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The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast - Jesus' Four Great Reversals · CLA+

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, my name is Pete Scuzzaro.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want to welcome you again today to the Emotionally Healthy Leader podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Our topic today is Jesus for Great Reversals.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus for Great Reversals to part three of our series coming out of the Emotionally Healthy Success Book.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this podcast is meant to supplement your reading of the book.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I trust, I really, my prayer is not just that you'll read the book, but that you'll actually do it, that we'll do it as churches around the world and thus, by the grace of God, uh make a much larger impact for the kingdom of God and his glory.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a set of uh discussion, there's a discussion guide available on our website if you go to emotionallyhealthy.org slash success.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And with your team, uh, you can do uh three one hour discussions on the core portions of the book and begin to actually integrate what's it going to mean for us to actually begin to apply this and live this out personally and in our ministries.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's emotionallyhealthy.org slash success.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: So so far, we've looked at the lies we call success and the wreckage of a wrong scorecard.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we've looked at the kind of the problem with a wrong measurement of success.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but today we're going to make a movement into uh how Jesus turned success on its head.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of my great surprises uh as I began to just study Jesus uh around the area of success was this was such a core issue for him as he was redefining it for the Greco-Roman culture of his day and the religious leaders uh that had been functioning for uh literally thousands of years.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he was constantly redefining it, constantly clashing with them.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I ended up calling it he's he's doing reversals.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what's so stunning to me was so stunning to me was these reversals didn't just apply to him, but they actually apply to all cultures across time, even here in the 21st century.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I I had copious notes, massive notes, uh, and uh I actually could have chosen a dozen different reversals.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I had them all there, and I realized that word reversals was such a good word uh because they each ran across the worldly way of doing leadership.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I could have chose things like, you know, from from ascending to descending, you know, from from the way up is down.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I could have chose the reversal from hurrying to actually present to loving people.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I could have chose doing for God, from doing to God to being with God, you know, Mary Martha, that whole thrust.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And or I could have moved from from performance, reversal of from performance to actually living out of his belovedness.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Again, all valid.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I could have chose moving from being admired by others, from reputation to hiddenness.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: That was another option, or from control to surrender, or actually from clinging to life to losing it uh or surrendering it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or I could have chosen from judgment to mercy, from from judging and not loving, from having opinions to actually loving and being merciful.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or I could have chosen from the center, Jesus movement from the center to the margins and how he moved to the Samaritans, the Gentiles, the uh the outcasts, the lepers, the blind.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I chose these four.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I really chose them very intentionally, and I chose four for two big reasons.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that these four are load-bearing, I'm gonna call them.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: They they are like structural beings to hold a whole building together.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the first talks about how I pray, moving from re praying for results to communion.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: That in other words, it has to do with our relationship with God and how we relate to Him.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the first one.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big loading, um, load-bearing wall.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: The second was how I lead, moving from charisma to weakness and limits.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's for prayer and then relationship, and then actually my leadership.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third actually is how I make decisions, moving from my you know, best thoughts and strategies to actually discerning.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, wow.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then the fourth actually is how I how I do mission and moving from critical mass to critical yeast.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you cover these four, I realize if I get these four, uh, they actually end up holding all the other ones together.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a second reason, not just because of their centrality and how they touched every aspect of leadership, but it was my own personal conversions over many years.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, these were four fundamental conversions that I had to undergo myself.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: They were, they weren't immediate, they weren't, but they were deep, they were profound, they were in every case uh paradigm shifting, they were uh uh painful, uh, and they required a whole new way of learning.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh because I was taught a standard way of leading, I'll just call it, uh, in my own formation in my early years.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was in my bones.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had these had they, those bones had to get broken and reset.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they were each a conversion because uh it was, it was, it was such a gap in my discipleship and leadership formation that uh, and what I seen modeled, again, it was in my bones, much like a genegram.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and so, for example, for 17 years as a Christian, uh, I was taught, you know, you pray to to break through, you know, to get God to move, that he doesn't move except we we pray.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that was in my, that was just the way we did things.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and so it became a burden to me, of course.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: But again, early mornings, late night prayer meetings.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: But to be able to let go and trust God, that the core is, again, learning from Jesus is was communion, being with him, out of which mission flows or my ministry flowed, that was radical.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a major shift.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh even even moving from my best ideas or best strategies, because I was at some, I was around some amazing leaders who were brilliant strategists.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'd seen some and been with amazing strategic planners uh who could really paint scenarios and create options and opportunities.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then to move to a place of, no, the most important thing is discerning and listening to Jesus.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh whether it appears like a great opportunity or not, that was that was that was major.