What Comes First: The Leaping or the Joy?

I'm going to jump into today's message.

We're in a series of messages we're calling the top three.

And uh I uh took a time some time to study in the scripture, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John looking at Jesus' life, the things he's quoted as saying, and trying to find the things he talked about most often.

Uh I think most people don't like to repeat themselves too many times.

If you've ever had to tell somebody more than once, right?

If you ever, if you have uh children or or whatever you say, how many times do I have to say this?

You have to think Jesus probably felt that way also, but yet he he had certain things that he wanted to repeat because we do know you you can't just say it one time.

Like a lot of times the most important things you do have to repeat them, you have to say them over and over again.

You might actually turn them into slogans or cliches or things that uh that you know, axioms that you want to say because you want them to last.

And so we have that from Jesus, and so what we're doing is taking some time to look at those things he repeated, he said a lot, uh, and then learning what we can learn from that.

Uh today I want to take you to Luke chapter 6, and we're gonna start reading in verse 20.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

Um, this same uh the same situation or the same conversation Jesus has recorded by Luke is also recorded by Matthew, Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Matthew writes it a little more extensively, Luke's a little more concise, so I'm gonna go with the concise guy.

Alright, here we go, verse 20.

Says, looking at his disciples, he, he being Jesus, said, Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

In other words, you're in good company.

Verse 24 But woe to you who are rich, for you've already received your comfort.

Woe to you who are well fed, for you will go hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.

Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

Uh let's pray.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

I pray, Lord, that you would illuminate your word in our hearts.

I pray, God, that you would speak to us as a group and speak to us as individuals.

Lord, we prepare ourselves mentally, emotionally, spiritually, to sense and perceive what you would like us to see.

Help us think better, help us do better, help us become better.

In Jesus' name.

And all God's people said, Amen.

Um I want to let you a little bit behind the curtain on when I'm looking at a text, when I'm looking at something like Luke 6 or any portion of scripture for that matter, how I kind of approach that and how it gets from the initial reading to where we are now.

Um what I try to do is I'll open up the text, I'll dig as far as I can into it, learn everything I can.

So I want to learn who is Luke and who's he talking to, and what happened in Luke 1 through 5, and what happens in uh after Luke 6, and all of as much of the context and the historical understanding as I possibly can because I want to understand uh what the original hearer would have heard and what Jesus was trying to uh get across, and looking at it in relationship to the rest of the Bible or what we call the weight of scripture, the other things that Jesus said and other things that we see uh going on.

And so I try to go as far into that as I can.

From there, what I try to do is come up with as many messages as I possibly could from the text.

So, like for example, if I'm coaching a preacher, I'll the I'll we'll look at Luke 6 and they'll go, okay, what message are you getting from that?

And they may give me a message, I'll go, cool, what other what other message is in there?

And then they'll give me another one.

I'll be like, what else is in there?

Okay, okay, what's another message you could preach from that?

Well, and by the time we got about seven messages, okay, that are all accurate to the text, all things that could be taught from the text, uh, then we'll step back and pray and go, Lord, which one is my assignment for today?

Lord, which one do you want to go to the people?

Because we could preach Luke 6, or we could teach it and look at it and learn from it.

A lot of different things, but yet what is the one for right now?

And that's what I've done with Luke 6.

When you look at Luke 6 and you look at this idea of uh Jesus saying, Blessed are you and woe to you.

Blessed are you and woe to you.

He's he's talking uh a few things.

There's a few messages in there.

Uh one is that your behavior matters.

Uh, the things you do, God's paying attention.

That God does see what we do, He He sees how we think, He sees the actions that we take, and those actions do matter.

And those actions have consequences, and God does bless us and does respond to our behavior.

And so uh, you know, Jesus says, hey, look, when you do this, good things often happen.

You know, this God does want this from you.

And then at other points he says, woe to you, which is a warning.

It's not a threat as much as it's a warning.

Like you got to be careful when you when you do this.

Um, and so so we could go right there.

And by the way, that's what the disciples, Jesus, when he's talking about blessed are you when, and then he comes up with four unenviable scenarios, things like struggling with your finances, or being hungry, or having people speak uh negatively of you, or you being emotionally broken to the point that you're weeping.

And then for him to ascribe the word, uh the concept makarios, blessing, favorable, enviable position.

So he's saying you're enviable.

In fact, you should rejoice when you're in this spot, okay?

