This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to Daily Drive Time Devotions, we're looking at the book
of Philippians together. This is our first day and looking at Philippians
chapter 2, we're going to go through that entire chapter this week, an
incredible chapter of Scripture. Philippians 2, 1-4 we're going to look at
today.

And as we start this chapter of Scripture, let me just remind you that missing
ingredients are usually disastrous. I can remember one time my mother when I was
young made a pumpkin pie and she forgot to put the sugar in. That was
disastrous, sort of tasted like a squash pie, it was terrible.

Or maybe you had bread that didn't have any yeast in it and it just didn't turn
out like it was supposed to turn out. Or have you ever been on a diet and you
could still have popcorn but you had to have it without the butter? The missing
ingredient just was disastrous.

There's an important ingredient that's all too often missing in our lives, joy.
And the results there are disastrous. Something's missing and life is just not
as sweet like that pumpkin pie or life feels flat like the bread without yeast
or life is tasteless like popcorn without butter.

When we're missing out on joy, we feel like we're lasting and not living. And we
find that we're not able to have the energy that we need for everyday life. And
every difficulty that you face seems like a Mount Everest.

That's when you know you really need joy. And Philippians tells us how joy is
released. As we've been walking through this book, we've begun to see that it
shows us how joy is released in the same places of our lives where you can find
instead discouragement.

It's the way we choose. Eight specific areas that we're looking at as we go
through this book. Last week we looked at people and problems.

You can either have discouragement there or you can have joy depending on your
choices. This week as we look at Philippians 2, we're going to look at your
potential. We're going to look at your work.

As we continue through this book, we're going to look at our accomplishments,
our future, our thoughts, our finances. All of those places are places where we
either lose joy or we find joy. For instance, last week we talked about joy with
people and joy with problems.

When it comes to people, we can let them steal joy from us or we can do what
Philippians 1 talks about. We can give thanks for them and pray for them. And
that results in joy.

When it comes to problems, I can obviously let problems steal joy from me or I
can let Philippians chapter 1 guide my way and I can begin to make choices to
see my problems as God given opportunities for growth. This week we're talking
about two other places where we can either find joy or lose joy depending on our
choices. And as we start this week, we're really starting with a little bit of a
tougher problem.

We're talking about the inside of us, the attitude of us, not the problems and
people on the outside but just in you. Sometimes you just feel dry and joyless
inside. You feel like a desert inside.

As we begin Philippians chapter 2, there's a reminder here that there's an
attitude of life when it comes to the way we look at life that is incredibly
important. And it is the attitude of humility. The attitude of humility when it
comes to the potential, the gifts, the abilities that God has given me is
incredibly important for experiencing joy.

You can have the greatest gifts in the world and have no joy. Even though
everyone around you is saying, "Wow, you're gifted, wow, you're able to do
this," but you have no joy because you're trying to just use it on yourself or
for yourself. It's humility, the ability to take whatever God has given to me
and use it, pour it out in a way that makes a difference in other people's lives
that really results in joy.

Jesus who had it all, God in human flesh, he chose humility as a pathway to joy.
These next couple of days we're going to talk about this attitude and we're
going to talk about the right foundation and the right example and the right
choices that grow out of the example of Jesus Christ. You want to have joy,
you've got to build on the right foundation.

Philippians 2, the first few verses talks about that. Philippians 2, 1 and 2
says, "If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any
comfort from his love, if any fellowship with his spirit, if any tenderness and
compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same
love, being one in spirit and purpose. " Did you notice as we walked through
that, the things that Paul says are the foundation for an attitude of humility?

He talked about encouragement, encouragement from being united with Christ. He
talked about comfort, comfort from his love, fellowship with his spirit, and
then a fourth thing, tenderness and compassion he put together. Those are the
foundation that you and I need in order to experience humility so that I can
experience joy, encouragement.

Discouraged people are rarely humble people. They are so concerned with what
they're facing that it's difficult for them to have concern about what other
people are facing. Yes, life can be discouraging sometimes.