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: That was a shift.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then I had to go on a whole learning uh shift.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: But it was so freeing.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of these reversals was so freeing personally, such a uh letting go of so much anxieties that I was carrying needlessly.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but then there's one more thing.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I just want to mention, I I don't, I would not say that uh praying for results and relying on charisma and you know our best ideas and critical mass, I wouldn't call them sins.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's motivations and all that.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: I I I just wouldn't I just consider them the dominant paradigm of what's considered successful Western uh leadership today.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that model lives inside of us.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're surrounded by it.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and so uh again, I I've taught each of these reversals uh in uh gave an episode to each of these reversals in in other podcasts.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you can go back and listen to them.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: But in this podcast, I want to stand above them and I want to show the pattern they make together.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'll touch and explain on each one briefly, but there's a pattern there, there's a wholeness to them uh there.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, but because there's one great enemy beneath all of them.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's what unites them both.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that reversal is a turn away from what's considered a successful, and I'll call it Western model that dominates today.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it actually very often, not always, but very often, runs on a false self and it feeds the wrong things in us, and we've got to then battle against that.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it these are these are uh in some ways that the the ways things we're moving away from, there are things the world applauds and admires.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I like to say that we're we're underformed.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've been formed, but underformed.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's gaps in our formation.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in some ways, these four reversals are prophetic for us today because they so speak to us.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: They were prophetic in the first century.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, yes, they're devotional.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: But again, we want to see the practical working out of these.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we will in the following podcasts when we talk about Jesus' new scorecard for success, and we get into that in the next couple of podcasts.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take each one um one by one, and then we'll talk about again the pattern as we close it up here.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so the first reversal uh of Jesus' great reversals is moving from prayer for results to prayer for communion.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about how we relate to God.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And again, where I began in my early formation for 17 years was everything rises and falls on intercession.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if revival isn't happening, it's because you're not praying uh enough.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't paid a price, you haven't prayed hard enough.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and so thus I was I I was so committed to prayer.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Early morning prayers, Friday nights, half nights of prayers uh every month.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there was growth, and but it was slow, but it was painful.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and prayer moved into more of a duty than a delight for me.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh it was so embedded in me, I knew something wasn't right uh with it, but I could not put my finger on it.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: It just seemed like a terrible something was was too something was wrong with it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: But two things moved me.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, first was uh exposure to monks, to the monastic movements of the world and and visiting monasteries, and seeing the great emphasis on being with God and communion with God and the daily office in particular, uh being a thrust of first being with God out of which intercession happens.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that there's not intercession, there's a place for it, but it flows out of a deep place of communion with God.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: But then the second uh big revolution for me was a deep dive into the prayer life of Jesus.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look just, for example, in the book of Luke, you will see you could call Jesus the praying Messiah.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's praying for us on earth, he's praying, uh, and then on it on he's ascended into the right hand of the Father, and he's forever interceding for us, Romans chapter 8.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so these this really shaped mine and shaped my prayers.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and three things about Jesus' prayer life, again, in particular, impacted me.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: The first was his his his core prayer life was about communion with the father.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he never is he's I I never do anything except the father uh tells me.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I only do what I see the father doing.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and we see it so clearly at his baptism, he's been alive for almost 30 years.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's not, quote, done anything uh to get the father's love, but he is uh at his baptism, he receives the father's love.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: The father speaks, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he lives in that place of belovedness uh and he is uh he's being delighted in.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh behold the one uh beholding us and smiles, and he receives that love, joy of the father.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: He lives in that place of communion, being with the father.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when we but that's very unnatural to us.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Being loved uh by God, period, irrespective of our performance, doesn't come naturally to us.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not the way the world works.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Our culture wires us, it trains us to measure our worth by what have we accomplished and produced.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And being so being long in communion with the Father in prayer can seem like a waste of time, uh, too extravagant.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it can even feel irresponsible.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And for years, I told myself, I I love being with you, Jesus.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I uh but I'll I got so much to do for you, I'll get to it later.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh, as you know, the hurry and demands the later doesn't come.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus shows us that receive communing with the Father and receiving his love is not a luxury.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: It actually is the work itself.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the work from which all other work for him flows.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: That was a huge turning point for me.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and I also realized Jesus, though, in that place of prayer with the Father is where he got clarity and direction uh for what he was supposed to do next.