Living Worthy: Spiritual Gifts, Humility, and Community

Jesus said you're gonna be salty and bright. Salty and bright. Listen. What could be any more popping and crazy and miraculous than a church that wasn't killing each other across political lines? That would be salty and bright. Amen? Like, that one of the most distinctive things about Jesus' people in 2026 might just be that we're humble before each other, even people we disagree with politically, that we're gentle with each other, that we fight for the unity of the body even when we disagree over really important issues. That would be salty and bright. Let's fight for that. Amen? It's worth fighting for. [00:12:04] (33 seconds)  #SaltyAndBright

When we show up with humility before Jesus and before each other, bearing with each other in love, the Holy Spirit just pours through, brings our gifts together, and it produces a disproportionately fruitful impact. Listen. The church has been around for two thousand years. The church has done some terrible, wicked, horrible things for two thousand years and has done world changing, wonderful things for, like, the last two thousand years, like invented or invented orphanages, invented the nonprofit sector, abolished slavery, like Christians have done amazing things. And when the church is its best, we show up humble before Jesus and humble before each other. We link arms, and the Holy Spirit just pours through us to do something that is bigger than we could ask or imagine. [00:16:48] (35 seconds)  #HumbleFruitfulChurch

If we are living a life of following Jesus, the way we live a life worthy of it, the way we demonstrate that his character is in us is how we show up for one another right here in this room. Humble, gentle, patient, bearing with one another in love, fighting for unity with one another. All these things are works in progress. They're never done. It's never like humility. Check. Got that. Or patience. Check. Got that. There's always someone who's driving you little crazy. For most of us, someone's gonna push your buttons or push you away. Might be the person around you. Don't look at them right now. That'd be awkward. [00:10:54] (35 seconds)  #ShowUpForEachOther

Help me to see other people the way that you see other people. Help me to engage with other people, to love other people the way that you love other people, maybe a specific person that you need extra patience or extra grace required that you might love them and serve them. Please forgive me. The next step for us is serve. Who can you serve? Jesus puts serving at the center of this whole thing when he washes his disciples' feet. He washes his disciples' feet, he's gonna put serving at the middle of this whole thing. Serving is one of the ways we cultivate humility in practice. We actually live this out. Who can you serve? [00:21:58] (29 seconds)  #ServeWithHumility

It's not really a spiritual gift. You need to mow the grass, walk the dog, take him to coffee, take him to lunch. My small group one guy was talking about his company. He was about ready to do layoffs at his company. Everyone's anxious. He's saying, who can I talk to? Who can I serve? Who needs prayer? Who can I take to lunch? Isn't that great? Following Jesus in an anxious environment, everyone's stressed out, and he's so not self absorbed, he's able to ask other people, how are doing? Can I pray for you? Do you need to talk? Who can you serve? That's the way that Jesus helps us to enter in with humility and love to one another. [00:22:34] (37 seconds)  #PracticalServiceMatters

Because in the first couple of centuries, people become Christians and they lose their jobs. They lose their families. They had to flee persecution from another town or another country, and they just show up. And the Christians open their homes and say, come on in. You're welcome here. You got family here. The only way the church survived the first few centuries, the only way the church has survived the twenty first century, to put humility at the center of it, and then love one another as faithfully as we know how, serve each other with gentleness and kindness and long suffering patience, and then we ask, come holy spirit, would you release our gifts individually and together to make a difference in the world the way you designed us to make it? [00:18:33] (36 seconds)  #RadicalHospitality

And so Paul says, listen. The most important thing is not your gifts. The most important thing is the giver. The most important thing is not your gifts. That's important. But the most important thing is the victorious king. He's the one who has ascended on high. He's the one who conquers sin, death, Satan, for you, for your salvation, forever and ever. Amen. He ascends on high. He has conquered. And when and and the way that Paul would think about this the psalm that he took many captives, almost any time he talks about Jesus taking captives in the in the in the gospels, Jesus talks about binding up the strong end. That's Satan himself. [00:24:15] (28 seconds)  #VictoriousGiver

The church in the first, second, third centuries are going face all this pressure, all this opposition, all these challenges. And the other reality is this: people are, like we said, messy. People fight over stupid things. People squabble over dumb things. People are disputatious, argumentative, selfish, and self absorbed. They're critical in mean ways, being spirited. All these things happen among people. Do you know how hard it is to keep just a family together? Some of you know how hard that is to keep a family together. Some of you know how people have argued in your family about dumb things. Some of you know that you're the one who's argued over dumb things. [00:17:41] (29 seconds)  #MessyButCalled