And we go through cycles sometimes of getting discouraged and then because I'm
discouraged I get selfish and I try to make life work just on my terms. But that
just results in getting more discouraged and then maybe growing more selfish.
How do you break the cycle of discouragement?

We need an encouragement to break that cycle and the encouragement here is from
being united with Christ. It's not built on my selfishness that I'm going to
change. There's lots of kinds and types of encouragement out there.

The encouragement that results in humility comes from being united with Christ.
The encouragement that results in joy comes from being united with Christ. Paul
talks about encouragement.

He talks about comfort as being a foundation, comfort. We all need a place of
comfort inside, a place where you can sort of sit back inside and say an inner
ah. Like your favorite chair, your favorite sofa is a place of physical comfort.

We need a place of spiritual comfort, a relaxation from the worries, from the
pressures of life. Where does that kind of comfort come from? Well, Paul says
here it comes from his love.

God loves you. That's the spiritual ah. That's the spiritual comfort that I need
in order to respond to others with humility, in order to experience joy in my
life.

He talks here about a third foundation, the foundation of fellowship. Fellowship
is one person committing themselves to another person and this talks about the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit who is a person, the person of God. This is God
committing himself to our everyday help, our everyday direction by sending his
Holy Spirit into our lives.

That is a truly wonderful gift and that is a gift that builds the foundation for
humility. God's Spirit, his presence daily and then Paul talks here about
tenderness and compassion. In order to be humble, you have to know that somebody
cares about you.

Humility does not come out of a vacuum and God's tenderness and compassion says
that he cares enough to forgive us when we're wrong, when we've sinned. He cares
enough to lift us up when we fail. He cares about us when no one else cares.

A foundation of humility is recognizing in a daily way God's tenderness and his
compassion towards you, but also it comes from recognizing his tenderness and
compassion towards everyone you're going to meet today. When we shut down the
compassion, we also shut down the joy. I don't know about you, but I tend to
shut down on compassion when I'm tired and when we get so worn out that we shut
down compassion in our lives for other people, we're also shutting out joy.

Tenderness and compassion, fellowship, comfort, encouragement, those are
foundations for humility in our lives. Those all result, Paul says, in this
ability to have the same love, to be one in spirit and purpose and he says,
"That'll make my joy complete. " Now when he talks about this, he's not saying
that we agree on everything, one in spirit and purpose.

He says we agree on the most important things. We are headed in the same
direction together. You start with the right foundation and then if you're going
to have this attitude of humility about the gifts, the abilities that God has
given to you, you also have to make the right choices and it's the humble
choice, it's the choice in verses three and four.

Listen to the clarity of these verses. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or
vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of
you should look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests
of others.

Now that is pretty clear. I don't even have to say much about those verses. It
simply says, and I need to say no to some things and say yes to some things.

Say no to a couple of things, say yes to a couple of things, say no to ambition
and conceit. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Say no to
ambition, that's the what's in it for me attitude.

Ambition is a word that originally began with the meaning of to work for wages,
but it grew to mean to work only for the wages, only for what's in it for me.
And you may have taken the same journey. You began in a job, you began in a
project, you began in a relationship thinking we want to work together on this,
but now you're just working for what's for your benefit.

It's the what's in it for me mentality and there's no joy in that. Now there is
a holy kind of ambition, an ambition for the things of God. That's not what
we're talking about here.

This is the ambition that's about me. Say no to that, Paul says. And say no to
conceit, vain conceit.

Ambition is what's in it for me. Conceit is who's noticing me. I guess we'd all
agree that we want people to notice us.

In fact, I'll admit it, I want people to notice me. But the truth is, Jesus says
when your life comes down to just thinking about who's noticing me and seeing
what's going on in my life, that you're missing out on joy. In fact, remember
what Jesus said about those who do everything so that other people will He said
in the Sermon on the Mount, they've got their reward in full.

That's all they're going to get. Now how do I say no to these choices that
result in the lack of joy? The only way to do that is by saying yes to some
things.

