humility
because I'm ready to go right back to the independent fundamental Baptist zone.
I put those pants on and I'm ready to go for blood, right?
So don't make it, don't confuse this story as somehow I've apprehended it all.
(15:59):
But I can tell you in that moment, I saved so much heartache,
so much pain, so much contention because I said, I'm just going to try to do
what this scripture tells me to do at least once today.
And I'm going to try to be meek. And in doing so, it dramatically changed that
situation because I didn't say anything.
(16:20):
And the only words I did say in passing were of words of service.
Can I get you anything else?
Changes the game. And I didn't just do it for them, friend.
I'm not that angelic. I'm not that celestial. I wasn't thinking that celestial.
I'm doing that also for me. If you can only start by applying these promises
(16:42):
selfishly, that's okay.
That's a place to start because I'll tell you what it did in that moment.
I didn't lose my peace. My blood pressure wasn't off the chart.
I didn't spend the rest of my day ruminating and thinking about all that.
No, I just walked right on to the next thing.
It preserved my peace in a moment. That's the power of these promises.
But in doing so, then I start changing my heart towards the orientation of that
(17:05):
person that was clearly just in a lot of pain, had nothing to do with me.
I was collateral damage standing in front of a firing line that I passed by.
It had nothing to do with me.
But it could have something to do with me if I responded like a complete jerk.
Instead, I decided to try this thing on, this meekness idea that,
(17:30):
by the way, is throughout Scripture.
It is throughout the Bible. It is all over the Book of Mormon.
It's everywhere, friends, for a reason.
Because God knows we're going to struggle with it. But if we're good,
our hands around it and our hearts around it, things can be, man, so much better.
Transformation can happen in our spirit, but also in our practical things that
(17:53):
we're dealing with every single day.
Friends, would you try this on today as you head into your weekend?
Get into the secret place. Maybe the prayer is, Father, in the name of Jesus,
would you help me to seek after you, after righteousness, and after meekness?
I need your strength. I need your power. I need your discernment.
I need your presence in these areas because I want protection.
(18:13):
I want to keep myself out of trouble and I certainly want to be on the right side of you. Amen.
So give this some thought in the secret place. Thank you so much for being here
for another week of episodes.
Don't you forget, go out to hoping him today.com. Leave us a review,
subscribe, use all the resources that are out there.
And if the, if you're led to it, Hey man, go out there, hit donate,
support what we're doing. We would appreciate you.
(18:34):
We are praying for you. We appreciate you. We will see you next week.
Hey there, friends. Welcome back to the show. My name is Gary Miller.
This place is Hope in Him Today.
Great to have you here. If you've got your Bibles, open them up to the book of Zephaniah.
Zephaniah. We're going to be aiming our attention in Chapter 2.
While you're getting there, let me just say thank you. Thank you for listening.
Thank you for being here. If you have not gone out to HopeinHimToday.com and
(00:27):
checked out all the episodes, I mean, We've got it all there and we're adding
some new content out there that's not featured here on the podcast.
So it would pay for you to stay plugged into hoping him today.com.
Go out there. You can use as much or as little as you like. Of course,
all that content is free.
You can also send us a note. You can ask us a question.
(00:48):
You can leave us a review. You can follow us there and you can also support
the show by going to hoping him.com or hoping him today.com.
Hello, HopeAtHimToday.com and hitting the donate button and supporting the show
in whatever way you feel is appropriate for you.
We thank you for doing that. For those that are doing it actively,
for those that have done it, thank you for supporting, leaving a review,
(01:09):
donating all the stuff you do. We appreciate you. All right, Zephaniah chapter 2.
I want us to draw our attention to verse 3. It says, Seek ye the Lord,
all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment.
Seek righteousness, seek meekness. It may be you shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger.
We've got three things we can seek here that are going to keep you and I out of trouble.
(01:31):
Sometimes you've got to take Old Testament stuff and you've got to kind of be
a prospector. You've got to sift the stuff so you can kind of,
because as a New Testament believer, as someone under the blood of Jesus,
the rules are a little bit different for you and I.
But at the same time, God's truth is God's truth. Amen.
So we've got to shake some of this a little bit so that we can go,
all right, what's the practical application.
(01:53):
Well, there are three things that if we seek, what it tells me is it can keep me out of trouble.
Now, I'm not in trouble in terms of God's anger and wrath because I am what?
I'm under the blood now, amen, as a blood-bought child of God.
