First Sunday of 2025… let’s start here… “Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure – pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.” (Luke 6:38)
The Message paraphrases that verse this way… “Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way.”
I once heard that there are two kinds of people in this world… there are those who want to get their way in life… and there are those who want to give away their life. Everything about us seems to direct us towards getting our way in life, and that that is actually greater than giving away our life.
David Foster Wallace once said this, “Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe: the realest, most vivid, and most important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on.”
Our culture doesn’t help with this:
- Think about Apple Music/Spotify. Don’t like a song? Don’t want to hear commercials? Don’t want to deal with weird radio giveaways? You can get your way. Pay for Apple Music or Spotify Premium!
- Or think about DoorDash. Don’t want to farm your food? Don’t want to cook your food? Don’t want to clean dishes after cooking your food? Don’t want to drive to get your food? You can get your way! Doordash!
- Or there’s Instagram filters. Is your picture looking not so good? Is the contrast wrong? Is the lighting off? Is it not as cheery or warm as you’d like? You can get your way. Get a nice filter, adjust the contrast, dabble with the saturation, and BOOM—great photo. I could go on.
Our culture is all about US getting our way in life. But is getting your way in life the way you get a life well lived? The Apostle Paul would argue “no.” In fact, he’d flip the script. Paul would argue that giving away your life > getting your way in life. We’ll come back to that.
Several months ago, we started brainstorming and praying through what direction God wanted us to take this year as we planned our preaching calendar. We polled some of our Sunday school classes… our small groups… our staff… and our elders… our greatest priority in these conversations was to meet the needs of the body of Christ with the truth of Scripture. We want Scripture to address your deepest wounds, guide your biggest decisions, expose your blind spots, and encourage your hearts and minds… we want Scripture to do what Scripture does… and we know it never returns void… so we wanted to be thoughtful… because 52 weeks… 52 sermons is not a lot considering the full counsel of Scripture… so we wanted to be intentional to make the most of our time as we dig in deep into the Word of God during our gatherings on the Lord’s Day each week.
So we started thinking about the answers to these kinds of questions:
- What are the needs of the body?
- What are the areas of Biblical knowledge that we ought to address?
- Where are the points of application being missed or ignored?
- How are our people hurting? Where do we need to grow?
Through those conversations, Mark posed a question to Brian and I as we were thinking through these things… he said something along the lines of, “think beyond just a year. Think longer-term… where do you want the people of DaySpring Christian Church to be in 5 years? Let that goal drive your planning for this year.” All that white hair… he’s got the wisdom to match it.
Here was our response: our desire for the saints at DaySpring Christian Church is that every follower of Jesus among this body would have such a deep trust in God and such solid convictions in His Word, that they would possess a mindset that honestly and humbly can say, “I am ALL yours, LORD.” Whatever I have, what I say, whatever I do, wherever I go, belongs to HIM. I am His servant, and where He leads, I will go.
Even if it makes no sense, even if it costs me something or someone, even if it costs me my life. Even if my friends and family think I’m crazy… If the Lord calls me, I will obey His voice.
I want to do what God wants me to do. I want to be who God wants me to be. I want to think how He wants me to think, say what He wants me to say, do what He wants me to do… everything about my life is about Him.
We don’t want DaySpring Christian Church to be a “fly on the wall” church… where you can walk in, keep to yourself, not be noticed, and walk right back out… we don’t want this to be a place that you simply devote an hour of your time to once a week… we don’t want you to be anonymous here… and I know some people prefer that for a time, and we can respect that for a time… but the model for the church is a body, a family, a bride, unified in purpose and vision, calling… functioning as one… and that’s awful hard to accomplish if we don’t even know each other’s names…
…and it’s not about more church involvement (though that’s part of it), it’s really about LORDSHIP. We don’t want you to just be paying lip-service to God. We don’t want this to just be something you do when it’s convenient. We don’t want this to be something where you come and be entertained and then go home and continue about your life…
We want you to go to heaven! Like I said… it’s all about Lordship. We want Jesus to be the LORD of your life. EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE. We want Him to be your everything!
We want your relationship with Jesus Christ to be the most important part of who you are. We want you to find your identity in Him. We want you to find your purpose in life in Him. We want you to love others because of how you love Him, rooted in His love for you first. We want you to devote yourselves to the cause of Christ. We want you to labor and strive for the mission of the Gospel. We want to fight against complacency in our Christian lives. We want you to love God so much that everything else just pales in comparison. We want you to be all in. We want you to be sold out. We want you to be who God made you to be. And we want you to bring as many people with you as you can.
