Summary

Show Notes

• Misunderstandings about humility—real humility involves faith, not unbelief.
• The absence of discipline in David’s family as a warning for parents and leaders.
• The difference between spiritual ambition and being led by God’s Spirit.
• The need for personal and spiritual discipline in everyday life.
• The power of combining the Word of God with the Spirit for real transformation.

• How does humility invite God to work through you?
• Are your disciplines born of love or of legalism?
• Do your ambitions build your name or God’s people?

Quotes

• Humility isn’t weakness; it’s confidence that God can work through even the most ordinary vessel.
• Ambition builds followers. Humility builds people.
• Discipline isn’t legalism—it’s love in practice.
• The Word must be joined to the Spirit; revelation isn’t information—it’s communion.
• God doesn’t measure success—He measures hearts.

Scriptural References

Takeaway

Dale: Humility is often not properly defined in people's thinking. Many people have the wrong idea about humility. They think that the kind of humility they have is a virtue when it is actually a weakness. When something is laid before them, they say, “I couldn't do this. I'm just nothing. I just couldn't.” That is not humility—it is unbelief. Remember that? That is the people who have little ability, who must believe God. If you feel that you cannot do anything, then come with your little ability and humble yourself before the Lord and say, “Oh Lord, I'm not much, but I know that you are everything, and I believe that my limitations do not limit you.” Therein lies the humility that is so positive. It's not unbelief because it's focusing all on God doing it through you.

Ron: Reflection. Humility isn't weakness; it's confidence that God can work through even the most ordinary vessel. Pride tries to qualify itself. Humility simply believes God's word. The lack of discipline or parenting that David did not do for his sons… therefore you had Absalom—actually the first three sons, I think it was—who were not so good. Absalom and this other one though, I can’t pronounce his name, the oldest one tried to take over the kingdom.

Linda: (Aja, I think.)

Ron: Anyway, it was interesting that it said David never displeased him or said, “Why did you do this? Why are you doing this?” In other words, he never put any discipline on him at all. I think that's a huge lesson. If I were re-parenting my children at this stage of the game, no free time. Even their free time would be channeled because discipline is so huge, especially from age zero to sixteen, at least—maybe even eighteen.

Dale: Discipline and responsibility—I really experienced that when the twins were born. Marge was in bed very sick, and that left me with their care. Laura was two and a half years older than Mindy and Melody. She learned how to take a bottle and put it on the stove, turn on the stove, warm it up, and bring it to me while I was changing one of the others. She was constantly there by my side, and that really gave her a discipline of being able to help. I think that's the key to discipline. You're not telling the kid, “Oh, don't sit there,” or “Don't do this, don't do that.” It really comes out when you give them responsibility and teach them how to do certain things the right way. Make them a part of the family instead of being on them all the time in that negative way.

Ron: Reflection. Just as David's family struggled when discipline was absent, the Father's discipline forms His sons and daughters. We grow by being given responsibility—by learning to carry something for someone else.

Jan: How do you determine if a man is ambitious or if he's being led of the Spirit? How about us? When are we ambitious to move in God because, “Oh well, it's there in the Bible, I should be doing it, so therefore I better go do it”?

Linda: It's all about a relationship with the Holy Spirit. If you don't have that relationship, then human nature can become ambitious.

Mike: Yeah, we can also think about what Korah did with Moses. It gets to be an obvious situation. They expose themselves by their attitude. They'll gather people around them who will side with them and start thinking like they think. Boy, you know you've got a problem.

Jan: Dealing with ambitious men of God—how do we determine who's an ambitious man of God rather than one being Spirit-led?

Sherry: People-gatherers. That is kind of a sign that it's all about “my ministry.” These people can actually look pretty good, and that's why they gather so many people around them—because they know how to say the right things. So that's just one of the things I watch for—how are they relating?

