Bobby Schuller - Stay Humble, Keep Growing
Well, no matter who you are, would you stand with us? Hold your hands out like this as a way of receiving from the Holy Spirit. Let's say this together, I'm not what I do. I'm not what I have. I'm not what people say about me. I am the beloved of God. It's who I am. No one can take it from me. I don't have to worry, I don't have to hurry. I can trust my friend Jesus and share his love with my neighbor. Thanks, you can be seated.
Today I wanna talk about the importance of keeping good company with the Lord, in particular as it has to do with personal development. I like the phrase personal development, even though it's overused. It is a term that I think we could incorporate into our view of discipleship. To be a disciple of Jesus means to be an apprentice or a student. It doesn't just mean that we were saved by grace through faith. It does mean that, that's at the core of our creeds and doctrine, but it also means that we've made a choice every day to do our best to follow Christ and become like him. And that means that we apply ourselves with a degree of effort into becoming the best version of us we can be, and the best version of us is the one that looks the most like if Jesus were walking in my shoes.
And that version of us is not something we're called to do by duty, but it's the best possible life we can live, and I wanna invite you to that today. I want to invite you to commit your life to constantly be a person who wants to grow, wants to grow. You know, growing is not something that is a default. It's easy to feel that way, that simply as I go through life I'm gonna grow, and there are things that happen in life that cause us to stop growing altogether. It's easy to fall into this trap, because when we're born, growing is just what we do, right? I mean, you look at a two year old becoming a five year old, and that person is growing.
And the price of their shoes every year, new shoes, that's expensive. I'd love to invent a pair of kid's shoes that expands somehow over time, that grows with the kid. But in life we're always growing, and I think there's something as a kid about going to school that forces you to have some kind of personal growth. You have to learn how to read and write, arithmetic, and all of those, so there's a sort of ongoing growth that happens, but when we leave school, when we go to the workplace, when we get into the rhythms of life, it's now up to you to grow or not grow, and I think what happens is most people kinda stop or only do it when they're forced to do it.
And I want to encourage you to commit your life every day to build little things into the habit of your life to make sure that year after year, you're growing. Maybe slowly, but you're growing. You could look back and say, yes, I've learned more, I've grown more, I've become more like Christ than I was a year ago. We serve a God that even when we mess up a million times, he continues to forgive us. Isn't that good news? That God sets aside his ego when we offend him, and he just forgives us over and over. He commands us to forgive people 70 times 7, you know why? 'Cause that's what he does with us. He loves us, and there's nothing you have done that can cause you to forever be away from God. He is always waiting for you with open arms. And so, to grow, we have to not be afraid of falling in this way.
So, I wanna encourage you that there is great reward in God's company. Growing and living every day with God, it's the best, honestly. It's the best kind of life we can live. I remember when I was in college, business school, I went lucky enough to go to a Christian school, but I also at the time worked for a real estate investment company in town. So, I did both things, and at the school most of the kids really were, you know, pretty Christian, and they were really committed to God. They chose a Christian university because they cared about that in most cases, but at the investment firm most were not Christians. In both places I made lots of friends, but there's two whose stories kind of went in opposite directions.
One, there was a guy named, we'll call him Brian, that I worked with, really great guy. Did have a foul mouth, but I really liked him a lot, and we became pretty good friends. And I remember at the time thinking if there is anyone that I ever thought was gonna succeed in life financially, it was gonna be this guy. He was so set that someday he was gonna get a Porsche 911 Turbo. He had it on his wall. I don't know if you listen to like, Tony Robbins a lot or something, but he would, like, visualize, this is the dream, and this is my life, this is who I'm gonna be. I'm gonna make money, and I'm gonna get there. And I just really did admire, I don't think he was a Christian, but I admired his drive to want to get into that place.
And then there was another guy who lived on our floor named, Rick, we'll call and Richard, Australian guy. He was an old man, though. I remember, I was 19 or 20 at the time, he was 25, and back in college there weren't a lot of those. We just remember thinking, oh, he's, like, my dad's age or something, how old this guy is. But he had a way about him. He was, as I said, Australian, but he was just full of God's life, and he had a way of just seeing the needs of others. When you were with him and he talked to you, he had very bright eyes, and it just felt like his enthusiasm was contagious. And when you talked to him, he was like he was seeking to know how he could help you and love you and be a friend to you. He's the kind of person you would trust, you know, everything with. He just seemed like a trustworthy person.