And then he goes and he mentions prosperity and wealth and and people who are laughing and people who have influence.

Everyone's speaking well of you.

And he says, hey, be careful of that.

When you're in that situation, look a little bit deeper.

Um, what Jesus is doing is he's approaching their thinking and their theology.

Because to Jesus' disciples, when when you looked at the surface of someone's life, their wealth, their health, the their uh power, their influence, where they show up in the food chain, okay, people automatically ascribed favorable positions to the blessing of God, and vice versa.

Where did well, where did they get this?

Well, if you cross-reference into the Old Testament, you look in the book of Deuteronomy, it's the fifth book of the Bible.

In the Old Testament, God makes a covenant in Deuteronomy chapter 28, in the first 14 verses, he makes a specific deal or covenant, a vassal suzerain covenant.

Deuteronomy 28 · chapter mention

In other words, he was powerful and they were subject to him.

And he said, If you obey my rules and my laws, you live in obedience, I will bless you.

And specifically, what he meant by blessing is you'll be uh you'll do well financially, you'll live in uh military victory, you'll you'll you'll win military battles, uh, you'll be you'll be healthy, okay, you'll be fertile, all of that.

Then he goes in the the next verses, like verse 15 through it's like in the 50s or 60s, like it's a bunch of verses.

He says, if you don't, if you break the rules, you're gonna be in captivity, um, you're gonna have disease that will come through the land, okay?

Ultimately you'll be cursed.

And so this was the prevailing mindset.

When you looked at someone who had wealth or health and things were going well, you would say, Whoa, God must be blessing them.

And anybody on the other end, you would say, Something's wrong.

You must have done something bad.

In fact, we see this show up uh in John 9.

Uh look at John 9, verse 1 through 3.

John 9:1–3

It says, Jesus was passing by and he saw a man blind from birth.

And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned?

This man or his parents?

Again, they go right to that conclusion.

This man's been blind since birth.

He's broke, he's begging on the side of the road, he's in an unenviable position.

Okay, who sinned?

Who did something wrong?

Who broke the rule?

Was it him or his parents that caused him to be born blind?

Verse 3, Jesus answered, Neither this man nor his parents sinned.

So what Jesus is doing here in Luke 6 is helping them understand that Deuteronomy chapter 28 was for a specific group of people, specific time, and yet in the real world, in the day we live now, that it doesn't always work like that.

Deuteronomy 28 · chapter mention

Sometimes you can be in this position that you don't want to be in or that others wouldn't want to be in, and we can't just right away go to that God is cursing you.

That's important for you to know because from time to time I'll have people come to me or I'll hear about it.

And they mean well and they're sincere, and it's a very sincere question, very sincere.

But they're looking at their life and they're going, man, this is things are going bad.

How could a good God and why would God?

And so it often causes either confusion at best or fracture at worst.

Like I don't want anything to do with a God like that.

And so they they get really confused, disillusioned, upset, okay, and and often it's not that God's cursed you or that God's angry with you.

It often has to do with just what happens when God does what he does, which is he gives us free will.

So often, free will, the free will of you and me collide.

So man, people have a free will to be able to drive in a distracted manner for one reason or another.

You have the free will to do that.

You could leave here and allow yourself to be distracted behind the wheel, going fast.

And because people have the free will to drive in a distracted manner, they also have the free will to collide with someone that I love.

And often that ends up in a tragedy, it ends up in pain.

Okay, you have a free will to keep your vows or not keep your vows, to be faithful or unfaithful.

So if my my partner cheats on me or my spouse cheats on me, it's I I'm not angry at God about that because this is this person's free will and action which has now inflicted pain on my life.

This is why I'm weeping, this is why I'm hurting.

Okay, so there there are a lot of things that would cause us to be in those unenviable positions.

It's an incorrect assumption to say it's automatically related to the judgment or the anger or the wrath of God.

Um, we have to look deeper.

And so Jesus invites them, and he comes up with four things like poverty, uh, like being hungry, um, like having people say terrible things about you, or being emotionally, this emotional crescendo of weeping.

But of course, you could put, you could fill in those blanks with whatever situation you're in that you don't want to be in, and Jesus is causing them to think deeper.

By the way, I want you to notice as we look through this text, I want you to notice the progression of Jesus training on how to grow in your maturity and in your transformation.

It's like this think better, do better, become better.