But I can still have all kinds of trouble through disobedience and through sin
and through choices and through doing stuff that's just upside down against God's word.
(02:17):
And so here are three things I can do that you can do to keep us out of trouble.
Three things that we need to seek. Look at the top part.
Number one, the first seek is seek ye the Lord.
Notice the word seek means I'm going out to find something.
So we seek the Lord, I believe, in just a few very simple and obvious places,
but you and I need more obvious taught to us so that we don't forget.
(02:40):
Obvious place number one is we seek the Lord in the scriptures. We seek him in his word.
And we're not just reading the scriptures. We're seeking him.
I'm looking for him when I go to the scriptures. I'm not looking to complete the reading plan.
I'm not looking to complete come follow me. I'm not looking to complete the
pastor's devotional. No, I'm looking for Jesus when I come to his word. Amen.
(03:04):
That's what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for completion of the plan.
Plans are great. They're fantastic.
We can automate it and check off the things and know what percentage you've
completed. All that is wonderful.
But I'm seeking God in his word.
And so that means we're actively looking. That means we're not just going through
(03:25):
it like we're zombies. enemies, we're actively seeking him. We seek him in his
word. Number two, we seek him in the secret place of prayer.
We seek his face in prayer.
Friends, I've never had a period of my life. You have never had a period of your life.
If you really are honest and you really look at it, I have never had a period
of my life where I was upside down and living outside of God's commands and
(03:49):
outside of his will for my life as laid out in scripture.
I've never done that while having a robust prayer life and a consistent prayer
life, my most obedient times, my most peaceful times, my most blessed times,
my most tuned into discernment times have been when my prayer life is the most
robust and the most consistent.
(04:10):
And because it is both, it is a quantity issue and it is a quality issue.
And so when I am prayed up consistently and enough, I keep myself out of trouble
because I'm seeking his face. I'm seeking him in a conversation. I'm looking to talk.
I'm not going to prayer because it's prayer time. I'm going because I'm looking for him.
(04:32):
I'm looking for a conversation with him. Does that make sense?
The third way is we seek him by just looking around.
You know, Paul in his letter to the Romans makes the case that there's no excuse
for you not to really believe because all you got to do is kind of like look
around, look at nature, look at the sky, look at the trees, look at creation.
(04:54):
And you're going to see, listen, if there was a handiwork, there had to be the handyman, right?
As Pastor Jeff Arthur used to say all the time when he was preaching there in the holler.
Where is that? Bancroft, West Virginia? Great church.
But if there's a handiwork, there had to be the handyman. Somebody had to create that thing.
And so when we can see that, and if we're paying attention, we can see God all over our lives.
(05:20):
I think the battle you and I are facing is often not a heavy spiritual one.
I mean, I believe in spiritual warfare. And let me take a drink.
I'm fighting a throat sinus thing right now.
I believe in spiritual warfare. All that's real.
But the biggest battle that we face, I think one of them every day is just the battle for attention.
(05:44):
You and I are distracted constantly. Instantly.
Notifications, beeps, emails, slacks, phone calls, knocks at the door, errands, stuff, noise.
And in that distraction, we're not paying attention to anything that's around us half the time.
And in not paying attention, we're missing seeing God in our life.
(06:05):
We're not seeking him in the everyday moments of our lives.
And we miss when we do that. So one of the ways we seek is by actually paying attention to our lives.
Because then when we pay attention, we start being grateful.
We start being grateful.
We start praising him. When we start praising him, now we're in an attitude
and posture of worship combined with humility.
And then this now all kinds of super starts getting on our natural, amen?
(06:27):
So we seek the Lord. That's the way we stay out of trouble.
Number two, first of all, before I get to number two, notice what it says.
Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth.
When you're seeking, you're being meek. So when you're meek, you seek.
You're humble because seeking is the action of a person that knows that they don't know at all.
(06:49):
I said it, what, an episode or so ago. I mean, the fastest way to lose me in
a spiritual conversation is for you to be the person that acts like they have
an answer to everything.
We won't be friends. I won't fellowship with you. I won't be anywhere around
you because you're an outright liar.
You don't have an answer for everything spiritually. You don't have an answer
(07:12):
for everything in every situation of your day.
There is nothing that you know everything about.
Nothing. Me either. And so because I know that when we are in a space of meekness,
then I know we're seeking because there's going to be stuff that we need help
with or knowledge on or something.
(07:32):
But you want to run people away? Act like you have all the answers.
