United Methodist Church Westlake Village

Why Humility Is The Start Of Every Blessing

• United Methodist Church Westlake Village

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What if faith felt less like forcing outcomes and more like catching a current you can trust. We explore a vivid river metaphor for God’s presence—how we often fight upstream, stall in eddies, or even scramble onto the rocky bank for control—and what it means to reenter the flow with humility. The turning point comes through a brief, piercing parable of two prayers: a polished Pharisee satisfied with himself and a tax collector who simply asks for mercy. That contrast reframes spiritual growth, showing why honest need creates space for grace to take root and why posture matters more than polish.

From there, we connect inner posture to communal practice. Prayer becomes relationship, not performance. Giving becomes alignment, not transaction. On Pledge Sunday, we talk openly about modeling generosity without grandstanding, and how a church can drift into busy eddies—old arguments, activity without purpose, or plans made on the shore of self-reliance. We honor a rich history while naming missteps, then cast a clear vision for serving Conejo Valley with tangible care, spiritual depth, and programs that move in step with God’s direction.

Across the conversation, we keep returning to simple tests: Where am I resisting the flow. Where is my prayer honest enough to change me. What pledge, habit, or act of service would carry someone else downstream. The rapids are real—sacrifice, courage, standing up for what matters—but the current is faithful, and the journey is shared. If you’re ready to trade strain for trust and motion for meaning, press play and step into the water with us. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs encouragement, and leave a review telling us where you’ve seen the flow carry you forward.

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SPEAKER_00:

