This week we are wrapping up our series, Leverage. For the past few weeks, we have been working through Jesus’ response to the disciples’ question about greatness in the kingdom of heaven. The short version is that if we want to be great in God’s kingdom, we have to follow His example of leveraging our resources for the sake of the people around us. Last time we looked with Jesus at a very specific example of how this can work in practice. We learned that when we leverage our resources for those who have hurt us, redemption is always the goal. But what if redemption doesn’t happen? What then? That’s what we’re talking about today. Let’s dig in to this together.
How Many Times?
Last week we talked about the fact that when someone hurts us we gain a kind of power over them. I want you to think for a second this morning about a time when you were hurt by someone else. I don’t just mean a little hurt either. I’m talking about a big, bad, ugly hurt; a hurt that was soul deep; a hurt that you carried with you for a long, long time…maybe you are still carrying it today. What did you do with all of that power? If you’re like most people, you probably didn’t do anything particularly productive with it. Maybe you made the other person pay relationally, especially when they reached the point of realizing their sin and seeking to repent of it. Maybe you’re still making them pay. How’s that working for you? Perhaps you used your power to build yourself some armor. This kind of armor can take a lot of different forms. Sometimes it is a prickly personality. Others, it is a refusal to let anyone get close. Armor like this makes us strong. It protects us from getting hurt again. But it also makes us lonely because it doesn’t let anyone really get close. It could be that you used your power to hurt someone else so you knew you weren’t the only one hurting. You wouldn’t have admitted that in the moment, and you may not have even realized it, but it was there all the same. There are all kinds of different things we can do with the relational and emotional power we gain over another person when they hurt us. What we should do with it is another matter.
Read the rest…
The Nexus 