Well, happy new years, friends. Alright , happy new year is a serious, it is happy. Alright . Hey , um , so I'm excited about this new conversation that we're going to be having it the end of 2018 I picked up a book, it's called how to kill a spider by a guy named Carlos Whitaker . And I quickly got to like the best part. It was in the first chapter right in the very beginning and it told a story about his dad had gone and done a three day like revival. He was a pastor and he was speaking the first night it was revival and he said he was like preaching his hardest. He was given God's word and invited people up for prayer. And at the end of the night, a woman, Ms. Ramirez came up front and she asked for prayer and she said, pastor, will you please pray that the Lord would clear the cobwebs out of my life? And so he went, okay, yeah, I'm going to pray that the Lord would clear the cobwebs out of your life. And so God take care of this for her and give her restoration from this and sent her on her way. And so night number two comes around and he notices Ms. Ramirez is there because at the end of the service she starts making her way back up front. He's like, Oh, maybe like, you know, some freedom took place. This is going to be great. And so she comes up and she goes, pastor, I know that you already prayed for this, but please would you just pray that God would clear the cobwebs out of my life. And so he's like, alright , so I'm going to pray harder. Like God, come on, you've got to show up and there's these cobwebs in her life and you know what it is and she needs some healing. And so she needed some distance from this and you can do this and this is what we're here for. And sends her on our way and the last night of this revival and he sees her there again, he sees her coming up and he's like, this is it. Like what a way to end. You know like God came through so good. We're going to hear testimony and she comes up and she looks at him and she goes, pastor, I know you've already done this, but will you just please pray that God would any stopped her and said, no, I will not pray that God clears out the cobwebs in your life. I'm going to pray that he kills the spider that's making all the cobwebs. In fact, I'm going to ask them that. He keeps those cobwebs. They're a little bit longer so we can figure out what that spider is, so then that's all I needed other books, so I was done. I put her off to the side. That was a good book. It's a personal stories about the different cobwebs and Carlos Carlos's life and it's really good, but it got me thinking, man, what a great conversation that we could have to start off this new year about the different spiders in the cobwebs that we have in our life. How there things like keep coming up and especially in this time when we were like, okay, we're going to do it this time. And we were like work hard at something but we don't actually ever deal with the spider and we get surrounded and imprisoned by these cobwebs. And then when I get this crazy spot again and so started thinking about like, well what are some of the cobwebs? Like what are the common creators of cobwebs and people's lives, like what are the typical ones? And so it was fairly easy thought about it for a minute and said, well it's like the seven deadly sins for history. Like for generations, books have been written, people kind of narrowed it to these like seven deadly sins that are at the root that cause all kinds of issue and chaos in everyone's life. There's even been movies written on it, books, all kinds of thoughts on how this affected people's lives. And so that's what we're going to have a conversation about over the next coming weeks. And I'm really excited to kind of dig in and attack some spiders and watch everyone in here squeal because they're the ones being affected, including myself in this reality. I grew up love going fishing. My dad taught me how to fish fish a lot. Still every year. Make sure I go fishing. I go to a Lake and spend a week plus fishing. It's like one of the highlights of my year. It's honestly one of the places I connect best with God. I connect great with my kids. Some friends, I love the fish and we go, this is actually my wife, this is one of the lockers that we caught. This is our place. This twin lakes is like glacier fed. It's beautiful love to go fishing and I don't know when you're fishing you don't have a whole lot to do, but to think about weird things like what a fish think because you're sitting there and you're trying to out-think a fish. I'm going to catch you fish and you're like put your , your Lewer in there. And a lot of times, you know , it looks like one of these and you're thinking about like what does a fish think all the time on a stab myself right now, what does a fish think when this thing's coming by? That doesn't even really look like a fish. But there's like eat me and it's coming by and you're like seeing it go by. And I started about bam, bite it and then hooked and then you're dragged out. Cause it's connected to a line and other person's , they're all excited because here comes dinner, right? And I wonder like can fish, like they should be talking with one another and sharing what happened because he has a crazy thing about fish. Three seconds later you could put this same thing like this that's wiggling by and then another fish, bam bites it that's hanging out with his friends. And so you're like, why isn't anyone being like, Hey Bobby, bit that last time and Bobby gone, he disappeared. So I wouldn't be biting that thing right there. But that's not what happens. They still comes on by, they see it, wham gets pulled up. And it just keeps happening in. The crazy thing is is it's the same thing. It's very generic , but the same thing has been used for years in our lives. We have a lot of the same