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we always see him, we we consistently see in the gospels Jesus withdrawing from the crowds at decisive moments to be with the Father, whether it's from the revival in Capernaum, uh in Mark chapter one, where he goes to a lonely place and prays, and he gets the discernment that he is not to stay in this revival move of God happening in Capernaum, but he is to move on to other cities also.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's an itinerant preacher.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or what is choosing the twelve disciples in Luke chapter six, he prays all night.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And out of the, I imagine, thousands of disciples that at that point, he chooses these twelve.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and even places like the Garden of Gethsemane, uh, where he is uh he is praying and he gets clarity and and and uh to you know to go to the cross.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and then then the third thing that happens out of his out of this prayer life is he power comes out of him.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Out of this place of of communion is power.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And not that he's he he angels come and minister him.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about that.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it speaks of 40 days in the wilderness, he comes out of that, and it and the power of the spirit is now upon him.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, an angel strengthens him in Gethsemane.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but it's it's not so much we're getting power to have anointing flow out of us, which is all good, but it's actually power to obey him and to wait on him and to do his will even when it's difficult.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it just kind of reframed for me the parable of persistent widow in Luke chapter 11 is that yeah, there's a place, there's intercession, it's important.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I do intercede for people and situations, but it flows out of a place of deep communion.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm interceding for actually what's on the Father's heart, uh, not so much my best ideas.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a whole nother uh area I wanted to go into in this Jesus' prayer life, but I it was, it would have, it would have required this segment alone to be its own chapter in the book.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just how Jesus, his prayer life of communion, was the place out of which he knew when it was timing to bring to the 12 disciples uh certain truths, for example, when he would reveal to them about the crucifixion and resurrection.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look closely, it comes out of a place of prayer.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And even prayer was the place he would pray and they would get revelation after he comes to a place of prayer.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that in multiple places in the gospel of Luke in particular, but that's another story.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and so prayer is a place of that the people we're leading get revelation.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Fascinating, isn't it?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: So again, we don't pray to brainstorm.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we don't pray to generate our best ideas, although it may happen.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: We pray to lay down our agendas and receive actually God's direction.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And prayer is where we let go of our best strategies and actually surrender our will to what God wants to do, even if it may not be our own will.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, prayer is the place where God gets his will done in us and then through us to the world around us.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome, isn't it?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Which leads to reversal number two.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we move, the second great reversal of Jesus is moving from our best ideas.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm sorry, reversal two is moving from uh charisma uh to weakness and limits, moving from charisma to weakness and limits.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I say that because in my own leadership, and just like the 21st century church, I mean, we prize gifts and intellect and ability and experience and power and influence and and so crowds and staff and buildings and budgets, and we usually get we get so discouraged by weak our weaknesses.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if only I was stronger, I could get so much done for God.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: If only I had that person's gifts, what I could do.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and my early instinct uh was absolutely lead from my strengths, which was vision casting, preaching and teaching, encouraging.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh, but I never let people see my weaknesses.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was taught to to preach it in a sermon, give an example of weakness so that people could relate to you.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it was never actually something I actually lived out of and led from.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so the break happened for me in this area.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually more from a uh a moment of a wall, a great brokenness was when our uh about year six or seven, we had this uh big Spanish split in one of our congregations.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I found myself uh very broken.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I realized the fragility of the foundation on which I had built the church.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I felt humiliated.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I was on a two-year descent to the bottom, uh, rock bottom, where Jesus was waiting for me, and I met him, and it was a fresh revelation of his love of him.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was the beginning of emotionally healthy spirituality, and and it was a dramatic shift for me to begin to lead from not from my strengths but or my charisma, but from my weakness and limits.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw for the first time, and I'll never forget, seeing Jesus' weakness and then seeing Paul's weakness uh and how they led from weakness and limits.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I what I began as a study, I think, boy my goodness, over 30 years ago, has only deepened with time.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I did such a deep study uh in this whole area during this writing of this book, I must have had 40 pages on Paul alone uh from 2 Corinthians 10 to 13 uh on his leadership over and against the superapostles.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we see, for example, in Jesus, you know, I mean, everything about his ministry was weakness and limits, uh, the way he was born uh to a peasant teenage girl in Bethlehem growing up in Nazareth, his small little village, nowheresville, and uh, and just his choosing of these twelve uh disciples from Galilee, again, nowheresville, and not of the best of the best from Jerusalem, and uh the most influential uh or brilliant or charismatic, and uh and and he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God's power.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I preached it, but I I I didn't I ran away from living like him.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: So interesting, isn't it?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course, Paul was even more vivid uh and uh so clear.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you look, if you look really closely at his ministry in 2 Corinthians, his struggle struggle in Corinth, the church he planted, and the struggle there when some other superapostles followed him after he left and began to to basically push him aside and say, no, we're the ones who should be leading you.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they had they had the charisma, they had the gifts, they had the anointings, uh, they had supernatural visions and revelations and all that.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were, they looked so impressive.