STAYING HUMBLE Philip Anthony Mitchell

[00:00:00]How are you able to just to be real?

[00:00:05]Like how do you keep your pride in check?

[00:00:08]>> I remember um when our church had grew to maybe about like 2,000 and somebody I don't really check attendance reports. I don't check finance reports. Although maybe I should, maybe that makes me a bad pastor. Um but I don't I don't check attendance reports or financial reports.

[00:00:24]I remember the day one of our staffers brought me an attendance report and said, "Hey, you know, we had 2,000 people plus in our gatherings today."

[00:00:34]And I remember going home that day and I was feeling something in myself. I was feeling myself just a little bit like, "Wow, there 2,000 people in church."

[00:00:44]Pride crept up in my heart. And I remember telling my wife, I got to go deal with this.

[00:00:50]>> And I got a legal pad, a Bible, and two jugs of water. And I left rented a hotel for a week and I spent a week alone with the Lord fasting and praying. I had to work that sin out of my heart.

[00:00:59]>> Yeah.

[00:01:00]>> And uh I really had to make a decision in myself. I had to redefine what success is for me and what my highest reward is going to be. And I think it was the redefining in that moment of what success is for me and what my highest reward is going to be helps to keep me >> sane. And that for me I I redefine success for me not as numbers or finances or attendance or anything.

[00:01:26]Success for me I had to redefine in second Timothy 4 when the Apostle Paul in his his dying moments the last thing he ever wrote before he was executed. He wrote to a young pastor named Timothy who was a pastor of a church in Ephesus.

[00:01:40]He wrote to him. said, "I fought the good fight.

[00:01:48]I kept the faith. I finished my race.

[00:01:54]And now there's laid up for me a crown that the Lord will give me on that day."

[00:02:01]And I sat with that text for a very long time.

[00:02:05]And I said to myself, that's going to be my highest reward. My highest reward is going to be the crown I lay down at the feet of the savior.

[00:02:17]It's a reward outside of this life. So none of this will feel like the reward.

[00:02:22]And then success will be did I finish my race, not another man's race.

[00:02:29]>> Did I keep the faith? Um >> was I faithful all the way to the end?

[00:02:38]Um, a lot of people start well, but they don't finish well. I want to finish well. So, if I can if I can say that with the Apostle Paul in the end and if I can make it to glory and lay down my crown, that for me, it will be my highest reward.