More than Milk Hannah Rebekah

Humility is not something that's very highly valued in our world today, but it is a command of us as believers. Let's look together at how Christ is our example of humility and how we can be more like Him!
Show Notes:
Welcome back to More than Milk; I’m Hannah Rebekah. This week, we’re talking about the Facet of the Fruit of the Spirit called humility. This is not included in the list in Galatians 5, but I could argue that humility is actually the root of the whole Fruit of the Spirit. None of the qualities we’ve looked at so far can be accomplished without humility. I would also argue that pride, the opposite of humility, is the original sin and the root of all sin, but that’s a little outside the scope of what I want to talk about today.
So what is humility? In the Old Testament, most of the words used for humility either meant or carried the connotation of being low or lowly. In the New Testament, there are only three words used, and they all carry this same meaning, as well. This gives us a good starting point for what humility means. We can picture someone kneeling before a king or master. Physical positioning has always connoted rank in human society. If you are higher up physically, you’re higher up in rank, too. This is why thrones are elevated from the floor around them, why drill sergeants push into trainee’s faces and physically look down on them, and why we imagine God as physically above us, even though Heaven is not even in this dimension. To be high up is to be superior; to be low is to be inferior.
We all want to be superior. It’s ingrained in our sin nature to seek a better position, more respect, more honor, more glory. This is our pride showing up. Even those who modern psychology would say need more self-confidence are prideful. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, humility is not going around telling everyone how lowly and poor and bad-off you are. That is just seeking attention and recognition in a different way.
I am painfully aware of my own pride, which feels like both a curse and a blessing at times. I’m constantly wondering what other people are thinking of me, whether strangers or friends, and trying to do things that will increase their opinion of me. I hate it. It’s gotten a little better over the years, especially as I learned about identity in Christ, but it’s always there, lurking in the background.
I bet you can relate. What exactly we want people to think of us is different from person to person because of personality and experiences, but we all want others to think and notice certain things about us and, ultimately, to think well of us, whatever that means to each person.
Instead of this, the New Testament writers command humility of us. 1 Peter 5:5 says, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’” The word for pride here literally means “over-shine,” as if the person is calling attention to themselves more than they have the right to. The word for humility, what Peter says we are to clothe ourselves with, means “a deep sense of moral littleness.” I love that.
This means true humility comes when we recognize the perfect moral purity of God and then also recognize our own deep moral failings. When done well, this leads us into a sense of wonder at God and the grace He shows us in choosing and redeeming and using us in His righteous plans.
Philippians 2:3-11 says, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to

Unity in the church is a hot-button issue--and it should be! But how do we achieve it? Many think we should either avoid teaching or compromise on doctrines that are hard to understand, but there is a better way.
Show Notes:
Welcome back to More than Milk; I’m Hannah Rebekah. This week, we’re talking about the facet of the Fruit of the Spirit called unity. Again, this is not one of the aspects listed in the Galatians 5 passage, but we can be sure that it is a part of the Fruit of the Spirit because it is commanded by God (through Paul and others) of believers and promised through the power of the Spirit.
The idea of Christian unity comes from all over the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 1:10 says, “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.”
1 Peter 3:8, “Now finally, all of you should be like-minded and sympathetic, should love believers,  and be compassionate and humble.”
Philippians 2:2-3 "fulfill my joy by thinking the same way, having the same love, sharing the same feelings, focusing on one goal. Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves."
There are many more. The theme we can see through these verses is that of having “no divisions” and the “same mind.” Before we get into what this means, let’s look at what it does not mean.
I have observed that most Christians (maybe all), at some point relatively early in their spiritual growth, reach a point when they look around and realize that there are so many different beliefs and disagreements between those claiming the title of “Christian,” and they feel a grief about this. I think this is a good, Spirit-led grief. We should be saddened that there are so many divisions within the Church. However, I have also seen that the common, knee-jerk reaction is to want to compromise on what we believe so that everyone can be together. “Maybe if we just focus on the gospel and not all the other theological issues, we can all worship together as one and not have these divisions.”
This is a deadly dangerous response. We cannot compromise on truth for the sake of perceived unity. First of all, Paul himself says in 1 Corinthians 11:17-18 that there must be divisions, otherwise we won’t know who the true believers are. “For to begin with, I hear that when you come together as a church there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. There must, indeed, be factions among you, so that those who are approved may be recognized among you.”