Ron: This question is really interesting because you have men and women of God who are actually anointed and commissioned with authority, so they can be aggressive in that, and they should be. That's the difference between the choosing of God and the aggressive initiative of faith in a man that's been chosen, and one that hasn't but wants a ministry. It's pushing in for a ministry. So there's a difference there. Reflection: The Kingdom doesn't advance through self-promotion. Ambition builds followers; humility builds people. The Lord alone appoints those who serve in His authority.

Jan: Going back to the thought of discipline—the importance of there being discipline. Being disciplined is not enough. It has to lead to self-discipline, or there is not the self-discipline needed to be a mature ministry.

Sherry: The importance of discipline that the Holy Spirit has me in right now—I am learning a kind of meditation that requires me to get up early in the morning because the traffic starts going past our house by six o'clock. So that means I have to get up early because the kind of meditation He's teaching me—I can't be distracted by outside things. He's teaching me how to be aware of the Holy Spirit in me. So there's that one, and that's on the spiritual level. But there's also—I just got a word from my doctor that I'm to drop salt. Okay, it's in everything, so I had to ask the Lord to help me with that one. I feel like at least for me, I am being brought tighter and tighter into His discipline. Your lifestyle is not your own anymore. You know what I'm saying? “I am the Holy Spirit, and I'm in you, and I'm going to lead you if you'll listen, and if you will do.”

Ron: Reflection. Discipline reaches into daily life—what we eat, when we rise, how we spend our time. It's not legalism; it's love and practice. As we yield, our pride is replaced by faith. Before we leave this thing of discipline, I wanted to bring up disciplining yourself in the Word. Read one, two, fifteen, twenty chapters. You're reading the Word, and something jumps out at you—then stop. Ring it dry, ring it dry. Really get what the Lord is trying to speak to you in that.

Mike: Jesus said, “I am the bread that came down out of heaven.”

Jan: Yes.

Mike: And we need to feed upon Him because the bread that we feed upon is spirit and it's life. If you don't eat it, if you don't digest it, you don't speak it, you don't become it.

Jan: The Word has to be your plumb line. When you read somebody else, when you hear somebody else, you have to go back to the Word. Is it lining up with that plumb line? And that's how you know whether Bill Johnson's word is worth listening to, or Dutch Sheets, or whomever—it has to line up with the Word of God. That's the plumb line.

Ron: Reflection. The Word is the center. The plumb line is alive, speaking fresh every day. When we immerse ourselves in it, the Spirit makes it real, forming Christ within us.

Jim: I like the idea that the Word is our foundation and God wants us to know His Word. I can read the Word and it doesn't become my foundation unless I am actually communing with the Spirit of God through the ingestion of that Word. That's different than disciplining ourselves to sit down and read the Word. I have to remember that when I turn to the Word, I'm turning to God. I'm turning to find transformation. I would much rather have a meeting with God the Father, where His Spirit can just sit right next to me and not say a word. I know that I'm communing in that moment. Then maybe I could go into the Scriptures and find where God was meeting me at.

Ron: Reflection. The Word alone isn't enough. It must be joined to the Spirit. Revelation isn't information—it's communion. When the Spirit breathes on the Word, it becomes our very life.

Dale: God evaluates a man by his heart, not his personality. True humility must embrace faith to believe that a humble person will not limit God in what He can accomplish through us. True disciples have always experienced the Master's discipline.

Mike: When do we have a chance to bow before the Lord? I believe it's a time when we approach the Scriptures and have the revelation that these words are God. Then you have the choice to humble yourself before Him. You approach this on a level of humility—it's our opportunity. Almost like Esther, when she went before the king, you had to have a certain humility about you to do something like that. We're getting to the place now where Christ is revealing Himself to His many-membered body to a degree where I think we need the revelation in our hearts of one another—to bow before one another in what the Lord has created in each one of us.

Ron: Reflection. In the end, God doesn't measure our successes; He measures our hearts. Humility, faith, and mutual love are the foundation stones of His Kingdom. This is where authority is born—in the hidden part that bows before Him and before one another.