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they had the eloquence.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the culture of that day, they were it.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Paul has to come against them.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Paul had visions and revelations, but his boast of his credentials for being God's apostle for that Corinthian church was my weakness, my limits.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he talks about his thorn in the flesh, he talks about his shipwrecks, he talks about his beatings, he talks about his, you know, everything going wrong.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it's just it's such a contrast.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he goes, I, you know, I will never boast except in my weaknesses.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, when I am weak, I am strong.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just in the very beginning, as I got on this journey, my preaching dramatically changed.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the big change was this.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and Jerry often would note it that my sermons prior to this, my emotional health journey and after, it all had to do with weakness and limits.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because now I approached sermons, I approached texts first, how they applied to me and my struggle with living them in my own life.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say it was about money and giving.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: I got into my own weakness and struggle with giving uh and really entered that space.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was able to preach out of that and then enter other people's pain and struggle as well.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, it was a big shift.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: That weakness is not a hindrance to God working.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually the requirement for God working.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was such a shift.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And God's means, God is really about not making you stronger by the world standards.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's actually about making you weaker uh until his power through you is unmistakable.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, that is such a shift.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: So practically what it began to mean for me was things like, you know, when I I don't when I don't, I don't, I say things like I don't know.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I ask for help, but I'm honest about my failures.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm honest when I'm overwhelmed.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I invite critique, although it's still painful, uh because I need it.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I am more, not always, but I'm much more accepting of not knowing what God's doing and the slowness of the way he's working.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm getting better, and I've continued to get better at not always having to give my opinion all the time about things.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: So then it moves us to reversal number three, which was moving from our best ideas to discerning God's voice, moving from our best ideas to discerning God's voice.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And again, now this word of the word to listen, to hear the word of the Lord is found over 1,500 times in scripture.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yet it's so easy to Be a Christian, especially, and even to be a leader for God and not actually be listening to Him.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know I did it.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: My first, I think of my first 17 years as a Christian, I was into stewarding my gifts best to maximize them for God's glory.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was praying, I was seizing opportunities, I was seeking to fulfill the Great Commission.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I was running really on my best ideas or the best ideas around me.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Discernment was not kind of on the curriculum.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a core value that people talked about a lot.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: What's God saying here?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and my my work over the years with pastors everywhere, all over the world has been this is number, this is one of the top couple of problems for leaders today is really not listening, not knowing how to discern what is Jesus saying that he wants us to be doing now.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Discernment.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because even our best ideas miss it.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just think with me for a moment of uh I'll take John 13, where uh Jesus begins to wash the disciples' feet.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter's best ideas, he he basically says, Never, Lord, will you do this to me, you know?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he shouts in order of Jesus, never, Lord, uh you'll never wash my feet.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and Jesus basically, you know, you don't realize what I'm doing now, but later you will understand.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you don't get it because Peter's not listening.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's got in his mind the way things should be working out.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Mount of Transfiguration, again, Elijah and Mo and Moses appear with Jesus.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Peter's got ideas, you know.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, let's let's build some booths here.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and and the father shuts him up, listen to him.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but Jesus too had to discern, and we see him in the wilderness temptation.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: The devil comes and tempts him, turn these stones to bread, jump down from the temple, bow down for a minute, you can save everybody.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: But he he's listening to the father's timing, the father's pathway, which is suffering and slow.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and he he uh he learned obedience from what he suffered, it tells us in Hebrews.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he refuses to act even when he can, and uh unless God speaks.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we too, we don't act because we can or because it'll appear to be great results.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: We we listen to God speaking to us.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I like what one pastor said to me uh, you know, recently and uh in a in an email he sent to me, he goes, Pete, one of the biggest things I've learned from you and Jerry has been that to ask the question always, especially when I don't know what I'm doing, God, what's your invitation to me in this?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so you want to run that through your time.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: What's God saying?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, even how you spend time in scripture, about how how much time?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: God, how would you have me spend time in scripture with you in the morning and midday prayers?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you want me to mature and grow in this season?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, even your team meetings, Lord, how would you have this team meeting unfold?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: How about my to-do list?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: What's priorities for you?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, in your meetings, as you're making plans with people, you want to be listening and discerning together your family, how how you're raising and if you're married or if you're single, how you're group, how how you're walking out your singleness and marriage.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a leader, you're a leader, but we're first sheep.