things that are used that get our attention. We bought into it , wham, we get hooked and then on that hook is a line and that line is another thing, real any , when the Bible calls him the tempter, the deceiver, a lion , that prowess that's trying to get you scoop you up ready for dinner time . And we keep going back to that same thing again. So that's really about what the spiders are. What are these things that haven't changed for generations that we continually see. Just combine wham. We get hooked next to me. You know, we got a Barb in our mouth and we're heading in the wrong direction. So I'm going to give you, I'm going to read off to you a handful of hints to see if we can figure out what the first spider is, which I actually think is the biggest or the one that actually connects to almost every other spider. We're going to talk about. This is one of the foundations for us. This is the one thing that keeps you from celebrating other people's success. It keeps you from initiating an apology. When you know that you're wrong, it keeps you from initiating apology when you were only 5% wrong and the other person was 95% wrong. It's the one thing that keeps you arguing your point. Even after you realize that you don't even really have a good point. It keeps you from admitting you've lost. It keeps you from admitting weakness. It keeps you from admitting you need help. It keeps you from admitting you don't know what you're doing, even though everyone else knows you don't know what you're doing. It keeps you from being honest with yourself. It keeps you from being honest with others. It keeps you from learning new things because you want people around you to think that you know everything. It causes you to feel good. When others fail, it causes you to power up. When you should open up. It causes you to cheat before you allow yourself to lose and it causes you to lie about your past. Maybe your relationships, graduation, the situation. It's what causes you to have the final word. This is what causes you to buy things, to impress people who aren't even paying attention to what you bought and he guesses what he got. He'll go , ah , yeah. Pride. Pride is the big spider hair bow . Yeah. Pride is this huge spider pride is thought of as the carbon monoxide of all the other things. It's the sneaky killer that sneaks up and most of us that most of us can't even see, but there's huge damage. You see the eye right there in the middle because pride is all about I, the Mead individual is as CS Lewis said in one of his books, it says on chastity, anger, greed, drunkenness are mere flea bites and comparison. Pride leads to every other vice . So we're going to have a conversation today about pride and how we kill that spider and the cobwebs that continue to come up and the damage it does, not only to us but to the others around us. So what does pride do? Pride diminishes you. So often we get stuck in this idea that, you know , pride is like the puff up, you know , like super prideful or the proud, or look what I accomplished. And that's not the kind of pride that I'm talking about right now. I'm not talking about the good job and an artwork or the complement you did by finishing something that you started that class that took all that work. The pride that's proud. We're about the pride that actually diminishes you and it diminishes these specific things. It diminishes a couple of capacities. It diminishes your capacity to admit, to apologize, and to acknowledge. It diminishes your capacity. It makes you smaller because you're unable to admit when you're wrong because it's just like that thing is like, Oh, I can't, I'm right. I'm not going to, I mean, I know like I'm not exactly right. You know like don't Google it, but I'm pretty sure it's that thing that keeps us from apologizing. It's like when she's in the kitchen and you're sitting over there and you know that you should apologize for what you said or what you did and like the other thing that's so emotionally just like, I can't, I'm just hand . I wanted to ask you a question or I wanted to say something to you. And they're like, yeah, what do you want for dinner? And they're like, ah, who cares about that as the prize? That thing that like adjusts you immediately, that diminishes, makes you smaller cause you can't apologize or to acknowledge what you've done or what you're doing continually to people that around you. It also diminishes your capacity to say, to hear and to give. It diminishes your cap capacity to say what needs to be said, like a compliment. Do you know how many people in your life maybe begging you for a compliment? The power of walking up to your son and saying, I'm proud of you. Even in the midst of them not accomplishing everything that you had dreamed of them to accomplish, to walking up to your daughter and saying, I love you to finding if you're a an employer that even though your employee has accomplished the task that they've been paid for that then telling them thank you and giving them a compliment, good job way to get it done. It's huge. It diminishes your capacity to be able do that. The same for you to do that to a boss to say what needs to be said, to give them a compliment. How often when you get paid, do you walk into your boss and say thank you for my paycheck. Pride diminishes us and our capacity do you think is to hear what needs to be heard. You know that when like words just bounce off of you and people are just like, if you could just hear this, it's for your own good. I beg you, but we're just bounced off. You know, giving that to other people because we can see pride in others so very well, but it diminishes the capacity for you when you have it. Has to become a huge spider in your life to be able to hear what needs to be heard or to give what needs to be given. When this happens, it's