And I remember whenever we weren't, you know, talking to him, he was reading a lot. He loved to read nonfiction books and personal development and read the Bible a lot, and his dream was not a Porsche 911, it was to be a missionary. And I remember years later coming back around, let's say ten, twelve years later, within one year I re-met both of those guys to hang out and sort of see how their lives were going. And that same guy, Richard, who wanted to be a missionary, he did. He went off and became a missionary, he met the love of his life and was married, he had a really great marriage, and they had, like, way too many kids.
I forgot how many it was, but a lot of kids, and he was just bubbling with joy, had the same kind of enthusiasm, and in the process invented, I forget what it was, invented some kinda thing, has something to do with camping, sold it to a company, and was, like, now rich as Crassus. I mean, the guy was, like, made some huge windfall payday, was still doing different things, but just because he found a need and invented this thing, he had this big windfall. And so, here he was, you wouldn't know he was rich, but as I got to talk to him I heard this amazing story. Not much later I met with that other guy, Brian, who I thought would be the most successful guy ever.
And he was still, he had bounced around a bunch of jobs, he was driving a BMW now, but as I got to know the story better I realized he probably couldn't afford it, kinda over leveraged to get it, and it seemed like he was never really happy with his roommates, bounced around a lot, and he wanted to be married, but he said, well, I'm not going to get married until I really make it. You know, now he's well into his 30s, and I just remember thinking, you know, just meet a girl now. You know, if you really wanna get married, go meet somebody. And it was interesting how the one friend who wanted to be rich and wanted a nice sports car, there's nothin' wrong with that, but wanted that 911 so bad, it really didn't turn into anything in his life.
But the other guy who just loved people and wanted to help people, like, as a bystander... not as a bystander, as a byproduct, he got this huge payday, and he got this great family, and I'm sure his life isn't perfect, but you could see that in one person he wanted to become a better person, and he wanted to help people, and the other guy wanted an awesome car. And how those two lives led to two very different results. Can I tell you something? I need you to hear this today. Results are from who you become. You can desire those things all day long, but it's not until you become a magnet to those things, it's not until you develop into that type of person that the things you want in life come to you.
As Jesus said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God," that is the reign of God in your life, that you become a Jesus kind of person, "And all these things," all the other stuff that the pagans run after, "will come to you," 'cause God knows you need them. So, but if you seek first his kingdom, you'll just naturally attract those things. Maybe we can say it this way, and if you hear the next thing I'm about to say, I promise your life will change if you apply it. Victory in life is like petting a cat.
Now, we all know what it's like to pet a dog. Piece of cake, right? You see a dog, and he's wagging his tail. He looks at you, and you're like, "How are you doing"? And he's like, "How are you doing"? You're like, "How are you doing"? And everybody's all excited, right? And the dog comes, and they always do this thing when they get close to you, maybe they yelp a little bit 'cause they're excited. They go... you know, this, like, what do you call it? You do that thing to a cat, "Hey buddy, how are you"? And the cat goes, "Gross". And then the tail goes up, and he, you know, shows you his you know what. And, you know, and it just feels like insult to injury. This is how cats are.
You know, if you want to pet a cat, you have to allure the cat, you know. You have to, if you want it, like, my sister has this great cat named Luna that is so cute and very fun. And, like, whenever we're gathered as a family, anyone who tries to pet her, she, you know, kinda scurries away. But if you ignore her, then sometimes she'll come to you. Actually, what's even better is if you have something like a string and you bounce the string. You know, she'll come around, and, like, look at the string, and if you try and give the string to her, she'll run away, but if you kind of, like, go, "Hmm, this is my string," like this, she'll, like, come around and, like, start playing with the string.
And not all cats are like this, but you get it, don't you? That to pet a cat, you have to talk the cat in some weird way to coming to you. And so much of life is that way, that if you want victory in life, many of the victories, there are some victories that are all about pursuit and going for it, I guess, but I feel like the big victories that you really want in life are really about becoming a different kind of person, about becoming that kind of person that attracts those things to you. And no one but Jesus can show you the very best way to become that kind of person. Yes, there's other people who have wisdom, but the best person to follow is Christ.