Think better, do better, become better.

If you're stuck in your ways, it's probably because you're stuck in your thoughts.

If I don't think better, I won't sustain the doing better.

I have to think better.

We should all the time be looking, going, how can I think better?

How do I think better about that?

Often it's thinking different about that.

And so we have to be willing to have our thoughts challenged.

It's one of the huge advantages of surrounding yourself with diverse people.

Because if we all think the same, that means we all have the same blind spots.

And people who all think the same and have the same blind spots have a tendency to stay blind in those areas.

And what you do is you do something that feels very soothing, which is we all violently agree with one another.

You ever been a part of a violent agreement where it's like, yeah, like we're so right.

I can't believe how dumb everyone is.

Why is it, you know, I just can't, why would God make so many dumb people?

You know, why don't they see what we see?

Well, yeah, you you it's monolithic.

It's it's uh, you know, it's it's it's it's all homogeneous.

It's it's the same thinking.

We all think the same way.

And violent agreement, okay, doesn't make you right.

People violently agreed that the world was flat and they were wrong.

So so you've got to surround yourself with diverse people.

They've they they lived in different places, they come from different cultures, they see things differently, and when you do that, it challenges your thoughts.

Don't be scared about that, don't let that freak you out.

It's it's okay for you to have your thoughts challenged because if I think better, then I'll do better, ultimately I'll become better.

So, so what Jesus is doing here is he's challenging them to think better.

Think better.

Blessed are you when you're poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Okay.

This is a bit of a cringy verse, I'll be honest, because it almost feels at first like you're making light of poverty.

Oh, it's not that big a deal.

But if you're broke, you know it is a big deal.

Like anybody know what I'm talking about?

Have you ever had too much month left at the end of the money?

It's not a good feeling.

It's embarrassing.

Um I I saw I saw a study one time, it was I think it was actually, I think it was uh Malcolm Gladwell, was talking about suicide, suicide rates in countries that have economic disparity, like significant economic disparity.

So in other words, countries that have low economic disparity, in other words, we all, you know, they're there in people are in similar places, there's less suicide than countries that have a large economic disparity because when we're all broke, it doesn't feel that bad.

But when some of us are broke and then others are like really, really, really not broke, then then it's like a problem.

Right?

Like if you if you grew up, if you grew up in poverty, and often you'll hear people say, Yeah, I grew up, man, we were poor, but we didn't know it.

Like we didn't really know it.

Because our worldview, we were surrounded by people like us, and we were all kind of struggling.

We were all fighting, we were all kind of in the same boat, but often it's when you see that disparity that it leads to despair.

And so, within that, Jesus is saying, by the way, um, that's going to happen.

Like he he juxtaposes people who are struggling financially with people who are wealthy.

By the way, let me, I it's the I need to say this as an observation of this text.

When Jesus is talking about poor versus rich and weeping versus uh laughing, and he says, Hey, those of you that laugh, woe to you, because eventually you're gonna weep, and and those of you that are rich, woe to you.

You've already received your comfort.

He's not speaking negatively of concepts like having money or having food.

He says, Those of you that are well fed, you will be hungry.

Okay, when he's saying this, he's not speaking negatively of those things because having money is not wrong.

Um, eating a good meal is not wrong, laughing is not wrong.

Okay, having people uh uh honor you, or he said, when people speak well of you, woe to you when all people speak well of you.

So being honored or having influence is not wrong.

The implication in here is that those people got to those ends by the wrong means.

So it does matter how you get there, by the way.

While you're trying to get to where you're trying to go, okay, or trying to go to where you're trying to get, remember it matters how you get there.

It totally matters how you get there.

So there's there's nothing wrong with having money.

In fact, Jesus will say in another text, hey, be faithful with the little, and then I can bless you with more.

He said, in fact, he said, earthly riches are actually a uh earthly wealth is a good litmus test, it's a good diagnostic.

And he said, if you can't be faithful with that, why would I trust you with the true riches of heaven?

So so like it's not bad that you would have resources.

It's not bad that you would laugh.

We know weeping may endure for a night, joy comes in the morning.

God created laughter.

Laughter is that emotional crescendo.

It's it's good, it sets off good brain stuff, it puts you in a good place.

You need to be able to laugh together.

But a bunch of you guys, you know, went to Hobby Lobby and bought them out of the lift, laugh, love stuff.

It's all over your house.