like this bar that gets hooked into us in the end. This is like all of a sudden out of nowhere, it's taken place. It snuck up on us and we're just stuck and we're hooked in. We're being reeled a different way cause pride does something really specific. It crowds others out. Pride crowds, others out. And when you are so full of you, there's no room for anybody else. You find yourself like alone and distant from everyone and disconnected and you know constantly just feeling like you're getting deeper and deeper into this hole because you just need to say it still, but you can't say it , but now it's been too long and now I'm just angry and now I'm going to draw a line or put my stake here. Then you find yourself so full of you and there's no room for anyone else in that church. Today we're even going to talk about how then pride crowds out God pride. Then ultimately crowds out others and it prouds out. God. David, the Psalmist said in Psalm ten four he said in his pride, the wicked man does not seek him in his thoughts. There are no room for God. Some of you may be in here today and you're like an intellectual person. You're smart. And some of you may be in the new year and you're coming and you're like, I don't know. I'll try this out. And I don't know if I believe this whole Jesus thing and the God thing and we just did commune today. And you know this is a little wonky too. I'm not really quite there. Some of you have like arguments because of your intellect that says like, this is why I know God or this is why I struggled with God. And you've used your intellect to distance yourself from God. And ultimately what you need to know is that your pride, not your intellect, is what's keeping you from God to be able to understand the , the , the majestic of who God and what God really is and all about. And if that's something that you do, you keep your distance from God because of pride, because of your intellect and then you find yourself using your intellect to distance others and to demean others. You might have a pride problem. This is an elbows in message. By the way, this message is just for you and not the person sitting next to you. Those of you who are like RA texting, you really need to hear this. What is pride? Pride is a prison. Friends of of webs. It's shuts us in and it shuts God and others out. It's this huge prison that encapsulates us and keeps God and others out, and ultimately the ability to receive, give love from God and others. So how do we kill this spider of pride? How do we kill the spider of pride? Follow Jesus. Yep . I know it's something that you've heard before. You're like, well no, this is me. Like I know this about pride, but you follow Jesus and in turn that will equal you. Unfollowing pride and I'm talking about follow Jesus like an actual following way in pursuit of taking steps, not just I'm a Jesus follower like I do the things like every once in a while I do the things that come to church. I say the prayer thing at the food thing and you know, listened to stuff I'm talking about like the follow, like where your life gets adjusted and you start trying to actually live in an act and be a disciple and allow him to be a rabbi for you. That is what's going to help you unfollow pride because if you start to follow Jesus, you get a couple of really key things that Jesus did that literally turned the world upside down in his head and showed us what humility was all about. When he came here. It used to be it was a world and it's much like it is today, which is all about how much you have and how people are serving and answering to you. That was status. That's who you were and he came in and said, it's not that. It's not how many people are serving you. It's how many people you can serve. That's the greatest. You're greater than. That's the greatest way that you can live. He said the meek will inherit the earth. He talked about meekness was where it was at and then he made the statement, the meek will inherit the earth and you're like, what does that mean? I don't know, but it sounds awesome. If you guys get with me, hang with me. You guys are like, seriously? Yeah. I don't know. Meekness is where it's at. The humble, the being able to have humility, being able to have empathy and walk and sit beside someone else. Then we see at the end of his life that at the end he with his disciples, with his followers, just like you and I, he washed his followers. Feats . Feats wasn't really the right word. He watched his disciples feet in, humbled himself in , served himself, made himself lower than and took care of them and ultimately if we can just get this one thing that Jesus did, this is a way that we can kill the spider of pride. Jesus initiated reconciliation. He initiated reconciliation. If we could just follow this one thing I can just about guarantee your life would be better, your relationships would be better, everything would be better around you and me. If we could learn to initiate reconciliation. And we've had a conversation here in this faith community before about reconciliation and the posture and how we should come to the table reconciliation and how so often we screwed up because of our own pride. You see that he had done nothing wrong and was wrong yet came down and served and humbled himself for others. He reconciled, he went to, we did nothing to deserve it and he decided, I'm going to initiate this. I'm going to initiate the grace, the peace, the love, the mercy, the atonement. I'm gonna initiate the reconciliation. A guy named Paul, he wrote a lot of the new Testament for us. He was really good friends with a couple of guys that spent a lot of time with Jesus and lived and watched Jesus through his ministry. And so he got to learn from them and hear about them, and he gave us these great instructions. And Philippians, he