Victory is like a cat, so if you want to share your faith with someone, I had to learn this, I used to, you know, love to, like, you know, when I was younger, you know, really go out of my way to witness and share my faith with others, and it just didn't work. What worked was living like Christ and being full of joy and people becoming my friends and then me having a conversation with them. It's very different. If you are looking for a spouse in life, and maybe you haven't found the person, you're always going after the spouse, maybe a change to take instead of saying what kind of spouse you want is to say what kind of spouse shall I become? And the person will come into your life.
Too often when I meet young people or old people or anybody in between that's single, maybe divorced, wants to meet someone, very often they can tell you top to bottom what they want. Gotta have a sense of humor, gotta be a surgeon, gotta be 6'3, and this is the girl, you know. Not a lot of women over 6'3". No, no, but they give you a list of all the things that they want in another person, but if you ask them what kinda spouse do you want to become, what kinda spouse do you wanna be when someone marries you? They're like, "Well, I'm good as I am". I'm like, okay. You know, there is a balance, isn't there, between self confidence and loving people and also becoming a better version of yourself, and that's what the gospel does for us. It allows us to keep coming closer to God and learning from the scriptures and learning from people in our lives.
So, if we wanna be a spouse, you gotta become the kind of person that attracts the kind of spouse you want. And this is true with money too, and, of course, we don't, there's so many things that are more important than money, but money is also like a cat. I've noticed that many of the people who have done well financially are trustworthy people who have a way of seeing opportunity. They're much more like my friend Richard and much less like my friend Bryan, where their goal in life is not to make money, their goal in life is to find a need and fill it. Same thing with a job, same thing with so many of the other victories in life. It's about luring those things into your life, it's about becoming a different kind of person.
Results in life are from who you become. It's from who you become, and today I wanna encourage you to get on the path of discipleship and of wisdom and of feedback, to always work on every aspect of your life, to become the type of person that attracts the kinds of victories into your life that you need. Maybe today you say, I'm never gonna this, I'm never gonna do that, I can't do this. You know, God is so involved in your life, and loves you, and is for you. We're gonna see that in the passage in Hosea where so much of the healing and goodness that you have experienced in life is from God, even though you didn't know it. And how very often we just think we did it or we just think we were lucky, but really it's God who's doing it.
Nita sang a song, "I'm not lucky, I'm loved". What a positive, good way of viewing life, that when good comes into our life, it's because God loves us. Even though, even though, even though God is for you, not against you, he's on your team, he loves you. In Hosea, which Hannah read today, Hosea is a prophetic book, it's actually a poem, most of it, and Hosea is a very sad poem, like so much of the ancient script. Hosea begins like this, he marries, and almost instantly his marriage goes wrong. His wife cheats on him, and God tells him pursue your wife and win her back, and so he does. And he pays off her debts, and then she cheats on him again.
And so he pursues her, and there's this back and forth when she cheats on him and he pursues her and pays off her debts and just keeps going after her, and it's this heartbreaking story of a man who wants to save his family. As the poem goes on then, you see that God uses this heartbreaking story to show to show the prophet Hosea, this is what my relationship is like with my people.
You know, if you can read the Old Testament in one sitting, and you can't, it would take forever, but if you could and you really watched it, one of the things you'd call, like, a motif in literature, one motif you'd see over and over is God's people are troubled, so he saves them and blesses them abundantly, and then they turn their backs on God and do horrible things to each other and to the world, and so God withdraws his blessing, and they get into trouble, and in their trouble they cry out to God, and so he rescues them and blesses them, but then when they're blessed, they turn their back on God, and it's this, like, how many times, how many times will this happen?
And I think it happens hundreds of times, over and over and over in the Bible. And this is what God's talkin' about with Hosea. God tells Hosea, "I want to bless my people, and want them to have victory. I want them to have full baskets. I want them to be healed. I want them to be full of life. But they turned their backs on me, and they neglect to the poor, and the widow, and the orphan, and they turn to Baal, they turn to idols, and they do evil things in my sight, even though I'm the one who blessed them". And he says, "There's this hypocrisy where they turn their back on the poor and those who are in need, and they worship these idols, and sacrifice human beings to them, and then they come into church, we would say church, in the synagogue or temple, and they worship, they do both". And he says, "There is no knowledge of God in the land".
Now, that phrase, which is used over and over, "There's no knowledge of God in the land," this word knowledge is yada, everybody say yada. It's different in Hebrew than it is in English. Knowledge in English is more like, you know data, you know things. Yada though is intimacy. It's the kind of friendship you have with your brother or sister, your favorite sibling or your best friend, It's the way your mom or your dad just knows you so well, or the way you know your kids so well. Yada means you really know each other super well.