It's draped everywhere because you know laughing's good.

Like you're supposed to do some laughing, like that's cool.

He's not speaking bad of laughing.

He's saying if you're laughing in terms of scoffing, because hey, uh, I got away with it.

Ooh, I got the best out of my.

I'm looking down and laughing.

He's like, uh, uh, uh, uh, don't be short-sighted, dude.

It's temporary.

You, you, you'll, you'll, you'll mourn, you'll weep.

Okay, so so he's not speaking negatively of those things.

And on the other side, he's not saying that he's not making light of poverty being as unpleasant as it is.

He's talking about hunger pangs.

He's like, man, some of you, you're hungry.

He's like, listen, you're you're you're hungry, but eventually you'll be full.

And and he's talking about those of you that weep.

Again, what is weep?

It's it's the other emotional crescendo.

Something happened that caused you so much pain.

No one weeps on purpose.

You weep because you can't stop it.

You're trying to not weep.

I'm trying, but I can't hold it back.

And so it's coming out.

And he's like, whatever happened that made you there, okay, puts you there.

He's like, I want you to look at your situation and think differently.

How would we think differently?

Well, there's a few ways to think.

Okay, Jesus says it, especially when he talks about weeping.

He says, uh, blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

And then on the other side, he says, Woe to you who who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.

What Jesus is ultimately saying is these situations and these feelings are temporary.

You're moving through them.

So if you're in a place of emotional despair, you're in the valley of despair, you're not going to be there forever.

It's it's it's intense, it's acute pain, it's spilling out, and in that moment, you can feel such despair that it feels like I'm gonna be here forever.

But he's like, no, listen now, you got to be reminded, even while you're weeping, that this is temporary.

You're coming through this.

You're gonna come through.

It's not gonna hurt quite like this for the rest of your life.

But but in those moments we can be short-sighted.

Listen, I want to encourage you, don't name what you're walking through while you're walking through it.

Often we name it while we're going through it.

We name the tears while we're crying the tears, we name the season while it's at its fever pitch.

We we name the pain while we're at our pain threshold.

Don't name what you're walking through while you're walking through it, because hindsight will be 20-20.

You're gonna get to another place and you'll get to the day when you're able to laugh again, you're able to smile again, you're able to be positive again, when hope is restored, and you'll be able to look back and see the formation of what happened with the tears and the weeping.

And not having what you need.

Being poor, he says.

And for some, poor, if we, however you handle it, sometimes it's a season.

God wants you to learn something when you have a deficit.

This is again the disadvantage of someone who's just been handed everything.

We know this.

You don't even need the Bible for this.

You know this, you you just look around.

You see, like people, like second generation wealth, third generation wealth often crumbles.

Why?

Because you didn't have to, you don't know what it's like to weep.

You don't know what it's like to be hungry, you don't know what it's like to have nothing.

You don't know what it's like to stand there and try to decide, should I buy this birthday present for this person I love, but I really can't afford to.

But you you you don't know what it's like to have to say say no to something so you can say yes to something else, because you can't say yes to everything.

You literally can't.

The math doesn't work.

You know what it's like to have your credit card declined, and it wasn't because the magnet was messed up.

That's what you told them, all the magnet, I don't know, I don't know.

It's the darn magnet, you know, this technology.

I tell you what, just put the stuff back, put it back, put it back.

You know what it, you know what that's like.

And when you know what that's like, there's a certain blessing to it because it's deepening you, it's forming you.

And in that moment, though, in that moment, it it's so easy to get caught up in what you don't have and to conclude that I'm not blessed, or I'm not as blessed as her, or I'm not as blessed as him.

Look at all that they've got.

Look how easy it comes to them.

Look at what they were handed.

I started at such a disadvantage.

Yeah, you you you were and you did, but but you need to bite down and actually think different.

Okay?

I I was talking to a I was talking to a friend.

Um, he's he's one of those friends.

You you have a friend who you don't talk to for like two years, and then you talk to him, it's like, you never missed a beat.

We pick up right where we left off.

He's one of these guys.

I met him during college, and um I see him every so often.

He lives in another state, and um he five years ago found out his wife was cheating.

Cheating on him, and he tried to save the relationship, and he went to her, and they tried to try to go to counseling, whatever, but she was out, she was done.

She decided she wanted to be done, and so she moved on, and so he had to move on.

