The Birth of The 4 P's

We delve into the transformative practice of humility through the Four Ps: Posture, Prayer, Position, and Pride. By examining these principles, we learn to replace pride with peace and discover a deeper connection with God.

•  Exploring the foundational role of posture in building humility 
• The power of prayer in our lives and our relationships with God 
• Trusting God with our position and circumstances 
• Realizing the sneaky influence of pride 
• A personal journey from despair to hope through the four Ps 
• Weekly Challenge: Pondering P's

Chapters

• 0:00 Living Low
• 1:14 Episode Intro
• 2:45 Be Humble Like Jesus
• 4:13 The 4 P's
• 7:47 Flashback: Humble Beginnings
• 9:24 Flashback: Beginning to Be Humbled
• 11:30 Flashback: Gun To The Head
• 12:19 Check Yourself
• 13:11 Pause for The Cause: Weekly Challenge
• 13:54 Tools for Spiritual Growth and Peace
• 14:34 Outro and Prayer

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Low Life Show, a space where we have conversations about the struggles of life, where we declare war on pride and walk humbly into renewed living with a surrendered heart. Where we take our past failures and turn them into a roadmap for you to live in peace and living the low life. Whether you're working through personal struggles or simply seeking a fresh perspective, this podcast will inspire and equip you to live low and let God lift you up. I'm your host, dl the Low Life, a reformed professional dirtbag who's here to tell you that I now live a life of peace, transformed through humility. Join me, let's get low. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Low Life Show. If you're new here, I'm DL the Low Life, and this is where we get real about what it means to live low with God, where I take lessons learned from being humbled, pair them with God's word and examples from the heroes of the Bible and walk with you through avoiding the pain and hurt pride brings. Last episode, we talked about why pride is the enemy and how humility is the key to walking in God's grace. Today, we're breaking it down even further with something I like to call the four Ps of living low Posture, prayer, position and pride. It's a daily loop of tools that I guarantee you'll end up coming back to over and over as you begin to take your life back from pride In God humbling me. Life was rough. My feelings got hurt plenty. So did my expectations. Then came that piece that makes no sense as I look back in hindsight. I was led through a process that birthed the four Ps. Throughout all of it, these are the common denominators. These are the things that changed and resulted in freedom and peace and a desire to long in his presence. So strap in and get ready. It's my hope that my experiences through being humbled will help you begin a life of active, intentional humility and avoid the hurt I went through learning them.

Speaker 1: 2:45

Let's start with an instruction from Paul about how to be humble. He points to Jesus because he's our ultimate example of living low. It says here in Philippians 2, in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant. Think about that. This is Jesus we're talking about here, the very Son of God, humble, humbling himself to serve others and doing it intentionally, actively, consistently, willingly. The Son of God, his glory, intentionally, actively, consistently and willingly. The Son of God, his glory, god Himself in the flesh of a man who chooses to be humble rather than what any one of us would probably do. Something human. If he can do that, why not us? What makes us more special than God's only begotten Son? I mean, remember he was made flesh so he felt and met every challenge we face today, and still he chose humility.

Speaker 1: 3:54

How do these Ps relate to the scripture? Let's get into that. The four P's are posture, prayer, position and pride. Posture is the first one. They all feed into each other and it becomes a loop. But you don't want to do this without starting with posture. If you start off on the wrong foot, you're destined to have the wrong result. So, when it comes to posture, humility starts with intention, your reason why, what motivates you, what pushes you? What do you see at the end and at the beginning that makes you want to do this? When it comes to serving God, do you come ready to learn, ready to serve, or are you just trying to check a box? Is it something that all the cool kids are doing? Are you looking to truly change and live to serve and honor God, or just to avoid Him having to humble you Consider these things. Are you looking for a reward or are you trying to avoid the consequences? All these things matter. Knowing God as God is the beginning of forming a proper posture.

Speaker 1: 5:04

The second piece is prayer. The act of prayer, the concept of prayer, the environment that creates prayer, the reason why you pray, even but posture informs all of these things. Prayer, though. That's where your relationship with Him begins. This tells Him that you seek Him. This tells Him that you want Him around. I mean, can you have a relationship with anyone that doesn't require communication? You have to humble yourself and open the dialogue. You have to be the one to make the first move. It's not about fancy words. It's about talking to God, being open to his correction and letting him know that you know you're nothing without him. It's seeking him as a solution for everything.

Speaker 1: 5:40

The next thing is position. When it comes to position, it's everything that you think. It is, starting with status and title to physical location, gps, global Positioning System. God places us where we need to be, even if it doesn't look like what we imagined or it's not what we want. Living low means trusting him with your position, with your status, with your title, with your class, with your placing, your environment. It means being willing to be the least and the last, even if your title says big dog. It's service to the needs of others before your own. And then, trusting and knowing that God has you, the last one's pride.