Second, if we look at the history of the church, we can see that the denominations which hide the harder and more controversial truths of the faith and focus solely on the gospel and other “easy” truths are the ones that quickly slip from truth all together. The gospel is upheld by foundational truths, such as God’s total sovereignty, the trinity, the virgin birth, the total depravity of man, and so many more. Without a thorough understanding of these things, the gospel loses its power and wonder.
God is never served by watering down or avoiding truths because they are hard or divisive.
So if that’s not the path to Christian unity, what is? How do we have the “same mind” that Paul and Peter command?
I want to look at two passages more in depth.
Ephesians 4:1-8, 11-16 says, “Therefore I, the prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, accepting one another in love, diligently keeping the unity of the Spirit with the peace that binds us. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope at your calling— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
“Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of th

Thankfulness has a power to transform our attitude and outlook on life. It's no wonder scripture commands it of us! Let's look at how it is possible to be thankful even when life is hard.
Show Notes:
Welcome back to More than Milk; I’m Hannah Rebekah. Today we are talking about thankfulness, which is a part of the Fruit of the Spirit not mentioned in the Galatians 5 passage. How do we know it’s a part of the Fruit of the Spirit, then? Let’s look at Ephesians 5:18-21, “And don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless actions, but be filled by the Spirit: speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music from your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.”
Paul says here to be filled by the Spirit and then lists a bunch of things that are a result of being filled with the Spirit. This list includes singing to each other and to God, giving thanks always and for everything, and submitting to one another. Additionally, there are many commands in the New Testament to be thankful, and we know that nothing God commands us to do can be done apart from the Spirit, which also means this must be part of the Fruit of the Spirit. Romans 1:21 even goes so far as to say that a failure to express gratitude to God is a mark of an unbeliever. Clearly, we had better pay attention!
So what is thankfulness? In the New Testament, the Greek words that we translate as “thank,” “thanksgiving,” and “thankfulness” all come from the root word charis. Charis is most often translated as “grace,” and it means “favor” and has the idea of giving something away for free. The thankfulness words use this word, charis, and another Greek word that means “good” or “well.” So translated loosely, these compound words mean “good gift” or “good grace.” The idea is that God gives us gifts (life, salvation, trials, friendship, food, etc.), and we recognize those gifts as good and express that we think they’re good to God in some way. So when I drink my coffee in the morning and it just hits the spot, I can recognize coffee in general and that perfect moment specifically as good gifts from God and tell Him I appreciate them.
The bigger and more undeserved the gift, the more thankfulness abounds. Just think about your own life. When have you been given help, money, encouragement or something else that you felt like you were completely undeserving of? Didn’t your heart want to explode with thankfulness toward the giver? I remember back in September, I was packing up to move back up north after losing my job. A friend and her kids came over to help me. She packed my entire kitchen that day. I was so overwhelmed with gratitude. I had only known her for a year and had by no means earned all the things she and her family had done for me, including that day. There was no way I could ever repay her; all I could do was let her know just how grateful I was. I wished I could connect my heart to hers and show her just how much this seemingly simple act meant to me.
So if the bigger the gift and the less we deserve it, the more thankful we are, then it makes sense that God should receive more gratitude than anyone else! The Bible talks a lot about being thankful. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, “Give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6 says, “Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”
It’s one thing to say, “Be thankful for everything all the time,” but if you’re anything like me, you need specifics before that can really sink in. Here are just a few of the ways and times the Bible commands us to be thankful:
      With praise/as an act of praise (Psalm 100:4, 106:1, 107:1, 69:30, 95:2, 1 Chron 16:34) o

Everyone needs hope in order to live. When we don't have it, we give into despair. But what is it, and how do we get more of it? How is it tied to the Holy Spirit? Let's learn about it together on today's episode.
