sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 04/14/2013
video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard/ondemand
Starting a new series today on living outward focused lives. Lives that make a difference in the lives of others. Lives that are faithful to the image of the loving God in which we are created. Lives that aren’t shrink-wrapped up in our petty concerns about ourselves, but large, expanding lives that are unafraid and generously powerful.
We’ve all got limited time, energy, and resources, don’t we? So how are we going to spend them? Should we look out for number 1, get as much as we can for ourselves, guard and defend what we have? Or should we look out for others, fearlessly spending ourselves for the sake of others that we want to help succeed? It’s an age old dilemma. And both recent research and ancient wisdom are suggesting that the story is far more interesting and beautiful than we might have ever expected.
A couple of quotes that illustrate conventional wisdom on the subject…
Take a look at them. They’re all nice guys, but they’ll finish last. Nice guys. Finish last.
Leo Durocher
The principle of give and take; that is diplomacy – give one and take ten.
Mark Twain
In “Give and Take,” Wharton Business School professor Adam Grant writes about three different ways of approaching life. Givers, Takers, and Matchers.
Takers like to get more than they give, he writes. They believe the world is a competitive, dog eat dog world. They are self-focused, evaluating what others can give them. They help whenever the benefits to them exceed their personal costs.
Givers, on the other hand, are other-focused, paying more attention to what others need from them. Givers help others whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs. They may even help without expecting anything in return at all.
Matchers are somewhere in between givers and takers. Matchers aim for an equal balance of giving and getting, operating on a principle of fairness.
Who do you think ends up at the bottom of the success ladder?
It’s givers.
The lowest rated engineers – the ones with the least number of tasks completed, technical reports, drawings submitted, and the ones with the most errors made, deadlines missed, and money wasted – were givers. Helping others, it seems, prevented them from getting their own work done.
The students with the lowest grades in medical school? Givers.
The salespeople with 2 ½ times less annual sales revenue than average? Givers.
So who do you think comes out at the top of the success ladder? Takers or Matchers?
Neither. Surprisingly, it’s givers there too.
The best engineers? Givers.
The medical students with the highest grades? Givers.
The top performing sales people? Givers. Averaging 50% more annual revenue than takers and matchers.
On any particular morning, Grant writes, giving may well be incompatible with success. In purely zero-sum situations and win-lose interactions, giving rarely pays off.
But, if we stretch the time horizons out long enough, if we take the long view, giving can be every bit as powerful as it might be dangerous. In fact, research suggests that over time, the giver advantage only grows.
Maybe we should listen to another famous quote on the subject, one that takes the opposite view of Mark Twain’s earlier quote:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
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…
Paul (formerly Saul) of Tarsus
from Philippians 2:1-11
At first this might strike us as inside out, and upside down. Value others above ourselves? Look not to our own interests, but to the interests of others? But how many of us heard my first report about how badly givers did in terms of success, and thought, shoot, I knew that’s how it would be, but a part of me hoped maybe it wouldn’t be. And how many of us heard about the fact that giving actually characterized some of the most successful people in the world and thought, yes! Man, I hope that’s really true. I hope that tells a true story about how our world works.
Because when it gets down to it, that’s the big question, isn’t it? What kind of universe do we live in?
Something in us wants to believe the good news, I think. Something in us wants to believe that, in the long run, the universe isn’t a zero-sum universe. That in the long run, there is a Good God who has created a world that’s full of those kinds of surprises. Who has created a world that’s better than we expected, better even than our limited experiences may have revealed to us. A Good God who shows us a way to be fully human that’s also got the breath of the divine in it, and that that breath is sweet, not rancid. A way to be human that’s filled with love, and that in the end, triumphs over everything less than love.
Because when it gets down to it, that’s what we’re trying to figure out, isn’t it? What’s the best way to live?
Story of politician who went by the name Sampson, from Illinois…
Grew up working on a farm. At 23, ran for state legislature, and failed, finishing 8th. Started a business with a friend, the business went under, and his possessions were seized because he couldn’t pay back the loan. His partner died, and he took on his debt too, 15 times his annual income. Finally made it to state legislature, worked his way through law school, paid off his debt, and made a bid for senate. Hours before the election, he realized he was likely to lose to an opponent he really disliked. Matteson, this disliked opponent had 44% of the vote locked up. Sampson shared much in common, however, with his other opponent, Trumbull. Trumbull, though, had only 9% of the vote in his corner. Sampson himself had 38%. Instead of trying to win over Trumbull’s supporters, Sampson told all of his own supporters to vote for Trumbull. His campaign manager vehemently resisted, and broke down in tears when Sampson wouldn’t change course. Trumbull, of course, won. Sampson lost his next two bids at Senate as well. One of his rivals said that he came “very near to being a perfect man…he lacks but one thing.” He said Sampson couldn’t be trusted with power because his judgment was too easily clouded by concern for others. Sampson was a giver, and like so many others, at the bottom of the ladder.
However. Sampson, on his third try, finally won national office. In part due to the support of people like Trumbull who had defeated him in the past, because of their great respect and admiration for him and his giving nature.
Years later, C-Span did a poll of 1000 of their most knowledgeable viewers. They ranked the effectiveness of Sampson and three dozen other politicians who competed for similar offices. Sampson came out at the very top, with the highest evaluations. Even with all of his losses, he was more popular than every other politician – perhaps more popular than any politician ever. Of course, Sampson wasn’t his real name – Sampson’s Ghost was a pen name he used in letters.
