Welcome to Sunday Fuel! This series of questions is designed to assist your personal reflection and fellowship with others about the sermon from this past Sunday.

Go to This Sunday’s Sermon (start at 21:46)

Choose the question(s) that are most helpful for you to reflect on the message.

1. Pastor Kim observes that though we may know that humility is a good thing, we often have subtler hidden motives behind our humility that work for our gain. Looking or appearing humble can actually be a gain for us, a form of selfish ambition that Paul warns against in Phil. 2:3. Take a moment to be 100% honest with yourself: why do you want to be humble? What is the gain behind it?

2. Review Phil. 2:5-8 and take some time to meditate on Christ. Think on 

• His incarnation—that moment when He, though God, took to himself our human nature with all our limitations.
• His willingness to give up His advantages instead of capitalizing on or exploiting them for his own gain
• His refusal to keep hold of his own glory but gave up the comforts and esteem of being God
• The suffering-free life and divine privilege He relinquished in order to love broken humanity
• His willingness to be despised and rejected, to bear our sorrows and grief, and to be smitten and afflicted by God (Is. 53:2-4)
• His willingness to relinquish what is fair while accepting what is unfair to Him, so that He could love us
• How he emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant, with its weakness, suffering and sacrifice in order to serve us 
• How he bore the curse we deserved in the most humiliating way possible, that we would no longer experience being cursed by God and an eternity in hell

Let your meditations turn your heart to worship and praise to Christ.

3. If Paul’s description of Christ has a practical goal of encourage us to grow in unity through humility like Him (Phil. 2:3-4), what are some ways you can begin imitating Him?

• Is there an “advantage” you are holding on to for your own gain (even if it appears humble) or a privilege you enjoy that you can give up in order to love sacrificially? 
• What “fairness” are you willing to lay down, for the sake of serving generously, even if it is unfair to you?  
• How might you give up your glory to serve in a menial task or an unseen ministry?
• In what ways will you humbly take on suffering for the purposes of loving and serving?
• Who do you need to forgive by taking on the cost of their sin to release them from the debt you have held over them? to forgive by taking on the cost of their sin to release them from the debt you have held over them? 

4. The way down is actually the way up. Read Phil. 2:9-11 in preparation for next week’s message. How might following Christ’s example of true humility be costly for you but also better? Take time to ask for His help to keep your eyes on Him, to serve Him by serving and sacrificing for others, trusting that the cost we bear is nothing compared to the exaltation he promises in Christ.