Show Notes:
Welcome back to More than Milk; I’m Hannah Rebekah. Today we are talking about hope, which is a little bit of a crazy story. If you’ve been a listener for a while, you know I haven’t released an episode since May. At the time, I was gearing up to run summer camp, and I knew there was no way to keep up with a podcast and run summer camp at the same time. My plan was to be back not long after summer camp ended. However, about the same time I was settling back into a post-summer rhythm, I was let go from my job because they could no longer afford to pay me, due to impacts from covid-19. Many of the things I had hoped for or hoped in shattered. New, desperate hopes took their place. “Please don’t make me temporarily move somewhere I don’t have a community already,” I prayed. “Please let me find another full-time job in Christian camping sooner than the almost three years it took me last time.” I moved this past Saturday back to a place where I have a strong community and at least a part-time job at a Christian camp. The following day at church, our pastor talked about hope and where it comes from and how to have more of it. When I opened my podcast document and read what I had promised the next episode would be about: hope. Then a couple days after I started working on this episode, a speaker at camp talked about the same thing! It’s like God knows what He’s doing and planned the whole thing.
As I have dived into the Bible to look up what hope is, I have found a few things. Let’s start with the original languages. In Hebrew, there are several words that are translated as “hope” in English. They fall into three categories of meaning: to wait for with expectation or confidence, to trust, and to find refuge. In Greek, there are only two words translated as “hope.” They both mean to expect, one specifically means to expect something pleasurable. If we were to take these definitions and combine them into one, all encompassing meaning, we could say that “hope” is an expectation that something good is going to happen in the future, and that gives us mental and emotional relief or refuge from the things happening between now and when that good thing happens. This idea that hope is a sustaining force is important. If I’m going through something difficult, so long as I have hope that something good will eventually happen, I can make it through the hard things.
This definition is a little different than in English but not completely. In English, there is room for hope to mean simply desire. When we say, “I hope it doesn’t rain today,” or “I hope I get that promotion,” we’re not expecting that this is the case, we are just saying that we want this to be the way things shape up. That’s not what the biblical meaning of hope is. To keep that straight, just think hope = expectation.
The opposite of hope is despair. If hope is the expectation of good things to come, despair is the expectation that only bad things will come. You could call it negative hope. Hope and despair can’t coexist. So long as there is some hope, some expectation that something good will happen sometime, there is not despair. As soon as that hope is snuffed out, though, despair takes over. Hope is sustaining, but despair kills.
Everyone can hope. You don’t have to be a Christian to have hope. All you need is an expectation of something. When I set out in the morning, I can hope (or expect) that it will be Michigan fall weather with a high of 65 degrees. I dress accordingly. However, my expectation can be wrong. I can hope in the wrong things, which leads to disappointment. Hoping in the wrong things happens for three reasons: 1) we have failed to do our research, 2) we have been deliberatel

What things are we supposed to self-controlled from? How does that work? Does God really care about all the little details of our lives, or do we just have to follow Him the the big decisions?
Show Notes:
Today we’re finishing off the Fruit of the Spirit list in Galatians 5 with self-control. The Greek word is egkrateia, and it means “dominion within.” Self-control is the idea that nothing controls us but us. In the context of the Fruit of the Spirit, however, self-control would be better translated as “Spirit-controlled.” Egkrateia has more to do with the actions we don’t take than the actions we do take, but in every respect, we are to be controlled by the Spirit. Everything we do and don’t do should be because that is what God has asked of us.
The reason we need egkrateia in the first place is because of the indwelling sin nature we all still have. Because of Adam’s sin, we have all been born into sin and are bound for hell because of it. Jesus paid the penalty for our sin on the cross and also made it possible for us to have His righteousness. This doesn’t take away the sin nature we were born with, however. It only takes away our need to obey our sin nature. We no longer have to follow it. But the pull toward sin still exists. We can all feel it. The only way to do the right thing, to do anything other than sin, is by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The indwelling sin nature usually pulls us toward things that have an immediate reward but negative lasting effects. It takes lots of different forms, everything from eating sweets we don’t need and watching too much television to extramarital sex and murder. It’s easy to think that if we’re only doing the “little things,” it doesn’t really matter. It’s easy to think that God doesn’t have a plan for our lives in the tiny, mundane things but only in the larger “more important” things. We tell ourselves that when something big comes along, we’ll follow the Spirit and make the right choices. What I think we often forget is that there are two masters in this world that we can serve: God and everything that stands against Him—which is the world, the flesh, and the devil. Every single thing we do is for one side or the other. There is no middle ground, no action that is neither good nor bad. Your choice of how you spend every minute of your free time, every penny of your money, and every ounce of your strength is either good or bad.