I need to say yes to the importance of others. I need to say yes to the
interests of others. Last part of verse three and verse four, he talks about
those things.

Last part of verse three, he says, here's what you do when it comes to the
importance of others. Humility, consider others better than yourselves, more
important than yourselves. More important, really?

More important? Humility is not considering yourself most important. And it's
not considering others somewhat important.

It's considering that others are more important. That's an amazing, amazing
statement. I know some people who are pretty good, and you might be one of them,
at considering themselves as less important, at putting themselves down.

That's not what this is talking about. That's not the attitude here. This is the
attitude of considering others as more important.

That means you are important, obviously, in God's sight. They are more
important. You remember that old formula for joy?

You may have learned it in Sunday school. If you went to Sunday school, J-O-Y is
Jesus, others, and you, J-O-Y, well, it's biblical. Jesus is most important.

Others are more important. You are important. And humility isn't putting
yourself down.

It's lifting the Lord and others up. And joy comes when others are more
important. One of the reasons for that, just practical reasons for that, is when
others are more important, you don't have to have everything go right in your
life to have joy.

Just think about this with me on a practical basis. If only one person in a
small group of 10 or 12 had a great week, and you get together, you can all
rejoice in that. You can all get joy from that if you have humility.

If you don't have humility, the one person in a group who had a great week, even
though you had a bad week, can make your bad week even worse because you're
upset that they had a good week. But with humility, with looking at the
importance of others, it doesn't mean that your week always has to go like you
would like it to go in order to have joy in your life. Joy can be something
that's shared.

That's just one of the many, many ways that making others more important results
in joy. What I'm saying is this, joy is not found in keeping up with the
Joneses, it's found in rejoicing with the Joneses and rejoicing what's going on
in their life. If somebody down your block bought a new car, you can rejoice in
the fact that they bought a new car because of their importance.

And you don't have to spend the money and have the debt yourself. It's a great
thing to rejoice in what God's doing in other people's lives. Say yes to the
importance of others and also say yes to the interests of others.

It's easy to say, oh yeah, yeah, they're important. But if they're important,
that means you have to look out for their interests. Not just your interests,
but theirs also.

I love the way that Chuck Swindoll made this practical when speaking on this
passage. That means that you give somebody else the choice traffic spot. You're
driving by and you see the right spot right in front and there's somebody right
behind you and you think, you know what, I think I'll let them have this.

That means when you sit down to a great plate of steaks and you see the
juiciest, nicest looking one right on top, instead of getting your fork out
during the prayer ready to stab it and get it first, you offer it to somebody
else first. It means you hand somebody else the television remote control. Just
the little things of life are where you're able to stand up for the interests of
others.

What's the right choice? The right choice is to say no to ambition, to say no to
conceit, to say no to what's in it for me and who's noticing me, and to instead
say yes to the importance of others and the interests of others. Now if you
think that's hard to do, join the club.

I think it's hard to do too. Tomorrow as we continue through this passage, we're
going to take a look at what Jesus has to teach us about where the power to do
this comes from. But as we close today, I'd like to take a moment to pray
together about what we've talked about, about the encouragement and comfort that
God wants to give us today.

As we pray, would you just remind yourself of the truth that God has taught us?
Yes, he's told us there is encouragement from belonging to Christ. Hear his
encouragement right now.

Yes, there is comfort in his love. Let his love comfort you right now. Yes,
there is fellowship together with his spirit.

Sense the fact that he is with you right now. And yes, there is affection and
compassion from Jesus Christ. Feel his compassion for whatever you're facing
today, whatever you're facing in your life right now.

And just say to him, God, my choice is this. Am I going to allow the fact that I
belong to you to encourage me today? Will I allow your love to comfort me today?

Will I allow your spirit to strengthen my fellowship with you and with others
today? Will I allow your affection and compassion to spill over into my
affection and compassion towards others today? Lord, let your yes be met by my
yes today.

I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.