Nobody likes to know it all, friends, no matter how much spirituality you try to dress it up in.
Nobody likes to know it all. Nobody. you want to have a powerful witness,
be humble enough sometimes to go either, I don't know, or, you know, I'm not sure.
(07:56):
Let me check and let me get you an answer I could support or a really good one.
You know, this is what I believe with what I know right now,
but it is subject to change as I learn more.
Whoa. Now, now we're in a whole different kind of seeking mode. That's powerful.
(08:17):
But notice we got two more seeks. The next one is we seek righteousness.
Friend, not only will seeking God in a continual way and enough quantity keep
you out of trouble, but seeking good things, doing the right thing,
behaving in line with God's word, that'll keep you out of trouble.
You don't have to worry about the crazy stuff that happens on the road at one
o'clock in the morning when people have been out partying because you're not
(08:39):
out partying, you're at home sleeping.
You have protected yourself from trouble.
Do you see that?
If you want no other reason to pay more attention to God's instructions, i.e.
Commandments for the basics of our life, don't even do it for some cosmic, supernatural reason.
(09:01):
Follow it because he knows what's best, and you just want to keep yourself out
of drama and trouble. That's a good reason to do it.
That's why he gives it to us, by the way, is for practical application. location.
It's not because, you know, God's just like, I need to be obeyed.
Obey me now. I need everybody to obey me so I can feel great about myself.
That's not how this works.
(09:22):
Those commands are for you and I to keep ourselves out of trouble.
Because if he's trying to, let's say we're in the boat that he's trying to take
us off to this beautiful destination on the other side of the lake.
Listen, if we are following it, there are no holes in our boat and we can travel
fast across that water and get where he wants to take us.
Prosperity, blessing, favor, all kinds of good things. But if we are trying
to get across to that destination with a boat full of holes and it's taking
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on water and our engine's stalling out because we're weighed down and punctured
with sin and disobedience, it's going to be very hard to get us where we want to go.
Commandments aren't a restriction. They are a pathway of acceleration to the
best things that God has for you and I. Amen.
So we keep ourselves out of trouble when we just don't do dumb stuff.
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Now that's not good grammar, but you understand what I mean.
Life is so much less dramatic when we don't do dumb stuff, right?
And dumb stuff being, i.e. doing things that God very specifically said, don't do.
Not because he wants his thumb on you, not because he wants to hold you down,
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but because he wants to raise you up, right?
He wants to raise you up in a better marriage, a better family,
better finances, better health, better business, better relationships,
better ministry, not less.
Good night. If we will do the right things and strive unto them, we're going to miss.
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That's why we have repentance. That's why we're finished and covered in the blood.
But listen, friends, we're going to try because we'll have less trouble than
more trouble if we strive and seek righteousness.
Number three, it says, what is it again? Seek meekness a second time.
If he says it twice in the same verse, friends, do you think it's important?
(11:14):
Conceptually, it's very important.
Meekness. Think about how many arguments, contention, discord,
trouble, relationally in your life up to this point that could have been completely
avoided if you would have been meek.
If you would have let the other person just go first.
(11:36):
If you would have just let the other person be right, even if it just meant
they thought they were right and they weren't really, but you just let them
be right. You let them go first.
You let somebody have the last word. You let that person pull into traffic before
you. You let the person go in before you.
You allowed that. You allowed that other person to get promoted before you.
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If you put on that position, if I put that position on a meekness,
how much discord would have been removed and will be removed in our lives?
For those of you that are married, just try this on. Our natural man wants the
last word so bad. Our natural man wants to be right so bad that we will do it,
even if it causes us more drama.
(12:22):
And we got to fight against that. Seek meekness, friends.
Meekness. What is meekness? This again is a humility exercise.
I don't need to be first. I don't need to be right in this situation.
God's going to promote me. God's going to take care of me.
God's going to make sure that I'm where I need to be. I am not trusting in this
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natural arm of flesh. I'm not trying to manipulate this social situation.
I am going to be meek because he told me that the meek will do what?
They'll inherit the earth. That sounds like some provision right there.
He did not say the egomaniac who wants to insist on being right.
And you say, but Gary, I'm right in this situation. Yes, but there's a long way to be right.
(13:03):
I recently had to sit in on a conversation with somebody very close to me.
And they i happened to be in the room when they said some really really horrible things.
And my natural man, I wanted, I mean, not only could I intellectually take down
everything they said, and I could have done it in such a way and made it so
(13:27):
cutting, I could have finished them off and they would have felt two inches tall.