I think if we really get this, it should terrify us. How can we possibly know whether what we’re doing is right or wrong when it comes to small things? How can we say ‘no’ to the things of this world when the desire can be overwhelming? It’s one thing to say ‘no’ to murder. It’s quite another to deny ourselves that last brownie or extra scoop of ice cream or TV show we like to binge. The answer is egkrateia, Spirit-control. The Holy Spirit lives in us. He is what changes us to be more like Christ. He is what gives us wisdom in our decisions, pricks our conscience, and gives us the strength to say no to sin and yes to righteousness.
We know non-believers don’t have self-control in the same way that believers can have it, but they do have some kind of self-control. What’s the difference? If non-believers are always fulfilling their own wants and desires, how is it that they can also say ‘no’ to their wants and desires? This is a very good question, and I think answering it will help to distinguish Spirit-control from self-control. Self-control is still always about what we want, but it values future gains over present ones. I want to have my weight under control. In order to do that, I have to eat well, exercise, etc. I also want to buy and eat that cheesecake in the store. Which want is greater? Which goal can I visualize more clearly in the moment? If the smoothness of the cheesecake in my mouth is a greater pull than being healthy, I’ll buy the cheesecake. On the other hand, if I

Facets of Fruit: Gentleness
Gentleness is power with reserve. Find out why there's no weakness in Spirit-given gentleness and why and how you should practice this facet of fruit in your life.
Show Notes:
Welcome back to More than Milk; I’m Hannah Rebekah.
It’s been two weeks, and I’ve managed to produce a new podcast! Hooray for being productive and timely! Today we’re talking about the facet of the Fruit of the Spirit known as gentleness or meekness. The Greek word here is prautés, which means gentle strength or power with reserve and gentleness. I remember one year at summer camp a chapel speaker was talking through the beatitudes and called meekness “strength under control.”
I think it’s easy to equate meekness or gentleness with weakness, especially in certain contexts. But the heart of prautés is power, not weakness. It’s all about how you use that power than matters. When you’re handling a newborn baby, you use a lot of gentleness—not because you aren’t capable of more but because gentleness is what’s required. We would never think positively about someone who manhandles a baby just to show off how strong he is. At the same time, there’s something very touching about a man with bulging muscles holding a tiny child so tenderly—and no one would dare call him weak!
Handling babies is a good picture of what gentleness means, but it’s not the only place this facet of the Fruit of the Spirit is called for. In fact, we are always to have this quality. Anytime there is power to be had, it can be under control. We all know what the opposite of this looks like. It’s the proud and arrogant coworker who talks down to everyone and will do anything to get ahead. It’s the older sibling who uses their position to make their brother or sister work so they can do nothing. This “unnecessary roughness” is very common.
I used to do a positive peer, anti-bullying program at the local school with the staff of the camp I worked for. We would go into the middle school and work with the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades individually, for a half day each. Every year, we would ask the 7th graders how the 8th grade class had treated them, and every year, the answer was not great; they were abusing their power. We would also ask the 7th graders if they would break the cycle the next year. You could see the people who really thought hard about this, but there were always kids who yelled audibly that they were going to do the same things and enjoy being on top while they had the chance.
Breaking that cycle is difficult, because we’ve all been hurt. We’ve all had people who used their power to gain the upper hand, and we’ve all thought to ourselves at one point or another, ‘Wait until I am in that position; I’ll show them. No one will treat me like this anymore.’ And then when we do move up the ladder, to prove to ourselves and others that we are powerful, we do the very same behaviors that we used to hate.
To avoid this, we need meekness and gentleness. God has given all of us a measure of power, some greater and some lesser. He expects all of us to use that power not to build ourselves up and make ourselves look good but for the good of those around us. True gentleness can only come from the Holy Spirit because it requires that we first understand that God is taking care of us. Only then can we use the power He’s given us to better those around us. Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” That’s the heart of gentleness.
So how do we cultivate this facet of fruit in our lives? As always, step one is pray. We need the power of God to look outside of ourselves and see how we can use the power God has given us to benefit others. Step two is continually be growing in the knowledge of who you are in Ch