And that’s our heart for you all. That’s our desire for this body of believers. And that drove our plans for this year’s series… we landed on this theme for the year… “WHATEVER IT TAKES.” Grounded in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
We have 5 sermon series that we’re gonna tackle this year that will hopefully drive that verse home in all of our lives… the first one is topical… looking at a few different narratives in Scripture… some of them have “whatever” attitudes… and some of them have “whatever it takes” attitudes… we’re gonna walk through each of them… and then close with four practical sermons on what this actually looks like in our lives.
Then we’re gonna spend about 3 months in the Sermon on the Mount. From there, we will spend the next quarter preaching through the Old Testament book of Nehemiah… we’ll approach the end of the year with an expository series through the book of James. Each of these illustrate a whatever it takes mindset when it comes to the Kingdom.
Let’s begin… our first example comes from the apostle Paul… He shows us what it means to live a whatever it takes life…
When Paul meets Christ on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, he is struck blind. Jesus says, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” He blinds Paul and sends him off to Damascus. Then Jesus goes immediately to Ananias in Damascus. The guy who would walk Paul through these early stages of following Jesus…
Here’s what Jesus does NOT say to Ananias. “I want you to show him what a great success he’s going to have as a missionary. I want you to tell him how many folks he’s going to move towards God. I want you to show him what a great name he’s going to make for himself and what heights of fame he’ll reach.”
No. What Jesus says is far more profound… “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name’s sake.”
Paul gives us a glimpse of this suffering in 2 Corinthians 11. He’s defending his ministry because it was being called into question… part of his defense is outlining the suffering he’s endured for the cause of Christ… let’s read some of what he says here…
2 Corinthians 11:23-33, “…I speak as if insane—I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. 24 Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. 26 I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; 27 I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches. 29 Who is weak without my being weak? Who is led into sin without my intense concern? 30 If I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weakness. 31 The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. 32 In Damascus the ethnarch under Aretas the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me, 33 and I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and so escaped his hands.”
Far more labors… far more imprisonments, countless beatings, and often near death.
According to Acts, Paul had only been imprisoned once at this point, but afterwards was imprisoned 3 times… church history says that Paul was imprisoned 7 times in his lifetime for the cause of Christ.
He was flogged 5 times by the Jews… the Old Testament law limited all floggings to 40 stripes… but the last one was left out in case someone counted carelessly. They didn’t want to break the law unintentionally as they flogged people nearly to death… He wasn’t flogged just once… but 5 times… Jesus warned His disciples that this would happen.
He was beaten with a rod 3 times… we know of one instance in Acts 16 in Philippi…
He was stoned once… this could have been what we read about in Acts 14 when Paul was nearly stoned to death and then left for dead in Lystra…
He put himself in harm’s way so many times… shipwrecked 3 times… you might think twice about getting on boats after the first one sank… but not Paul! Facing dangers from rivers, and robbers, and from Jews and Gentiles alike… he faced danger in the city, in the wilderness, at sea, and from false brothers in the churches.
He had sleepless nights, toil, and hardship. He suffered hunger and thirst… cold weather and exposure to the elements. He suffered want and must have gone days without food, drink, and adequate clothing. And he once had to flee in a basket out of a window to escape a persecutor.
Why did Paul expose his life to such sufferings when he could have had it easy? Why would he go through this? In verse 28 he begins to give us the answer.
“Besides everything else, I faced daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.” There it is. He’s saying, “I love these people. I’m concerned about these people. And whatever it takes to take care of them, whatever it takes to get the Gospel to them, I’ll do it, because these folks need Christ.”
He feels concern for the churches. The wranglings, disputes, backslidings, apostasies… he cares about these Christians and their spiritual wellbeing and their unhealth put pressure on his pastoral heart.
You realize Paul could have avoided all these sufferings. He was a sail maker, a tent maker; he could have had a great life of comfort and ease. But somehow or other he said, “I’m going to choose, instead, to take all of these sufferings, because I love these people.”
One preacher wrote this, “If we lived as if we really longed to rescue a soul from hell, then the battering would begin at once for us.”
He shows us what it looks like to have this mindset that resolves to say, “whatever it takes.”
Remember what Jesus said to Timothy? “All who would live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer.” In Philippians 3 Paul says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.” And a lot of us would say, “Yeah, I want to know the power of his resurrection too. I want to live a strong Christian life. I want God to pour on the power.” And we forget that the next thing Paul says is this: “… and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.” You realize there is a powerful spiritual principle at play in that verse. Resurrection is precede by death.
Paul mentions 23 different ways he suffered in this passage.
Not your run of the mill suffering either… it was severe suffering that brought him right up against death time and time again… and yet he praises God in the midst of this because he knows full well that following Jesus comes with a cost.