talks about this and he says, in your relationships, in our relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ. Essentially it's lived like Christ. Adjust yourself. Adjust the way that you act, the way that you talk, the way that you present yourself, the way we carry our own pride in live with a mindset of Jesus. It continues on and it says, he made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of, there's that word, a servant. What if we looked at at our life as a service to others rather than a service to ourselves when someone's hurt us or wronged us? What if we looked at it and said, how can I serve you? And you're like, well, no, that's our enemy. Well, yeah, that's what's really radical about something he said too . He said, love your enemy. Oh my goodness. Serve what if. That's how we responded to a lot of these circumstances and they continued on. He says, and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled, humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. He humbled himself and that's all he's asking us eat . He humbled himself to death and all he's asking you to do and me to do is to give an apology. All he wants you to do is to apologize. All he wants you to do is say, son, I'm proud of you. All he wants you to do is say to your daughter, I love you. All he wants to do is go up to your partner and say, I messed up. Let's fix this. All he wants you to do is come to the table of reconciliation. There's three questions I want to kind of leave you with as we kind of wrap this up because it's really difficult to talk about such a big topic and 25 minutes or so and so this is way you can chew on this and get into a group around some people. And so these are the three questions to ask yourself about whether or not you have a pride problem. Ask yourself this. How does pride manifest itself in you? What is pride? Masquerade as an you . And how much longer do you plan to let the spider of pride live? Now, if you're having trouble answering this, there's someone sitting next to you that might have the answer. You're going to need to prepare yourself when you ask them these questions about yourself. Because there will be some fry that puffs up when you're maybe hearing about some of our blind spots. And that's the thing is it's so hard to see in the mirror. Our pride is. So how does pride manifest itself in you? You have to ask yourself, what does that look like? How does it come out? I can tell you, for me, it manifests itself in me. I can become very critical. I can become very critical of myself, which is damaging. And I can be very critical of other people and things, including my kids. Uh, like, you know, like my win , win prize, like really struggling and having an issue. You know, my kids, like my daughter draws me a cute picture and she's like, look at this awesome picture I made. And I'm like, yeah, it's not really that awesome. And then she's like, here, I made it for you. And then later on she doesn't realize I crumpled it up and threw it in his car. It was just like, where's my picture? I gave you forever and I'm like, it's in the garbage. Well, you guys judging me right now. Wow. All right , well that's what Sharon looks like. That was a little rough. Like your hardcore , that's what it looks like. Price gross. As much as we can laugh about it right now, we're like laughing about it. It's serious like damages other people and it comes out and we're critical of stuff because our first response is like, well, like look, look what I did. This is awesome. You're like hurts people, right? What does it manifest itself as you? What is it? Pride. Masquerade itself as an Ew . What is it hiding behind? I can tell you for me. All right, this is sharing. Are you ready to do this? Easy. They're sinners. I see you. Yeah. You're next for me. It's sarcasm. Yeah. You know what the definition of sarcasm is? Yeah, like literally tearing of the flesh. Right? But that's how it like mask itself. When my prides really popping up and like I'm really struggling with that and my own issues and it's welling up in me, I can become so sarcastic because it's tearing down of other people as like some pride protection of myself because I need to be okay with me in. It shuts myself in and it pushes everybody else out and that remark is usually at the expense of the other person emotionally usually to get a poke to get a laugh. It doesn't usually ever do anything to build them up. It's funny, I'll tell you, it's funny, it's witty. It's good and quick, but that's how it matters . How does it do it for you? Is it, is it fashion? Is it your intelligence? You're like, nah , I'm just smart. No , you're arrogant like this . Just get there. How does pride masquerade itself in you? Is it stuff? Is it the things we say is the things we're not willing to say like we're continually going to put that stake in the ground? No , no, no. I won't tell you that I love you because my dad never told me he loved me. That's not what we do in this family , just who I am. Oh, that's just who your dad is. Come on. How's it? How's it? What's the , what's the mask that this spider is wearing and how much longer friends do you plan to let it live? How much longer do you really plan to let it live? You know, for some of you, like, Hey, it's a new year. It's a new start. I'm gonna do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. What are all those statements? Start with I . Yeah. What if, what if you stopped letting that spider be in control, that's going to eventually create cobwebs in your life and you started following Jesus and trying to act like he acted and unfollowed pride. Watch this pride. Watch this bread. I'm going to walk over there and I'm going to apologize. What? You've never done that? I know. Watch this. Watch this pride. I'm going to go to my son's