I wanted to do that. I mean, friends, you don't want to know how much I wanted to do that.
I really, really wanted to do it. You pray for me.
That's why, listen, I love that you're here and I love that you listen to this
podcast, but we should call it hoping him today hosted by the biggest center on the planet.
(13:51):
I'm doing it much worse than a 12 pack of beer, friend. I'm doing it in attitudes and in thoughts.
And in a moment like that, where I just wanted to tear that person to pieces
intellectually, I wanted to break them down.
See, that's, that's why I still got a lot of work.
That's why we got to be praying for each other because we need that help.
But I did not do that. And that moment I sat, then I removed myself and I went
(14:14):
and I, the person, my sense was, is that they had been on kind of a rough, a rough go.
And it was, I don't know if it was the spirit or just thinking in the natural,
I won't try to sound like I was too woo here, but I, it occurred to me that
this person needs, just as soon as I walked away, I said, they need to eat.
(14:34):
And i'm not talking about hangry. I think they were They they hadn't they had
been really tripping out and they they'd not tripping out on like acid here
relax but like they had been on this bender of emotion and i'm like I My and
they were burning so much adrenaline.
I'm like, I think they need to eat. So I got them some food and I came back
and I I walked back in that room.
(14:55):
It's fully expecting the brace and Of here it goes again and they gave me a
death stare like you wouldn't believe leave.
And I put it together on a plate and got a napkin and a drink.
I sat it down right in front of him. I said, is there anything else I can get you right now?
There weren't any words there. There was still kind of a glare.
(15:15):
And they said, no. Great. I walked away.
Before I left the situation entirely, I came back about 15 minutes later.
I walked in, sat down right in front of him. I said, is there anything else I can get for you?
Is there anything else you need? So they they just broke down.
I'm so sorry, they said. I don't know what I was saying.
(15:37):
My meekness. And I have not apprehended humility, friend.
Just have me sit through a bad talk and you'll see how much I don't grasp humility
because I'm ready to go right back to the independent fundamental Baptist zone.
I put those pants on and I'm ready to go for blood, right?
So don't make it, don't confuse this story as somehow I've apprehended it all.
(15:59):
But I can tell you in that moment, I saved so much heartache,
so much pain, so much contention because I said, I'm just going to try to do
what this scripture tells me to do at least once today.
And I'm going to try to be meek. And in doing so, it dramatically changed that
situation because I didn't say anything.
(16:20):
And the only words I did say in passing were of words of service.
Can I get you anything else?
Changes the game. And I didn't just do it for them, friend.
I'm not that angelic. I'm not that celestial. I wasn't thinking that celestial.
I'm doing that also for me. If you can only start by applying these promises
(16:42):
selfishly, that's okay.
That's a place to start because I'll tell you what it did in that moment.
I didn't lose my peace. My blood pressure wasn't off the chart.
I didn't spend the rest of my day ruminating and thinking about all that.
No, I just walked right on to the next thing.
It preserved my peace in a moment. That's the power of these promises.
But in doing so, then I start changing my heart towards the orientation of that
(17:05):
person that was clearly just in a lot of pain, had nothing to do with me.
I was collateral damage standing in front of a firing line that I passed by.
It had nothing to do with me.
But it could have something to do with me if I responded like a complete jerk.
Instead, I decided to try this thing on, this meekness idea that,
(17:30):
by the way, is throughout Scripture.
It is throughout the Bible. It is all over the Book of Mormon.
It's everywhere, friends, for a reason.
Because God knows we're going to struggle with it. But if we're good,
our hands around it and our hearts around it, things can be, man, so much better.
Transformation can happen in our spirit, but also in our practical things that
(17:53):
we're dealing with every single day.
Friends, would you try this on today as you head into your weekend?
Get into the secret place. Maybe the prayer is, Father, in the name of Jesus,
would you help me to seek after you, after righteousness, and after meekness?
I need your strength. I need your power. I need your discernment.
I need your presence in these areas because I want protection.
(18:13):
I want to keep myself out of trouble and I certainly want to be on the right side of you. Amen.
So give this some thought in the secret place. Thank you so much for being here
for another week of episodes.
Don't you forget, go out to hoping him today.com. Leave us a review,
subscribe, use all the resources that are out there.
And if the, if you're led to it, Hey man, go out there, hit donate,
support what we're doing. We would appreciate you.
(18:34):
We are praying for you. We appreciate you. We will see you next week.
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