And uh, they have three kids, and one of his daughters was 12 when this all happened, and and so she they all took it tough, but they she took it real tough.

And so she was angry at her dad, and she was angry at her mom, and then she went to school and she doesn't do so well academically, and so now she was upset about that, and she's like, you know what?

What why me, man?

I I mean my life's horrible, you know.

Not only is our home broken, but I go to school, it's like everybody learns this stuff.

Like everybody's picking it up like this, and I can't get it figured out, and then the teacher's not nice to me either, and the teacher's rude to me, and everything all that seems like all the teachers have it out for me, and then socially her relationships were starting to break down.

You know how this goes?

You start to spiral down because my outlook on life, it just like everything's confirming the fact that I I my life's bad in all of this, it's going down.

Well, my friend, if you knew him, dude's heart is like it's like the Grinch after he gave Christmas back.

You know what I'm talking about?

You see the Grinch stole Christmas, he gives it back.

Which I have an issue with that, by the way.

Grinch didn't steal Christmas, he gave it back, so he borrowed it.

That's what they should be.

It should be the Grinch borrowed.

He borrowed it, he totally gave it back.

But, anyways, when he gave it back, remember when his size heart was like beat out of his chest?

That's my friend.

So my friend is trying to support his daughter, and he's dealing with a lot of stuff like this.

He feels guilty because man, if maybe if I was a better man and whatever, I could have held this marriage together and all this, and then he's angry at his ex-wife because he's like, you know, look what you did.

You didn't just do me dirty, you did our whole family dirty, and now he's trying to pick up the pieces for her.

But he's also in there trying to like he can't tell his daughter everything because he wants to be not throw his ex-wife under the bus and create more stuff, so he can't say everything he wants to say or be able to, so he's got to deal with that internally.

At the same time, she's everywhere she's going, things are getting worse.

So he has this fatherly instinct.

I gotta protect her.

And so for five years, every time she had it out with a teacher, he went in and got at the teacher.

And every time she had a friend that she had it out with, he he joined her in blaming that friend.

And every single time, in an attempt to try to deal with his own guilt and shame and try to help his daughter and do well, it's just caused her to go like this.

And so they finally came to a crescendo.

They both went and got counselors, and and he's she's his daughter's talking to one now, and he's talking to one, and we're on the phone this week, and he's telling me about it.

And he said, Man, he goes, Listen, my counselor said, Man, you're a good dude.

But you did the wrong thing.

So, what do you mean?

It's like, because you feel guilty about this, and because you so badly want your daughter to be healthy and you're trying to be a hero, he said, what you're doing is you're going in and you're going into this bad situation, and you're enabling her to become a victim, and you're enabling her to feel sorry for herself, and you're enabling her to stack losses instead of wins, and you're enabling her to blame everybody for her bad uh situation.

He said, What you have to do is you have to go in and say, Let's cry our tears, let's go ahead, let's cry it out.

All right, let's wipe these tears.

Now, how do we need to think different so we can do different so we can be different?

Because we can't go change mom and we can't go change the teacher, and we can't go change everybody else.

All we have is the control of our thoughts and our reactions and what we're gonna do.

And so he said, at some point you need to teach her to take responsibility.

And he's like, and it'll feel counterintuitive because you feel bad that some of it's your fault, and the guy who thinks it's his fault needs to look and go, whatever, it's my fault.

I'm sorry, and I'm sorry for what I did, but you are not gonna sit here and stack losses.

We got to step back, okay?

Yeah, we're poor, yeah, we're hungry, yeah, people are speaking evil about us, yeah, we're crying and weeping, yeah, it hurts.

We're gonna acknowledge that in the appropriate way, and then we're gonna go.

Now, how do we think different?

How do we think different?

Look what Jesus says here now in Luke 6.

He says in verse 23, after he says about weeping and people let's go to verse 22 actually, back up to that.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you, when they insult you, when they they don't just ignore you, they attack you and reject you for the right reasons, okay, because of the Son of Man.

Now look what he says in verse 23.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.

Rejoice.

Look what Jesus doesn't say.

He doesn't say, hey, when everybody's insulting you and everybody's hard on you, just try to hold it together as long as you can, and daddy will show up and rescue you.

Don't worry, I'll come in like the hero that I am, and I'll I'll punch that bully in the nose.

Don't worry, I'll come bail you out.

No, what does he do?

He hands power back to the disciples.