His real name was Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln understood what Paul was talking about. He understood what it meant to value others above oneself, what it meant to look to the interests of others. And as a result, he was able to be instrumental in some of the most significant shifts for the good our nation has ever known.
Part of the dynamic that seems to be at work is this. If you’re a taker, every time you win, someone else loses. And that generates a lot of ill-will over time, ill-will that may come back to bite you. But if you’re a giver, every time you win, someone else wins too. And that generates a lot of good-will over time, good-will that, very often, will end up producing multiplying benefits.
But there’s even more to it than that, I think.
Paul is saying to us in this passage that Jesus is showing a new way to live. That Jesus is showing us a way to life that doesn’t just depend on trusting some research or a principle of reciprocity, but trusts in the living God. Paul is saying, essentially, that God himself is this way, and that if we conform ourselves to God’s pattern of living, modeling our lives on the life of God reveals in Jesus, then we’ll have the power that created the universe and raised Jesus from the dead coursing through our lives, and by extension, through our world. And that pattern of living is a life we might call an outward-focused life.
One of the reasons Jesus is so attractive to so many people is that his life, at core, is different than everyone else’s. Where everyone else lives for themselves, Jesus lives for others. Where everyone else looks to their own feelings for direction, Jesus looks to YHWH, to his Father in the heavens, to God. Where everyone else uses their strengths to get a leg up and put others down, Jesus uses his strength to carry the lowly and downtrodden to higher ground – to become, in fact, that ground itself.
If you are a follower of Jesus, you had better be prepared to have your life similarly turned inside out and upside down. To have your life’s focus from inward, to outward.
Consider how life starts out for us. Focused on getting what we want and directed primarily by our feelings. And often that’s where we stay. Almost as if we get stuck developmentally at 2 years old. [Babies at first not being able to distinguish between themselves and the world around them, thinking their parents are an extension of themselves, then becoming aware of others primarily as means to various ends; the blossoming of the will and experience of conflict, hyper-responsiveness to emotions. What I want trumps every other want, and what I feel is the only feeling that matters]
Although we may learn to play the game in more socially acceptable ways, what we want remains our focus and how we feel remains our compass. (Selfish ambition and vain conceit…) Our minds and bodies become creative servants of those ends, our social relationships exist to support and nourish those driving agents in our lives, and our souls dry up. [I’ll play nice if it helps me get what I want, but heaven help you if you let me down. Or if I start to feel anxious. Or taken advantage of… mortgage broker example.]
Jesus meets us in this state, and calls us to follow him into maturity as human beings (in humility value others above yourselves…have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had…) He calls us, and teaches us, and empowers us to join him in living outward focused lives. Lives that make a difference. Lives that are faithful to the image of the loving God in which we are created. Lives that aren’t shrink-wrapped up in our petty concerns about ourselves, but large, expanding lives that are unafraid and generously powerful.
There are people sitting next to you living those kinds of lives in response to Jesus. They may work in the same kind of job and come from the same background and put their pants on one leg at a time like you do, but the thing that drives them is their love for God and for others. From time to time it’s almost as if they forget about what they want for themselves because all they care about is love taking more ground. As if they forget about how they feel at any given moment, because they are preoccupied with how others feel, or because they’re overwhelmed by how God feels towards someone else.
The biggest charge they get in life is not their paycheck or their power or their accolades. It’s packing groceries for the needy, or mentoring a younger person, or having the opportunity to surprise someone with a generous and unexpected financial gift, or teaching a child the love of God, or mowing the lawn of their aging neighbor, or caring for the people in their small group, or speaking timely words of hope to a discouraged friend, or visiting the sick in the hospital, or praying for strangers in trouble.
They are living lives that cannot be extinguished but thrive for eternity. Lives that multiply, not divide. Lives that heal, not hurt. Lives that are free not trapped. Lives that are full of life and spilling over.
So what exactly is an Outward Focused Life?
A life pointed towards others and looking to God.
A life characterized by humility, compassion, and expectation.
A life empowered by the Holy Spirit.
We’ll unpack what it means to live outward focused lives over the next few weeks, but today, I simply want to encourage you to consider making a settled decision to imitate the attitude of Jesus.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
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…
Are you going to look at your time, energy, gifts, skills, resources, etc. as things to be guarded and used for your own benefit, to be used for your advantage? Or are you going to take on the nature of a servant, looking at all of your time, energy, gifts, skills, resources, etc. as something you steward for the sake of others, trusting God to be using his time, energy, gifts, skills, resources, etc. to care for you?
Practical Suggestions:
1. Give Giving a Chance. Find one opportunity a day to do something for someone else not because it will benefit you, but because the pay-off for the other person outweighs the effort you’ll put into it.
2. Give Someone a Second Look. For one day, make a note of everyone you think about who you think of as less than you. Someone you don’t have respect for, or see as a threat, or a competitor, or that you just don’t care about, or for, for one reason or another. At the end of the day, go through the list and ask God to show you what their interests might be, what they might need or desire in life.
3. Take a Knee. Take the opportunity to repent, if necessary. Have you been doing things out of selfish ambition or vain conceit? Tell God you’re sorry, and that you recognize it’s not helping you or the world or him. Make a settled decision to change, whatever it takes.
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