recital even though I'm really upset because he's not playing football and I want to go to the ball game. I don't want to go to the recital and watch the piano concert cause my pride says , uh , that's not what I do. That's what you're supposed to do. Watch this pride. I'm going to show up for my son and sit in the front road at the recital and say, I'm proud of you. Watch this pride. I'm gonna go to my daughter and tell her how beautiful she is and how loved she is even though I'm not happy with the decisions that she's making right now. Watch this pride. Get this fried you don't even understand. This is going to be good. I'm actually going to try to fix my relationship so my kids can learn from my relationship and how I have humbled myself because it's that important and this is how you fix things. Watch this pride. I'm going to show up at a Monday night recovery meeting for the first time. I'm going to name you out pride and I'm going to talk about my addiction problem and pride. You keep whispering saying, no, you can't do that. People are gonna see it. They're gonna understand it. No, you're good enough. You can fix this. We can just fight it together on pride. Watch, I'm showing up on Monday and I'm going to call it out and people are going to hear it. Watch this pride. I might even sign up for that starting point class and I'm going to ask questions and learn what it looks like to pursue God and to build community and unleash compassion. Whole pride. I'm going to get you look at you pride. I might even show up on one of these screens up here cause I'm telling a story about how he just wrecked my world in the best way ever. Pride. I'm coming at you with rooted pride. I'm coming at you with this, with community, with stories, how much longer friends we going to let it live. That big old, nasty spider of pride. For some of you. Maybe you're here today and we say this every single week and we'll continue to say this. This is some of your first times this new year. You're like, I'll investigate. Maybe you're here and you're showing up after just a wonky 2018 and you're just looking for something and you feel like either things are dead in your life or a dead end. I mean almost to the degree where you're just bored with life or done with it. We want to tell you that there's nothing so dead that God cannot resurrect it again. When you follow him and you unfollow these other things, just these few things, he can resurrect it again. There's nothing so lost in your life that God can not find it again and there's nothing so broken that he can, not that he can not mend and begin the mending process. Even today, no matter where you're at, and for some of you, that broken thing in you is that gigantic spider where where you're going to say, watch this pride. I'm just going to shut up and I'm going to walk into some new things and some new spaces and I'm not going to have the last word. I'm actually maybe going to check out what this following thing looks like. So we have something for you. We'll have this every week we wrote a journal for you and you're ready to kill that spider. And for some of you are ready to give up to follow Jesus to check it out and unfollow these things that continue to leave into these dead ends and your life. We have a book because it changes everything. It's a little journal called this changes everything. It's a 20 day basic journey that's going to answer some of your basic questions where you're like, okay, I think I'm going to check this out. I'm ready to do this. What's next? This is next. So this is, this is you today. I want to give this to you and you go on this journey. I'm gonna follow up with you. Maybe you're here today and you're like, man , I checked it out. I mean the community thing was kind of weird and you know , we sang some songs, then the guy then sang , talked to us and people had questions and somebody else raised their hand. So many questions during worship and then you're talking about pride and that's uncomfortable. But I mean I check it out. This is for you. I would love for you just to go on an exploratory journey because it changes everything. Friends, this new year when we, when we give ourselves over to Jesus, when we decide, okay I'm gonna start killing some spiders, I'm done with the cobwebs. It literally will change everything. Would you stand? So again, if that's you, if you're here today and this is your first time to make this type of decision, there's going to be some people upfront that I have these booklets are prayer partners. If you just want some prayer or just to connect with somebody, they're also available for that. And we also have some of them out there at the information desk. So too , if this is your first time making this kind of decision or you want to go on an exploratory journey cause you're like, I'm willing, I'll check it out, take the take. I encourage you 21 days and then I'll connect with you personally after that time. It is one of your first times with us. I'm so glad you came. Check us out for a couple of weeks. Get to know us. This is gonna be really fun conversation. I promise it's going to be uncomfortable, but I think it could be extremely powerful as we pursue God and see how he's going to transform us as we deal with some of these spiders that continue to come up on a regular basis in our lives and so great opportunity for you to come back or invite other people to come and join you in this space and we have a gift for you on your way out. Thank you for unleashing compassion and your generosity and I would love to send you off with a blessing. The blessing is simply this. It's from Philippians two five in our relationships with one another. Maybe we have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. Maybe go on that piece , friends , I will see you next week. Love you.