Speaker 1: 6:23

When we get here. This is when we circle back and we reevaluate our posture. We begin back in prayer, we begin back to check our position and ensure that we are trusting and knowing that we're where we need to be. Pride is the enemy, because when you start walking like this, it's not going to like the fact that you're getting rid of them, so he'll find every door to sneak back in. When you're aware and you're leaning on God, you can fight it. It's hard to self-explanatory, but in this context, this is where your challenge comes from. This evaluation of this step of the peas. This informs your strategy on how you're going to take back your life and take back your peace. Now I invite you to walk with me to the beginning. Let me take you back in time to the moment God began this work and what he walked me through to get here the birth of the four Ps.

Speaker 1: 7:47

Imagine this You're a poor in the hood, always hopeful, though Innocence Prevalent, evident. You could be without a glass and you still had a glass that was always half full, hopeful, family unit was intact, your parents loved you, you had siblings, best of buds, you had loving people around you pouring into every bit of your being. So you didn't notice the circumstance. You didn't notice that life wasn't ideal or perfect. Everything seemed like it was perfect. Rock bottom was cloud nine to you. So you took every challenge as just an opportunity to explore. You didn't have to back down because there was no confrontation in it. You were innocent. You lived a life of fortune. Things always seemed to naturally go your way, like you had the Midas touch. You could touch anything and it would turn to gold. Everywhere you went, people had something to compliment you about, it seemed, and you were easy to talk to, even when you didn't listen. And you could tell people knew it, but they never seemed to mind. They would just smile, seemed like you couldn't lose, even if you tried.

Speaker 1: 9:08

This started at an early age and grew you into a proud and arrogant person. You walked around like you ran the world. Nobody could tell you anything you didn't already know. You lacked compassion because life began to be all about people making you feel good. You were the only thing that mattered.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Then things take a turn. Death starts knocking and, one by one, the people you love the most are gone in the blink of an eye your relationships. They feel less and less valuable. Not that you valued them, but you feel less valued in that they become distant, the ones that are closest to you. They're hurt so they can't call to you, they can't comfort you, they can't tell you that life is going to be better. Every relationship seems to be fractured. Everyone is looking for guidance so that you can't get it from them. You're lost. You can't find your direction. You feel neglected, in outcasts, in exile in your own home even. And those compliments you used to get they start to be offensive. A new picture of you begins to form, because these compliments are now insults. It's like your life had been backwards the whole time. Your circle of people starts pulling back, becoming less and less dependable for your every need.

Speaker 1: 10:30

What would your next move be if you had nobody to lean on? It's not a place I would wish for anybody to be lost or confused, restless in every situation, using all the energy you have just to fight the noise that never stops in your mind. Thoughts just flow endlessly Regret, guilt, shame and then they're topped off by rage and self-blame. You say things to yourself like if only I had done this, if only I had done that, I should have been better at this, if only I could have. And then it seems like it begins to start quieting down. But that's when it's the loudest. What good are you? Why are you even alive? Do you really even matter? Nobody else will love you without strings. It's not real. You're not lovable. You don't even love yourself.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Then you find yourself with a gun to your head and every intent to pull the trigger. What would you do if, in one fell swoop, everything came crashing down? If, after a life of success and praise, you began to lose in every way possible? How would you feel? This is where I was when God began to form the low life within me Lost, ashamed, grieving, depressed, suicidal. The lowest level of rock bottom is rock bottom. It's where the four Ps were born In the midst of death, failure, loss, grief and living intentionally near suicide.

Speaker 1: 12:13

Let's take some time and have you consider your own life and your walk with God. What are your intentions? What motivates you to do kingdom work? Are you seeking blessings and rewards? Or are you seeking Him because you know that you're less and he's more? Do you know that you're small and he's all? Or do you think it's the other way around? What's your reason for whatever it is you do, and then ask yourself this In all those situations, is God consistently in view or does he somehow look like you? Now let's take our pause for the cause Weekly challenge.

Speaker 1: 13:18

This week, I challenge you to pick one of the Ps Posture, prayer position or pride, because, assuming that you're hearing this, you are already walking with God. Then spend some time with that Pondering, contemplating, thinking and inquiring of Him. Find out where you're really at and then journal it. It can look like a bunch of different things, the way that you do this. However you choose to do it. You can be writing things down, you can be talking or thinking in prayer. You can be conversing with somebody that you trust. You could even be sitting in silence waiting to hear.

Speaker 1: 13:54

I can tell you the bulk of my best prayer and analysis time comes just by sitting in contemplation. Remember one thing do not put any pressure on yourself. Let God do the work. He's the one that lifts all the heavy stuff. And remember the four Ps are a continuous cycle. It's a strategy for an ongoing, progressive work of intention. It's not a one time and it's done. It's a tool that helps me, even today, maintain God's peace.

Speaker 1: 14:24

These are weapons in the real war that we fight, the war on pride. Now that we know them, make sure you come back next week as we take a deep dive into posture and we get into our very first parable, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Now let's pray Father, we thank you for always providing a way, for always being God and for never minding getting dirty just to save us for meeting us in the middle of our mess. Continue to teach us to let go of pride and lean on you in every aspect of our lives. Bless the listener and help them take one more step closer to you this week. In Jesus' name, amen, thank you for tuning in. See you on the next one. Until then, stay low, stay blessed and stay ready for the next week's episode of the Low Life Show.

Speaker 2: 15:13

Peace, welcome to the live you're alive. Outro Music.