Live Free with Josh Howerton - Strength in Gentleness | Ep. 212 | Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

Is gentleness not in your DNA? God wants to shape you into a passionate person who is under control. Our unnecessary roughness can be smoothed by placing ourselves under the control of His Spirit. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's daily drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. This Christmas, we want to invite you and your family to join us for our candlelight services on December 22nd through 24th at any of our six locations or for church online. For more information, visit lakepoint.combe.com slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the podcast. My name is Mike Bro, and we're here Monday through Friday,

trying to become a little more like Jesus every day. So thanks for tuning in. We launched into a discussion yesterday about a character trait called gentleness. And we talked about going to the replay monitor like those football referees and taking a closer look at our character, our actions, our reactions, and asking God, would you take a closer look and let me know how I'm doing? Am I growing in love? Am I growing in peace? Am I growing in patience and goodness and kindness and faithfulness and self-control? Am I growing in gentleness? And we said yesterday that gentleness is not weakness but its power under control, or more specifically, our power under God's control.

And we left off yesterday with these words of Jesus from Matthew 11. Let me read it again. He says, come to me. All of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I'll give you a rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle, and you'll find rest for your souls. Jesus is saying, if you'll just come to me, if you'll yoke up, link up, do life with me, the gentle one, I will enable you to have power under my control, because that's how God, is. God is a gentle God. Now that doesn't mean that God is weak in any way. I mean, he is omnipotent. He is all-powerful. And as a man, Jesus was certainly not weak. I mean, think about it.

You know he had to have calloused hands from working for years as a Judean carpenter. And those days, you didn't run to Home Depot for your lumber. You've made your own. Plus, most every day, everything was done with stone in those days. I mean, yeah, have you ever shook hands with a stone mason? So you know that he was strong, probably shredded from all that physical labor. One time Jesus walks right into God's temple and boldly throws out all these religious con men and thieves, flipping over tables while his nostrils flared over the injustice of it all, and nobody wanted to mess with him. Man, Jesus used strong words to the religious leaders of his day and confronted their distortion of God's word.

He boldly ventured into places that nobody else would go. embraced and befriended people that nobody else would, and he courageously endured the humiliation and pain of the cross. I mean, you talk about power under control. It's there on the cross that maybe we see the greatest display of gentleness in the history of the world, because he could have called fire down from heaven. He could have sent for thousands of angels to come and rescue him and blow away all of his accusers. It was all within his power. but in an amazing demonstration, a power under control, he carried our sins on the cross because he knew. No one else could.

You see, without gentleness, without power under control, the most important series of events in history would have never occurred. After his resurrection, Jesus told Peter, James, and John, those three guys talked about with the rough edges, and his other followers that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit, God, the Spirit, would come upon them. And you can read all about that in Acts chapter two, how from that point on they become these world changers because the Holy Spirit began to change them from the inside out. And without gentleness, without their power under God's control, all of those guys could have self-destructed. But everything changed because their rough edges got smoothed out by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. And the cool thing is, the same power that smoothed out

their rough edges, can smooth out yours and mine too. So, do you mind if I mix metaphors here for a second? Football and carpentry? Sorry, they're two of my passions. Some of you know I like building and remodeling stuff. Now my skill level may be questionable, but I really like finishing a day covered in sawdust. And my love for it came from seventh grade shop class, where Mr. Reynolds showed us all the basic tools.

And one of the first tools we learned to use was the wood planer. It planes away the thickness of a rough board. off like a 16th of an inch at a time and just makes it smoother to work with. And as a guy with plenty of rough edges, I'm learning that to produce gentleness in me, the Holy Spirit wants to plain my disposition. There are just some layers that need to come off of all of us. I mean, you might be saying, well, listen, bro, gentiless, gentleness is just not in my makeup. I can't help it. I'm just not tender and friendly. I'm not funny. I'm not laid back. I'm tough, man. I'm a type A. I'm highly competitive, I'm aggressive, I'm high energy, I'm pretty matter of fact with people.

I say what's on my mind, I tell it like it is. That's just my personality. And you always say that you're supposed to be who God wired you up to be. Well, that's true. God's not interested in changing your basic personality makeup. He does want you to be you. However, he is super interested in you and me, becoming his best version of us. He wants to shape the way your unique personality plays itself out in a God-honoring way. He wants to shape our disposition so that you and I can react and act and relate to people like Jesus did. I had a basketball coach who once said, I'd never have a player play for me that didn't have a temper, but I'd never have one that didn't have it under control.

Man, you ought to have some passion. You ought to have some fire and ambition and energy and drive and courage. You were made in God's image, and he possesses all those traits in a healthy way. But you know as well as I do, there is an unhealthy flip side to those qualities as well. And unless you and I surrender the dangerous shadow side of those traits to the Holy Spirit, we're going to turn into hard-charging, insensitive, irritable grumps who explode at the drop of a hat and run over people all the time. The Apostle Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, was at one time a guy like that.

He was previously called Saul, and Saul was absolutely running rough shot over people. You talk about a life of unnecessary roughness, but God changed him. And guess what? Saul, now Paul, was still tough. He was still fiery. He was still sharp. He was still bold and ambitious and hardworking and determined. But now he channeled all of that through the Holy Spirit of God.

Look what he writes from a prison cell in Philippians chapter 4. He says, rejoice in the Lord always. I'll say it again. Rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. He's saying that life is short. Not only is the Lord near you, with you, in you, but Jesus could come back at any time.

So live and relate in a warm, joy-filled, upbeat, smile on your face, dealing tenderly with people kind of way. Let your gentleness be evident. to all. I mean, all of us need to surrender our disposition daily to the Holy Spirit saying, would you just plain away my moodiness today? Would you plain away any layers of cynicism? Would you remind me to choose joy when I don't feel like it? Guard my reactions and my body language today. Would you help me control my tongue today? Because I don't want to berate, criticize with those shade at anybody today. So I'm just asking for your help. And when you remind me in the moment,

I'll listen and I'll respond. So why not make you make it? that year prayer today. Rejoice to the Lord always and let your gentleness be evident to all at work, at school, at practice, at home, in the store, and even in traffic, and come back here tomorrow and we'll dig in a little more. Have a great day. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out? For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.comte.combe.