When I grew up in the '80s my grandfather was the founding pastor of this church, was super famous. People knew him everywhere, most people my age have not heard of him, but when I was a kid it was like everybody, especially in Orange County, knew who he was. And I would meet super fans that could tell me so many things about my grandpa. They could say, you know, where he lived between this time and this time, and where he got his 13th honorary doctorate from, and when was the first time he said this, and they could name all of his books. They had all of these data points of knowledge I'd never heard of, and they would recite it to me. I'd go, that's great, and there's nothing wrong with that.
If you're a Dr. Schuller super fan, that's great. He deserves it, he did a lot of great things, but they didn't know him, you know what I mean? They knew him, they had the knowledge, but they didn't really know him like I knew him. If you haven't seen the man in an open robe and his underwear drinking a cup of coffee looking at the ocean as I have, the knowledge is different. I had a friend who saw one of his books for sale in a used bookstore, said, Look at this book I found from your grandpa. And I said, turn it around, look on the back. And that's me with my grandpa as a, whatever, two or three year old. Look at that smile. My grandpa's is good too.
Anyway, I remember I was fixing somethin', doin' somethin', and my grandpa goes, and he had a way of doing this sometimes to people as a growing age for him, "Bobby, get me a cup of coffee". I said, "Get it yourself, I'm workin'. What are you... get me a cup of coffee". He says, "I'm sorry, will you get me a cup of coffee please"? I was like, "All right, I'll get you some coffee, but you should do it next time. You need to work out more". And I got him some coffee, handed it to him. I was like, "Here you go, stop being snarky". It's a different thing, and that's the thing, you know, with celebrities, is people know about them, but they don't know them.
You know, Steve Jobs, our world idolizes him, they think he's this great, wonderful marketer, business manager, but you ask his older daughter, she'll say he was a horrible person. "He treated me terribly". We don't care about that, why? We didn't know him. If we knew him, we probably wouldn't like him. And I think that's one of the problems that so many people have turned their back on God. They know about him, they don't know him. They don't know God. If they knew him personally, they'd love him, they couldn't resist him. There's no one more joyful, loving, and overflowing with passion for you than God. He's the most interesting, intelligent, celebratory, mirth-filled being in the universe. There's never been anyone more creative, more full of life and love.
The Bible even says God is love. Like, if you're gonna have one word to describe him, that's it. But if you've never experienced him, if all you have is book knowledge, then you'll never really know him. And I think this is the problem, is that there's no knowledge of God in the land. There's no knowledge of God in the land. We have all our theories about God and our doctors and our theories, but do you know him? Do you wake up in the morning excited to be with him and to live in his kingdom and to know that every moment of your life, you're perfectly safe and full of his power? That he sees you and is in love with you as a good Father would be with his daughter or son. Oh, if you haven't experienced God, chase after him and get to know him. He loves you.
And that's what he says in Hosea 11 after all of this stuff. It's almost like this remorseful thing that God says in Hosea chapter 11, when he says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt I called my son. But the more they called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to Baals and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk," Ephraim is another way of saying Israel. "Taking them by the arms, but they did not realize that it was I who healed them. I led them with the cords of human kindness, with ties of love". And then it says, "They will follow the Lord. He will roar like a lion. When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west. They will come from Egypt, trembling like sparrows. From Assyria, fluttering like doves. And I will settle them in their homes, declares the Lord".
He says it's like they don't know, but they were like a child whose cheek I put to my cheek. They don't know that when they were blessed, it was I who blessed them. When they were healed, it was I who healed them. Because even when they turn away from me, I forgive them, and I love them. Can we just say that there is a great reward to God's company? There's a great reward in just doing life with God. And sometimes that reward is our daily bread. Sometimes that reward is that relationship. But always that reward is eternal living, the best kind of life we can have. God's call to us is to be his disciples, which is a fancy way of saying we become his students, that we devote our lives every day to being more and more like him.
