The Upside-Down Kingdom: God Chooses the Humble

God is not impressed with power, charisma, and influence. His desire is for humble servants who trust him. And through these people, his upside down kingdom will break forth. David was the perfect example of this. Yes. David eventually got power and charisma. Those things aren't bad, but that's not what God was after. He was after the heart. [01:01:13] (23 seconds)  #HeartOverPower

What kingdom are you building? Are you Saul, worried about your own home and status and influence and you're willing to push people aside that you don't like or are different than you and you're seeking your own comfort? Maybe you lack humility and there's certain people you don't wanna associate with because they're too lowly. Or are we seeking God's kingdom and be willing to be used whatever that means? Do we trust that God is building his kingdom? [00:56:40] (32 seconds)  #ChooseGodsKingdom

Sometimes you get to be used in glamorous ways, but if we truly wanna be a humble servant, we need to be used in whatever way god sees fit. I want to be. I want to be used like paper, a humble servant. David modeled this as a shepherd. He was satisfied being a servant for Saul. He did it when he got to be elevated to a warrior and elevated to king, but he also had to do it when he was on the run. He he had the whole gamut of being used highly and lowly. We see this in Paul, in his writings, and we see it in the person of Jesus. [00:53:00] (39 seconds)  #BeHumbleServant

We need to be prepared to be used, whatever that might mean. And then the other part, so we need to be humble be a humble servant. We need to cultivate that in ourselves, and then we need to be willing to trust God and wait for him. And what I wanna propose here is we need to be willing to be foolish by worldly standards to follow what God says. [00:53:38] (22 seconds)  #CultivateHumility

And what I love is how Dallas Willard talks about it is that he talks about it we're flying upside down. When we enter the Christian life, we're flying inverted the wrong way. But the more we do that, we start to realize that we're actually flying right side up. That this is what God intended but the world has flipped it. So we are entering into this kingdom where everything is turned around. [00:55:25] (27 seconds)  #FlyingUpsideDown

But either way, I didn't see clearly. And that really is a big part of what we're gonna be talking about today is that humans, we all see incorrectly, but God sees rightly. [00:38:52] (16 seconds)  #GodSeesRight

And honestly, it doesn't make a lot of sense to follow him if I'm trying to build Jake's kingdom. But if I am trying to build a different kingdom and part of what God is doing on this adventure, then I want to follow Jesus. Jesus is the only leader that we can truly follow who does this perfectly. David didn't do it perfectly. You should read the rest of the story. David is a great setup for Jesus but he makes a lot of mistakes. Because Jesus is the only one who had a truly pure heart and he was the true shepherd king. [01:03:16] (31 seconds)  #JesusTrueShepherd

Have you ever created something or had a vision for something you wanted to build but it didn't turn out right? And so I'm assuming there's a lot of thoughts going through your head that we've all had this happen. We live in a fallen world. We live in a broken world. Things don't always turn out the way we envision or want them to be. And so for me, I wanna take you back to when I was in seventh grade. I was in art class, and I was making a bowl out of paper mache. I wanted to make this fruit bowl, and as I was making it, I'm like, it'd be a great idea if this could be a Christmas bowl. [00:37:08] (36 seconds)  #WhenPlansFail