He says, No, you think different.

Yeah, I'm poor, but I'm blessed.

Yeah, I'm hungry, but I'm blessed.

Yes, yes, I'm weeping, but I'm fortunate.

I'm not gonna stay here, I'm coming through.

I'm not gonna name this what it is.

I'm a powerful person.

So he says, look, rejoice.

Rejoice because you're still blessed.

And then he says, leap for joy.

I don't want to get too cute with the text, but I when I look at it, I notice he says leap before he says joy.

What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

What comes first?

The leaping or the joy?

Most people wait till joy before they start leaping.

Jesus says, now leap first, joy will come later.

You I've I've found in life it's better to act your way into a feeling than it is to feel your way into an action.

If you feel your way into an action, often when you're hungry and people are speaking evil of you and they're insulting you and your money's not right and your health's not right, if that's my feeling, I'll tend to do and spiral into.

Everybody's got it out for me.

Everything's falling apart.

Woe is me.

Instead of going, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm gonna leap, I'm gonna leap and let joy come later.

I don't feel happy.

I'm gonna leap, I'm gonna leap my way into joy, I'm not gonna join my way into leaping.

He says, leap for joy.

Act your way.

I'm not saying act like an actor, I'm saying take action and let the feeling follow.

So he says, You, but what does it start with?

It starts with the thought, I am blessed.

Think of what he says about the the blessed are the poor.

He says, Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Okay?

What he's not saying is that by virtue of not having money, you are now automatically thrust into the kingdom of God.

That's not what he's saying.

He's not saying broke people get an automatic pass into the kingdom of God.

That's not what he's saying.

He's saying when you're poor, it does not exclude you from being in the kingdom of God.

In other words, just because you don't have a lot of money doesn't mean you can't have a big life.

So some of you are in a place right now, struggling financially.

And if you will, if you will take this season to actually go, no, I'm blessed, I'm here, I'm not gonna name what I'm going through while I'm going through it.

I'm coming through this, I'm gonna get to a better place, there's gonna be a better day.

But you you see yourself as blessed right now, what what here's what it'll produce.

You'll do right things like this.

You know what?

I'm in this season where I don't have much, I'm gonna humble myself.

I'm not gonna be humiliated because I'm blessed and humiliated people, blessed people aren't humiliated people, but I'm gonna humble myself.

And I'm gonna humble myself and learn how to manage my money because if I can manage it a little bit, when I get more, I'll already be good at managing it, so I'll be able to manage more.

Right?

You you'll you'll start to you you'll develop the character that when you get later in life and you actually have more, you'll be able to draw on that character.

My mom used to say, money tends to make you more of what you already are.

So if you're a big jerk when you're broke, you just become a colossal jerk with money.

If you're generous when you don't have much, if you have an attitude of generosity when you get more, you become a philanthropist, they call you.

You you you end up being extremely generous.

So so it uh money often just reveals who you already are.

So if I could be poor and have a have a transformational experience, take a look at my character instead of just my situation.

Look at my character and go, yeah, I don't have anything.

What's bubbling to the surface?

Am I becoming a stingy poor person or am I generous in my poverty?

And in here, let God shape my character so that when I come through this season and I get to a different place, now I have the character that matches ultimately what I have to be able to do more.

Because what Jesus says is it's quite possible you could be wealthy and rich.

And he says, Woe to you, be careful.

Because if if you're there and you don't have your character right, you actually do quite a bit of damage.

But here's this is this is again even the better news.

Some people, financial hardship or poverty is a season, but others, it's a more extended period of life.

There it's quite possible.

Some people they they they die financially poor.

They never made much.

And of course, we know poor is relative, right?

We're in a country where even if you're in the lower part, right, you tend to have more than some places around the world, and that that's worth thinking about.

But at the same time, even if you never get to where you have a lot of excess or whatever, Jesus is saying, even if your money is low, you can still be tremendously impactful.

You can live a big life as part of the kingdom of God.

Yours is the kingdom of God just as much as the person who has a ton.

The value of your life, the impact of your life, the eternal connection of your life has nothing to do with how much money you have.

It has to do with how blessed you are.

So you may be in a place where you're surrounded doing the Lord's work and you don't have a ton of resource.

That doesn't mean you can't have tremendous character and major impact.

So, what's he doing?

He's trying to cause people to think differently about whether they have or have not.

