Inspire Ohio 2012

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Advent HOPE Kettering

Chester Clark

Walk Humbly

Father in heaven, today we just want to ask that you would take these fleeting moments that we've shared here together, that you would take the wonderful fellowship that we've enjoyed, that you would take the devotional time that we've spent in nature and in your word, you would even take the foolishness of preaching and that you would take our experience this weekend and you'll make it something lasting.

That you'll make it just the spark that gets a fire going.

That it might be a flame that will not flicker and die, but 1 that will grow to a mighty inferno as your spirit falls on the young people of Ohio and surrounding areas and indeed around the world.

We want to experience the final, final events.

We don't want to come up so close to the end and have history record that you could have come.

The Holy Spirit, the latter rain could have fallen.

We want it to be fulfilled in our generation.

So today, as we come to our last meeting together, we just want to pray that Your Spirit would touch our hearts once again, that we might benefit from our study of Your Word, and we thank You in Jesus' name, amen.

Turn with me in your Bibles once again to Micah chapter 6 and verse 8.

We're going to be looking at the last portion of this passage here today and it's already been referred to a little bit.

Yesterday Pastor Elliott talked a bit about humility.

I'm going to be maybe looking at a little different angle than you've thought of humility before, but we're going to be seeing what it is that we can gather from this passage 1 more time.

He has shown the old man what is good, and what does the Lord require of thee?

Now, if it stopped with walk humbly, it might be, you know, understandable.

It's good to be not filled with pride, of course.

But this phrase, walk humbly with thy God, is 1 that gives me great intrigue.

Because I get the picture of someone walking humbly, and that's okay.

Someone walking humbly is 1 thing, right?

To walk humbly, if you were to put it in sort of like a mental picture, you would see someone who wasn't really full of themselves, someone who's meek, right?

Someone who is willing to listen to other people, someone who's, You know, there's lots of different characteristics of humility that we could talk about here.

And you can get that mental picture in your mind, right?

But then I have, it's hard for us not to have a very different mental picture of walking with God.

Because imagine you're walking with the most powerful being of the universe.

You know, you understand what I'm saying?

Imagine you're walking hand in hand or you're walking side by side and, you know, usually power goes to the head, doesn't it?

If you have someone who is a humble person and they get elevated to a high position, it usually doesn't take very long for that person to sort of become corrupted.

There's a little saying that say, power corrupts, right?

There is no more powerful position that a human can be in than walking with God.

It's not just like having, you know, it's not just having like, you know, President Obama's number in your cell phone or President Wilson's number in your cell phone or something like that, you know.

You think, wow, this is walking with God.

The God who is the Creator of the universe, the God who speaks and worlds come into existence, the God who is the ultimate judge.

This is an amazing concept to me that God is calling us not just to walk humbly, but to walk humbly with God." I think it's all involved, it's all wrapped up in the same concept that Pastor Shane has been talking about, the idea of having the latter rain poured out into us as human vessels so that we are filled with power.

Just look to the day of Pentecost if you don't believe it.

It's not as long as any of my sermons that I've been preaching here.

But thousands of people came forward to an altar call.

And if God were to put His power into us today so that when we spoke, people's hearts, men and women's hearts trembled, tears came down their face.

They saw the King of Kings as they really were.

In just a few moments, if we had that kind of a power to move hearts, to open doors, there's a great possibility that it might go to our head, because we're human.

This is 1 of the reasons that God wants to teach us humility.

He teaches us humility often through difficult trials of life, right?

The trial of our faith, through difficulties, through trials, through disappointments, through griefs and through spending that time on our knees agonizing in prayer and pleading and praying for the Holy Spirit.

You see, it's not just about walking humbly, it's about walking humbly with God.

If you have the 2 of them, Then I think you have the latter rain.

Let's turn to a text in Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 57.

It's 1 of the first verses that comes to my mind when I think of humility, and it fits right in with what we've been talking about here in this weekend.

Isaiah chapter 57 and verse 15, 1 of my favorite promises, Isaiah chapter 57 and verse 15, for thus saith the high and lofty 1 that inhabiteth eternity." So here God is portrayed as a holy God, right?

Isaiah is saying this is the high and lofty 1 who inhabits eternity.

God is a God who is high and lofty and holy, right?

And he says this, Thus saith the high and lofty 1 who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy.

I dwell in the high and holy place with, " and there you have relationship, right?

You have a relationship of this high and holy God, a lofty, lifted up God.

Contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

Remember we said from Desire of Ages, the weaker and more helpless you know yourself to be, the stronger you will become in His strength.

That's who He wants to have a personal, intimate relationship with, someone who realizes their nothingness, someone who realizes their need, someone who realizes their weakness.

And once again, I just want to encourage you in your personal devotional life, at least from my experience, My experience is that my greatest need to spend time in the Word of God is so that I can have a right knowledge of myself.

From the soul that feels his need, nothing is withheld, right?

The weaker and more helpless you know yourself to be, the stronger you become in his strength.

The problem is when I go out and start my day not with God's strength, not realizing my nothingness, not Realizing how much I need a miracle today, the problem comes up when I go out into the day thinking I can do it, satisfied, comfortable enough.

Those are the days when, frankly, I'm not abiding with Christ, right?

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Walk Humbly

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