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're sheep, and we hear his voice.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so in our discernment, we're we're embracing our limits, we're we're we're we're seeking to be open, detached, not tied to anything, and we're listening to God from the inside out.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And God's invitation to us is to relax.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the work of God is this to listen, to, to believe in the one he has sent, which I like to translate from John 6, 29, to to relax in the one he has sent, as one great commentator said it, just to trust him.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so we trust him as we're discerning, we're not making it happen.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so not that we're not active, but we're listening.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and Jesus models that so beautifully to us in places like John 7, where it's thousands of people have just left him in John 6 and that sermon about eat my blood and drink, eat my eat my flesh.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then right after that, uh his brothers say to him, Jesus, you got to get to Jerusalem and Judea so people can see you, because nobody who's a public figure acts in secret.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, My hour is not yet come.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: For you, any hour is fine.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's listening to the Father, the Father's timing of what matters.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna try to get crowds back up and my following because you think it's the right thing for me to do.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: He could do it, but he didn't at that timing they wanted because he was listening, and we want to be listeners too.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then the final uh reversal uh of Jesus, the big one, was moving from critical mass to critical yeast.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's an insight from uh, of course, Jesus talked about critical yeast, just like he talked about uh mustard seeds.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um, Jesus, the kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman mixed into 60 pounds of flour, and that little bit of yeast, you know, filled up the whole flour and caused it to grow and rise and feed a whole village.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I take the term from uh a guy named John Paul Letterac and his work, Christian Peacemaker around the world.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he makes this interesting point that in the world's you know hardest conflicts, that lasting change came down to a few people.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: He called it critical yeast versus critical mass.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that was the missing ingredient that a few people uh were able to make massive change in troubled places around the world.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that pull so so well to critical mass.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta get crowds, I gotta get bigger because then we can make an impact.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh again, I it was just such a pull.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I always felt like the small, the critical yeast was was failure.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus never pursued the critical mass of the crowds.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh his way was critical yeast.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: He invested in the three and the 12, then of course the 70.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, the impact wasn't unstoppable.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: He he cared for individuals, not just crowd.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and yeast was his model for changing the whole world.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so he forms a small, deeply formed community.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's why forming culture is so important.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Critical mass pursues large numbers for impact, critical yeast invests in a few deeply to transform the many long term.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: So life in Jesus is not primarily about scale, it is about depth.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's about connection.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so this impacts our priorities, it impacts how we spend our time.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not that we're unconcerned for the crowds and the masses, but it's how we proportion our time.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll see more of this in the next couple of podcasts as we talk about a new scorecard for success, because critical yeast, the small, can seem insignificant, so powerless, and it doesn't seem like it's getting anything done.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I know I've seen it now for decades, the powerful, unstoppable impact of making decisions to be sure that we are investing in critical yeast in the mustard seed and how it is unstoppable when we do it God's way.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Paul had that long vision as well.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and that was another large study I did on Paul's ministry and realizing that he wrote these incredible epistles, incredible epistles, but he was writing them to small churches, house churches.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and even the largest churches in the empire were probably 100 to 200 people.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but he knew the quality of those churches was going to impact the world.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they did, it changed the whole Roman Empire.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: But why would he put so much time into such a small church, say in a place like, you know, Colossians or Galatia?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but by any measure, at least of the Greco-Roman world of his time, his ministry didn't appear to do much or impact much.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there was all kinds of heresies floating around.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he died before he even saw the full fruit of his work.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: But but his life was among the most fruitful ever in Christian history in terms of bearing fruit for Jesus.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: So make no mistake about it.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: These four reversals are load-bearing walls of uh our lives, and they're structural beams that we build around, but they're also conversions, each one of them.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: So just think about it: praying for results to communion, from relying on charisma to weakness and limits, to depending on our best ideas to discerning, from moving from critical yeast to critical mass.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the one enemy beyond beneath all this is that uh doing it the world's way can very often feed our false selves.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: So again, this is about emotionally healthy success, measuring what really matters to Jesus and trusting that his way actually works.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: So which one of these four might God be inviting you to focus on today?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about it.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is it how you pray that you actually move to greater communion, or is it how you lead moving from charisma to weakness and limits?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is it perhaps how you make decisions, moving from your best ideas, actually listening?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps it's actually focusing on what you know, critical yeast, the small and not just simply the big, not that you disband the big.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, this will take a miracle, but God is good at miracles.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Blessings, everybody.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have a wonderful day, and may the Lord guide you and fill you with his power that you may do his will and not ours.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Blessings to you.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Have a good day.