He's cautioning us when it feels like everything's going right, everybody's speaking well of you.

You have more than you need to step back.

He says, Whoa, be careful.

Caution, warning, step back.

Try to take as clear a look at your life as you can.

Am I here for good reason?

Or did I get here the wrong way?

And in so doing, take take inventory and inspect your life and allow God to draw to the surface what He wants to draw to the surface.

Um, I end with this.

Uh, I've told you guys a little bit about the story of our family.

My two of my boys have autism.

I tell people all the time, I I when I talk about this in the church, I I don't really, it's not a therapy session.

I have a counselor, so I I get that elsewhere.

What I want to do is put it in as a metaphor, even similar to what Jesus does here in Luke 6, is he brings these things up.

And whether you're dealing with one of these specific things or something else, it's to take whatever unenviable position or whatever challenging hardship your flesh is disrupted, to take that and to see it differently and to go, no, I am blessed in this, and to dig deeper and and and to do better and to become better.

But what I was going through something when my daughter and I were talking one day and she was just talking about how frustrated she is, you know, because here's the reality: my my particularly my my middle son is quite disruptive based on his autism.

And because of that, it does create a lot of disruptions for our family, a lot of challenges.

If you've been in a family where you have a disruptive family member, even if they're uh, you know, say they're neurotypical or whatever, but they're really disruptive, you know, often you feel resentful, you feel angry, uh, and it tends to sometimes become the thing the whole family revolves around.

It's like gravit gravitational pull, whatever.

And so my daughter was feeling that because just because he has autism doesn't mean that she doesn't feel angry, that um, you know, he's disrupted, there's disruptions.

And so we were sitting down talking, and we won, I wanted to help her not just cascade, although I to be honest, as she was talking, I'm like, yeah, I get it.

You know, I get it, I'm there too, I feel you.

And so we did something that I'll just give you as maybe a practice or something that you could do to pray through if you find yourself in one of those unenviable situations.

I say, hey, let's sit here and let's think about all the things we we have that other people don't have but they would want.

Because we have some things other people really wish they had, and they and they don't, and if we're not careful, we just take them for granted.

It's not like we're trying to say, oh, we're better than this person or that person, but you know, that is one of the things as a human being.

Sometimes we fixate on what we don't have and what it's not, that we don't think about what do we actually have.

We take we end up taking those things for granted.

Big mistake.

So we sit there and we do that, and we just come up with everything we can think of that we have that a lot of people would look and go, man, I wish I had that.

And then we flipped it and said, let's think about the things other people have that we don't have and we would never want.

Like, yeah, we we have something other people wouldn't necessarily want, but other people have things we don't wake up and think about.

They carry things we don't think about.

And just sitting there having that conversation started to take us literally.

It was it deepened our thoughts.

It caused a gratitude, it caused a different perspective.

It took us deeper in our thoughts to going from feeling like the deck was stacked against us.

And to be honest, some of the emotional woe is me that we both felt tempted to slide into, and we started to see things differently, which gave us an emotional resilience to be able to rejoice in the midst of the pain, to leap for joy when frankly we'd rather spiral out of you know, spiral down, but but but to make the shift.

And ultimately, friend, this is what I believe Jesus is trying to do to not only serve his disciples, but serve us.

Don't conclude that because you're going through a hard time, God must be against you now, or he's neglecting you or ignoring you or whatever.

It's this we're not in Deuteronomy 28 anymore.

We're in Luke 6.

And so Jesus is saying, look, with life, the way life goes and free will and all of this, you're gonna find yourself in these types of situations.

Body's not doing good, money's not doing good, relationships aren't doing good, emotions aren't doing good.

When you're there, go deeper in your thoughts.

My thoughts are I'm still blessed, and I'm just passing through, and I'm not going to name what I'm going through while I'm going through it, and I'm gonna keep putting one foot in front of the other, and I'm gonna keep showing up, and eventually I'm gonna go from weeping till I can laugh again.

I'm going to do that.

I'm gonna go from being hungry, I'm gonna be full again, I'm gonna be fed, I'm gonna be okay, and and to change the deeper thinking into deeper doing, and ultimately, no matter what you're going through, if you do that, it's transformative.

It brings you to a level of deeper maturity.

And so let's not miss what Jesus repeated Blessed are you, woe to you.

Let's heed his warnings and his woes, and let's receive his blessings and his perspective about what that even means.

Amen.