Jesus calls for a real commitment…
ILLUSTRATION
William Willimon tells about a recruiter who came to Duke University to recruit future teachers for “Teach America.” It is a program which recruits bright young prospective teachers from college and university campuses to teach in America’s most difficult and deprived school systems. To an auditorium full of Duke students, she said, “Looking at you tonight, I don’t know why I’m here. You are privileged, the beneficiaries of the best of this nation’s educational resources. I can tell, just by looking at you, that you are all bound for Wall Street, law school, med. school. And here I stand, trying to recruit you for a salary of $15,000 a year in some of the worst school situations in America, begging you to waste your life for a bunch of ungrateful kids in the backwoods of Appalachia or the inner city of Philadelphia. I must have been crazy to come here.
“But I do have some literature up here, and I would be willing to talk to anybody who happens to be interested. But I know, just by looking at you, that all of you want to be a success, and here I am inviting you to be failures. So, you can all leave now. But if by chance somebody here feels called to do the worst job any of you can imagine, then I’m here to talk to you. The meeting’s over.”
With that, everyone stood up and stampeded to the front, fighting over a chance to talk to this recruiter, dying to give themselves to something bigger and more important than themselves.”
Jesus says it best in Luke 14:26-33, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. 28 For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends [o]a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.
Forget what you’ve been told about praying a prayer and asking Jesus to be your personal Savior. We don’t really see that in Scripture. Read what Jesus demanded of his followers and ask yourself whether you still want to follow Him. There was no misinterpreting what Christ was calling for. Maybe this is why He had so few disciples. The call to follow Jesus was a call to die. The price tag was front and center. Jesus laid it out from the start and told people to count the cost before they got themselves into something they weren’t ready to commit to.
Nowadays we just want to talk about the good part- the grace and blessings. And of course grace, forgiveness, and mercy are central to the gospel and are amazing gifts from God that ought to be enjoyed and celebrated… and at the same time Jesus was very truthful and up-front about the costliness of the gospel, a concept that we all too often completely neglect.
And I wonder if in doing this, if we’ve lost something so central to the essence of what it means to be a Christian. Becoming a Christian is a complete and total surrender of your own desires and flesh to the higher purpose of serving God’s glory. It means you die to yourself and put on Christ. That is what you’re signing up for. When Christ calls a man, He bids Him come and die.
Mark 8:34-37 says, “And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul?”
According to Jesus, far from having no cost, following Him will cost you everything. Far from promising a better life (in terms of health of wealth), He warned of intense suffering.
Matthew 24:9-10 says, “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. 10 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.”
We church, want to produce people who are on fire for Jesus, willing to go wherever and do whatever for the Kingdom- no matter the cost. Whatever it takes! This is what we read about in Acts 5, The apostles had been summoned by the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest and Peter replied, “We must obey God rather than men!” Then he concisely preaches the gospel. Jump ahead to verse 40-41 we see, “When they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.” This would truly be unstoppable. The early church was truly unstoppable. This life is not one characterized by getting our in life… but by giving ourselves away.
J.C. Ryle once said, “A religion that costs nothing is worth nothing! A cheap Christianity, without a cross, will prove in the end a useless Christianity, without a crown.”
Will you join us on this journey this year? To learn to rid ourselves of the need to get our way in life… and instead learn how to give your life away.
As we mature in the Christian life… our question changes from “How do I get my life together?” to “How do I give my life away more deeply, more generously, and more meaningfully?”
At the end of my life I want to be able to say, “I’ve given my life away. I have loved and loved deeply. I’ve given and given generously. I’ve served and served meaningfully.”
I’m not perfect. None of us are. But God is calling us to mature into the kinds of people who say, “Take it! Take it! Take my life! I’m giving it all away! I’m leaving it all out on the court! No matter the cost, no matter the pain. I’m letting go. I’m relinquishing control. It’s not about me. It’s about my brother, my sister, and my neighbor. Whatever It Takes.”
Will you give your life away? This is what God is calling us to. God is calling us not to get our way in life, but to give away our lives. God is calling us to be people abandoned to Him, surrendered to Him, willing to risk it all, willing to love unconditionally, willing to step out with courage. He’s looking for people to become who He was for us in Jesus.
Jesus took care – He saw us, He sees YOU. Jesus laid down his life – He died for us, He died for YOU. Jesus went to the cross so we might be restored – so YOU might be forgiven. Jesus gave his life for us. He redeemed us. He gave us the example. Will you follow?
Whatever He wants from us, we will do. Wherever He leads, we will go. Whatever it takes.