3 Ways To Actually "Be Like Jesus" (Even When It's Hard)

Guys, you wanna take the imitation of Christ to the next level? Parents, do you realize that your children are imitating you? So who are you imitating? Wow. That's a great question. I should probably stop right there and just ponder that for a moment, but I'll let you off the hook. That's what Paul did. Paul took it to another level. Didn't take it take it beyond a parenting thing and now take it to, like, a a discipling relationship like Paul's taking it to. Like, with a group of strangers, and he's going, I'm not perfect, but as I imitate Jesus, you can imitate my life. [00:22:52] (39 seconds)  #ImitateChrist

And so we started to give grace to each other. Here's the other thing. Instead of leaning away from each other, we started leaning in towards each other to better understand where we were coming from. That's what grace does, though. Grace opens up your heart, and it starts to cause you to wanna lean in and go, how do I better understand why we're in this situation? And then lastly, what I what I watched us do was this, that we we decided in our heart that unity was gonna be more important than winning. Even though I joked about, you know, that she was right, unity was gonna be more important than winning. That's the attitude of Jesus. [00:36:20] (39 seconds)  #ChooseUnity

Without God's spirit in our lives, this verse is like a crushing weight against us. We will never accomplish it. It feels incredibly defeating. But with God's spirit, all of a sudden all of a sudden, we start to see the fruit of God's spirit being lived out in our lives, and guess what happens? The same attitude that Christ Jesus had, all of a sudden, starts coming out of us over and over and over again. [00:21:30] (29 seconds)  #WithGodsSpirit

I think Jesus showed us the ultimate picture of humility. He was fully God, and he became fully man. I think that's the ultimate sign of humility. Why? Because the Bible tells us that Jesus, he created all things and that all things were created by him and for him. Meaning that Jesus creates all of this, the universe, the galaxy, you know, our planet, and then Jesus submits himself and he comes as a part of his own creation. That's being humble when you're the God who spoke the son into existence. And now you're the baby vulnerable on this planet that if parents don't take care of you, you're not going to live. That's humility. [00:37:30] (40 seconds)  #DivineHumility

Because the condition of your heart tells you whether you are strong or not. And I'm not talking about your physical heart. I'm talking about your spiritual heart right now. We we there's many things about the physical heart you can't control, but you can control the spiritual heart. You can discern and determine what type of person are you going to be on the inside, and you can strive for that, and you can hunger for that. God tells us this. [00:17:22] (28 seconds)  #SpiritualHeartMatters

If you wanna be a Christ follower, you wanna call yourself a follower of Jesus, God says this, you must have the same attitude as Christ Jesus had. Okay. From a human perspective, that's impossible. From a human perspective, it's intimidating. But from God's perspective, God's going, it's possible. No. It's not that you're gonna have the same attitude and be perfect. It's that you can you can aspire to and achieve the attitude of Christ that he's gonna lay out for us here by one thing and one thing only, our submission to the lordship of God's spirit in our lives. [00:20:50] (39 seconds)  #AttitudeOfChrist

Now all three of these guys, two of them were, you know, like, athletes on their own right in college on their way to professional football, and the other one played professional basketball. Each of them have one thing in common. The unfortunate truth is that they're no longer with us. Like, Ben died at 21. Jeremiah died at 18. Zeke, professional basketball player, died at 26 years old. They all died from the same thing, heart problems. They looked amazingly strong, [00:15:05] (31 seconds)  #LooksCanBeDeceiving

And if you were just to look at them, you would be like, these guys have got it put together. I wish that I had a physique like them. I wish that I had, you know, the stamina like them. I wish I had the cardio like them. I wish I had the muscles like them. Or whatever it is, you would look on the outside and you're like, those guys are in shape, but what you couldn't see, what what was in the heart. And in the same way, spiritually, that's the way we are. [00:15:39] (24 seconds)  #InnerStrengthMatters