We've been talking people get ready. People get ready for a month now. And I thought it was a fun way to kind of get us uh um inspired and get us to be thinking about what uh lay ahead and what's possible and what's exciting, getting ourselves ready for all that God has uh planned for us, all the hopes God has for us. And here we are finishing kind of where we started the whole series. You know, for in a large part, it's about being in step with God. We started four weeks ago. We were talking about being ready to change. People get ready. Are we ready to change? Are we ready to be the church that God wants us to be? Because oftentimes a church, especially a healthy, or I should say a healthy, one that has a lot of people in it, it's a lot, uh it's easy to become the church you want to be. And it can be a challenge being the church that God wants you to be. Are we ready to change and be what God needs for us to be? We talked about the importance of being grateful, and we are appreciative of Pastor Lanny, who came and delivered that message a few weeks ago. We talked about the importance also of being ready to dig in. We know it's a challenge sometimes, the life of faith. It's a challenge as a church sometimes as well, being able to stand up for things, being able to do what God wants us to do, even when it is challenging. Finally, we're back to this uh this reality of where we started, recognizing that we have a need for God, that that is critical. If whatever journey we're going to be taking, we need to be taking it with God. If we are going to know the blessings that God has for us, if we're gonna know the blessings that for most of us we come here to get. So getting ready for today, my analogy switched. We've been talking trains for a while, and then all of a sudden, for this week, especially, I was remembering this river analogy. And my dad, he had about three to five analogies, metaphors he really liked that really spoke to him, and he would preach them now and again as well. And this analogy, this metaphor he would use is a river, right? Uh a river that God's presence, God's energy in this world is a lot like a river flowing, and it's flowing in a certain direction. Now we can be in all kinds of relationship with that river flow. We can be rowing upstream, we could be fighting it, deciding for ourselves that wait a minute, where God is leading, where God's energy is leading. I'm not so sure about it. I'm gonna go up this way. I know it's harder and try to work out my life's uh blessing that way. We can get into little eddies on a river. Does any has anybody done any river rafting? Right? Some of us, okay. So you know what I'm talking about. These eddies that sometimes they're good places to be because you can kind of chill for a little bit and not feel the pressure. Other times you're stuck in this eddy, which basically means you're not going anywhere, almost like a treadmill on the side of the river, and you have to work to get yourself back into where the river is actually flowing. We can be out of the river entirely, right? We don't have to use the river's flow. We can be on the outside, walking through, climbing over rocks and hills, getting through trees and bushes. We have that option. And some, in fact, sometimes it can look kind of attractive, especially if we don't, if we've lost faith in where the river is going, where God is taking us. Right? And if you know, sometimes we think, oh, you know, what God's got in mind, it's not so attractive. That place involves a lot of sacrifice, it involves a little more care for others, a little less uh care for myself and looking out for me, creating space for others. You know, it's all about everyone instead of just me. Sometimes we aren't as attracted to that. We jump out of God's river and we start kind of doing it on our own, maybe getting a little control of our lives again. But those of you who know about getting out of the water, how much more difficult the journey becomes on the side. It's much more challenging to climb over the rocks and the hills, get through the bushes and the trees of life. There's one more relationship that we can have with this river. We can be going with its flow. We can be working with it. To me, this would mean living a godly life as best that we are able. It's about being kind. It's about sharing space so others can grow. It's about sharing resources, it's about figuring out how to get, well, not necessarily getting down the river first, but being at somebody who helps other people get down that river as well. That's how I would understand kind of living in that flow, living in God's flow. It is assuming that that's the way that we want to go, that's where we want to be, but in that condition, in that space where we want to be in God's good graces, in God's blessing, available to understand what God has for us, that's usually the best way to go. Flow with God. It's not without its challenges. Running down the river, they have these things called rapids. I don't know if you've been in any of those, but they can get quite challenging as well, just as the life of faith can get difficult. Sometimes we got to stand up for things, sometimes we got to sacrifice for things as people of faith. But ultimately, that life of faith, it's really about being in that flow, trusting that it leads to the type of life that is blessed, the type of life that we come here seeking. To me, isn't that question of whether or not we're going to be in that flow a question of humility? This question of whether or not we are really humble enough to let God have that kind of control or that authority, that power. Are we really ready to trust the way God does things? Are we really ready to follow Christ? That's where our passage comes in for me at least. This passage that really is about humility. Hopefully, you were hearing it. It's a pretty short parable from Jesus, right? There's two guys, they're praying. First is the Pharisee, presumably a person of faith, a church leader, a Pharisee. And then he reads his prayer, and what you come to understand pretty quickly is he's just pretty grateful. He's not bad like all the other folks. Thank you, God, for not making me a thief or a jerk or a wiener like that guy and that guy and her over there. Weird prayer? A little bit, right? I mean, and Jesus is pointing to that, saying, okay, sometimes we pray that way. It's a a little bit of an interesting prayer that we might challenge whether there's faith there. Then the other one, a tax collector, which we should know, tax collectors in scripture, typically the villain, you know, typically the ones like, oh, you know, they're the ones in the middle. They got the Roman powers that be uh that are wanting to collect those taxes, and then you've got uh uh the people, and especially people of faith, and those tax collectors come and they're going to collect those taxes, and they're gonna a little bit in their own pocket. Oh, this is the perception of a tax collector. When Jesus uses this as an example, it's with intention, right? It is a tax collector, but this tax collector prays a different prayer. He prays a prayer asking for mercy for himself, a sinner. It's a distinction from the first one, right? And it's an interesting contrast because you want the one, the Pharisee, who kind of feels like he's not a sinner and he's grateful. You know, his sin almost becomes the arrogance to think that he's already climbed the