WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING?

Have you ever looked at your life and thought, I should be further along than this? I’m gifted. I work hard. I love God. I’m trying to do the right things. So what’s holding me back?

What if it isn’t a lack of talent? What if it isn’t a lack of opportunity?

What if one of the things keeping you from going where God wants to take you is how you handle the people He’s already put around you?

What if the way up in life is to actually go down?

Today's main point: The Way Up is Down

Honor: recognizing someone’s value and treating them accordingly.

- Honor sees value.
 Honor expresses value.
 Honor treats something as valuable because of the value it carries.

- To dishonor is to treat as common, ordinary, or insignificant what should be treated as valuable.

- Honor isn’t just what you think about someone - Honor is how you treat them because of what you recognize in them.

- We are to honor God from our hearts and with our lives (incl. our possessions)

- When you honor God with your first and best, you'll find that the way up is down.

- We are to Honor our parents and other authority figures that God has placed in our lives.

- When you honor parents/authority instead of insisting you know better, you'll find that the way up is down.

- We are to honor our spouses!

- Kingdom marriages aren't built around demanding honor. It’s built around giving it.

- Instead of: “Do you respect me enough?” Kingdom thinking asks: “Am I treating you according to the value God placed on you?”

- When you honor your spouse and put their interests ahead of yours you'll find that the way up is down.

- We are to honor all in God's family & those outside of His family!

- When you honor one another instead of needing to be the most important person in the room you'll find that the way up is down.

- You can’t consistently live a life of honor without humility.

- Honor requires you to lower yourself enough to recognize the value God placed in somebody else.

- Pride involves deception and an overestimation of oneself.

- Pride asks, “How valuable am I?”

- Honor asks, “How can I show you that you’re valuable?”

Symptoms of Pride:

1. Speaking of oneself: Pride seeks its own glory and constantly tries to impress others.

2. Name-dropping: A tendency to mention people known or places visited to gain status.

3. Interrupting: Pride is not interested in listening to others and often cuts them off.

4. Presumption: Assuming that others are interested in one's own stories or that everyone already knows one's achievements.

5. Comparing and minimizing others: Trying to appear greater than others by downplaying their experiences or successes.

6. Inability to admit lack of knowledge: Pride refuses to say "I don't know."

7. Lying and maintaining a false front: Exaggerating and working hard to keep up an image.

8. Contentiousness and anger: Being defensive, argumentative, and causing strife.

9. Sensitivity to offense: Feeling easily embarrassed or hurt when not receiving special attention.

10. The need to be "different": Using this label to imply spiritual superiority.

11. Rejecting correction: Pride does not want to be taught or corrected.

12. Making excuses: Instead of adjusting or taking responsibility, pride shifts blame.

13. Refusing to follow instructions: Always thinking there is a "better way" than what was asked.

14. Refusing gifts or help: Feeling unable to be "beholden" to others.

15. Positional pride: A need to be in charge or first, and struggling to play a supporting role.

- The way up is down! Humble yourself by Honoring others and HE will lift you up!