Tag: Leverage

How Many Times?

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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. 

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Redemption Is the Goal

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As we come to the third part of our series, Leverage, this week and next we are going to explore a couple of very specific examples from Jesus on what leveraging our resources for the sake of those around us can look like. This first one takes the form of a passage that is used to talk about a whole bunch of other things including church discipline. But the often-missed heart of the passage falls right in line with what we have been talking about this entire time. Let’s talk about sin, relationships, and God’s preference for redemption.

Redemption Is the Goal

I grew up as the older sibling. When you are the older sibling, sometimes you might occasionally do something to cause injury to your younger siblings. Of course, the whole thing is totally their fault, and they have it coming. But the injury occurs nonetheless. The trouble with injuring younger siblings is that your parents don’t always see the absolute justification you had in your actions. Or, they can’t understand that it was totally an accident. You didn’t plan for him to run into your fist at the precise moment you swung it forward, it just happened that way. It could have happened to anybody. The universe acts in strange ways sometimes. It was an honest mistake. 

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Lost and Found

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This week as we continue in our series, Leverage, we are talking about the why behind Jesus’ call for us to use our resources for the sake of those around us. Through a story about a shepherd with a lost sheep, Jesus helps us see that the why here is intimately connected to the character of our God. Let’s dig into this vital truth together.

Lost and Found

I lost a sock in the wash the other day. I finally found it Wednesday night. The first thing I exclaimed when I did, though, was, “Oh great, now this will mess up my illustration for Sunday.” For a full two weeks there, though, if you were to go and open my sock drawer, you would have found one sock neatly folded and lying on top of the rest of the rolled pairs underneath it. I’ve lost socks before, but they usually turned up faster than this one. As it turns out, it got stuck in the arm of my light jacket. Since the last time I wore and washed it, though, it got cold and it just sat in our coat closet with the sock sitting in its sleeve until I put it on Wednesday and made my happy discovery. I’ll confess, though, as much as that one, lone sock lying on the top of the pile bothered me every single time I opened my sock drawer, I didn’t invest much time searching for its sole mate. It was just a sock after all. If I didn’t ever find the match, I would have eventually thrown it away (at which point, of course, I would have immediately discovered the other one). I have other pairs. And, when those wear out, I’ll just buy a new pack. I actually look forward to doing that every few years. There aren’t very many things that feel better than a brand-new pair of socks. 

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How to Be Great

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Today we are kicking off a brand-new teaching series called, Leverage. Over the next four weeks we are going to be working through Matthew 18 where we find Jesus giving a lot of focused attention to how life in the kingdom of God should work. He starts here at the beginning of the chapter with a discussion on what it looks like to be great in the ways that matter most. Let’s tune in together and see what He has to say.

How to Be Great

How do you move something heavy? Well, nowadays, if it’s big enough, you get a big piece of machinery and use that. For smaller things that don’t merit heavy equipment, you call some friends to help. A couple of years ago we got a new TV stand from Sam’s. Seeing it in the context of the enormous store did not give me a proper appreciation for how big it really was. After we bought it, I drove the family home so I could drive back to Sam’s with all of the seats down in the van and pick it up. I should have known what I was really in for when they loaded it into the van directly off of the forklift they were using to carry it…so that they didn’t have to carry it. It fit…barely. Once I got it home, and went around to the back and started pulling at the box to get a sense of what I was in for. I couldn’t budge it. So, I got on the phone and called TJ and Kevin who, much to their credit but as no surprise at all, came right over to help. The three of us did a further assessment of the box. Then they each got on the phone to call for more backup. I think we finally managed to get it into the house with four of us working together with lots of grunting and sweating. I don’t think it has moved much from the place we set it down since that day. 

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