mountain. He's not one of the bad people. And then you've got the tax collector who most likely is sinning in some way, the dishonesty, an injustice, maybe even some meanness. But there's the recognition that he is that way, the recognition not only of that, but a sinner using words of faith to talk about it not just being bad, but being against God. I think Jesus is trying to get across to us the important and the importance of our mindset. It matters what we're we're thinking. In this case, it matters even more than how you behave, because the Pharisees' behavior is probably decent. But Jesus is saying, you know what, it's more important that this tax collector gets that he needs God. He gets where his vulnerabilities are, he gets where he needs help. And in that way, he's actually in a better place. The first guy, the Pharisee, sure, he's got faith, but he's got it for a reason and not really a godly reason. It's not really to better himself or to better the world, to increase God's love in the world, God's reach in the world. It really was just to appear better to others and maybe to appear better to himself. It's a weird kind of egotism that's in play there. Then you got the tax collector who knows he needs God. It's a weird nuance between these two, isn't it? An interesting challenge. What's the difference between feeling good about oneself and being arrogant? Sometimes it's obvious arrogance versus just good self-esteem, right? They you can tell the difference pretty easily, but a lot of times it's not that easy what's going on inside. Are they being arrogant? Or is this j they're just claiming a good sense of who you are? Yep. I wonder uh we all wrestle with that, and we probably don't as clearly wrestle with what the tax collector is wrestling with. That's not the prayer we typically do. We probably more likely in our prayers identify with that Pharisee than with that tax collector because those nuances are so challenging. They're difficult. Last week at our finance town hall, I was telling our leaders, all right, friends, you don't have to tell people what you're pledging. But I'd love for you to tell people you're raising it if you are. Isn't that a weird nuance? I don't want you to be arrogant. It says in our scriptures, you should give in in uh privacy, you should give without fanfare, and yet I recognize the value of leaders showing leadership by raising pledges. That's the nuance we wrestle with. We're more likely to be this Pharisee than we are to be that tax collector, the one who sits there and says, Boy, do I need God. But Jesus knows we need to learn something here. Some of our United Methodist materials for the week are pretty good about laying it out. I think, Callie, we have it up on a slide here. They write, um, oh, that's a lot of words. We probably should do two slides next time. But here it is. If Jesus is so keen on the spirit we bring to prayer, there must be some effect that is accomplished because of that right spirit. If prayer is at its simplest a conversation with God, then the desired effect, a relationship, a life-giving, soul-sustaining, direction-giving, comfort sharing, challenge offering relationship. If that is the case, then coming to God already filled up, already righteous in our own minds, already trusting in self, provides no room for this relationship to take root, to grow. But coming to God empty and needy, it allows room for this relationship to grow and for transformation to take place. This is the humility we're being called to. It's the mindset that allows us to share God's spirit, to open our soul for God to have influence on this, to see what we need to see, to hear what we need to hear, to be able to work with God's river flow and not against it, to move be moving toward God's ultimate blessings, not away. We need this as individuals. It may be the core of why any of us is here. But we also need it as a church. Yes, there are prayers, hopefully said in humility, where we ask God's appreciation for the servant's work done well. We also, but we also need that prayer that acknowledges our frailty, our need for God should be clear to us, lest we go on this journey thinking we've got it all figured out, thinking we don't need something bigger than ourselves to work within. I've been saying, people get ready for a couple of months now, and the hope was to get us to recognize how God was already working with us. But it was also to help us realize our challenges and our frailties. The journey with God at our church has generally flowed with God's river. I've talked with people who have been here, some of them the whole 50 plus years. We know that there have been sacred times with a rich past in these walls, on this property, in the Kaneho Valley, even on mystery nights, right, Nancy? Yeah, but the mystery nights. I'm gonna be clear, I'm never going on a mystery night. I've heard enough to know I need my sleep. But there's also been times here where that journey got difficult. I'm sure there are times where we ended up in different eddies that we got ourselves lost in these eddies on the river. Arguments that weren't really necessary or relevant, programs that served the community, but maybe not God's purposes in the community. I'm sure there were times where this church tried to do it on its own, whether rowing upstream or even getting out of the river to walk in a different direction, with that sense of context. There are those here who can probably remember those times. But today on Pledge Sunday, where we consecrate our pledges for the new year, we want to make sure we are flowing with God's will. Our giving, like a prayer, is an interaction with God. We want that prayer, that gift, to be in the spirit of the river flowing. We all come here for similar reasons. We want to share life with others that share our faith. We want to be blessed by that community, that relationship. We want to be part of the blessing that God wants to offer to the world around us. We want to know the peace that comes with being in that right place in life, even when it's challenging. Your gift, your pledge should be in that flow. God's flow for your life, where you'll live into the hopes and the desires that God has for you more deeply. But we also want to be in that flow as a church. We've been feeling God's presence here. There's a joy in our fellowship, in our relationships, there is caring amongst each other as we walk the different challenges of this world, and there is ministry happening here in our midst. We are serving the community of Caneho Valley. We're growing in our spirit, and we're feeling the blessing that comes from that growth. And not only that, we have some vision. We feel like we know where God is calling us next, the way that we might reach more of God's world, more people in this valley with God's love. I hope that your gift can reflect that flow, that journey. We're talking about getting ready. People get ready. Hopefully, you're understanding that this is not a destination we're getting ready for. It is a journey. It's one we've already been on for however long. But it's also one we're kind of in the middle of getting started again, moving forward into something new, not only as this church community, but in a world that seems to be changing every single day around us. I hope you believe like I do that God is with us on that journey. And I hope that your giving can reflect your faith in that presence as well. Amen.