I have a big, I've run out of time, but I've been asked this question before. Is it okay to follow God for the reward? Everybody repeat after me okay, of course. Of course, of course it is. Of course it is, why else would he tell us over and over about the reward? There's this weird Western thing where we think, well, we have to just follow God out of, you know, some abstract idea of duty or honor, and that duty, honor, those are all noble and good things, and I hope you have those virtues, but God does not ask us to follow him just because we ought to or because we should. God, and let me just say, I'm asking you to follow and commit your life to God because I love you, because I know it's the best, most joyful, amazing life you can have. That's why, the reward.
In Malachi God tells us that there is a reward for tithing. In Deuteronomy God tells us there's a great reward for those who follow the commands, and that commands means full barns, and healthy flocks, and you'll be above and not beneath, the head and not the tail. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus uses the word reward over and over. You'll get a reward, you'll get a reward, you'll get this reward, you'll get a reward, and then he finishes with, "Everyone is seeking after food and clothing and fame," and he says, "And your Heavenly Father knows you need these things, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness," that means to know him personally and to live under his care, "and all these things," everybody, say all these things, "all these things will be added to you".
It's the Word of God, it's either true or it isn't. There is a reward, and there's nothing wrong with getting up in the morning and saying, I want the reward of eternal living. I want God's reward in my life, which is a hundredfold blessing in every aspect of my life. I wanna seek out God and train to be like him, because there is a great reward. I remember I had a friend once who had a spiritual director, and he said to her, "I want to give up something for Lent, but I can't think of what to give up". And she stopped, they were walking, and she looked at him, and she said, "Give up? Why would you give up anything"? She said, "First, think of what you want to gain, and then you'll know you'll know what you need to cut loose from your life".
That's a good way of thinking about it. That's a Christian way of thinking about it. God only asks us to give up one thing in order to attain the reward of another thing, which is a thousand times better than the little thing we had to give up. So, I'll finish with this, how do we do that then? How do we change? And, of course, there's a million ways to answer this question, but when it comes to living under God's loving care, having a good relationship with God or with anybody, so the main motif in Hosea is either marriage or parenting. How do children spell love? How does your spouse spell love? In almost every case love is spelled T-I-M-E. It's the most valuable resource we have, and everyone who loves you demands it. Good, real, consistent time. T-I-M-E.
You have to give your time to God, and that is such a small price to pay, because, let me tell you, he gives you a lot of time back in return. Can we agree on that? The time we lose that we give to God is given back to us a hundredfold. The kind of love that your wife or husband wants is T-I-M-E. The kind of love that your kids want, it's T-I-M-E. Your best friend, it's time. You need to spend time with people, and time, like money, is elusive. It has a way of always getting away from us unless we are disciplined. And to be disciplined, you need ritual, ritual. Here's my ritual, some of my most important relationships, my wife is, other than God, is my most important relationship. Every Monday we have a date day.
And you know, all of my friends know trying to get ahold of Bobby or Hannah on Monday, just forget it. We're off havin' fun doing something fun. On Wednesday morning I get breakfast with my daughter every week. On Saturday I go to Disneyland with my son, and sometimes my daughter every week almost without fail. On Friday nights I spend time with my friends. Almost every Friday night, but now we're getting into almost because we're going in order of most important relationships. And on Sunday I'm here with you. And you're here, and I think that's great. And on on every morning I write down my goals and I have a cup of coffee, it's the best drink of the day, and read my Bible.
And these little rituals seem like a lot, but they're not, because I promise you, you already have other bad, a lot of us already have bad rituals in place of those. You probably do the same thing every morning when you get up, whether it's good or bad. You probably do the same thing most nights that you get home from work. It's ritualized, but you don't know it, so change the ritual and make time for God and make time for personal growth and your discipleship, and you'll just see slowly over time, like, a year or two years from now you're gonna be like, how did I get so blessed? What the heck happened? What happened?
There is a reward for those who put the Lord first in their life. There's a reward for people who emphasize their marriages, who emphasize their kids, there's a reward for that. And it is worth it, so I wanna encourage you to do that. Hey, if you're feeling beat up or you're feeling guilty or feeling shame, God is so for you. He has forgiven you. Today is a great day, a great day to make a change in your life, just a small change that you do consistently over time. Watch how everything in your life changes.
So, Lord, we come before your throne, and we just say, Father, that we love you, and we pour our hearts out to you. I pray that you would bring people into our lives that are more like who we want to be. And help us, Lord, to change by making little changes every day. Lord, we absolutely love you with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our might. And it's in the strong name of Jesus we pray. And all God's people said, amen.