I was at the office a little late the other day, sometime around 5:30 or so.  Had I known what was going on in the fellowship hall had sneaked up on me, I would have hustled home for tacos, but I think the Father wanted to remind me of something pretty important.  That’s usually when He catches me.  In those moments, I’d rather hustle home for tacos.  Nevertheless, I walked into the hallway and thought I had walked into Gold’s Gym.  People had bottles of water.  Wearing sweat pants.  People had sweat bands on their foreheads.  I started looking for Richard Simmons in ankle weights!  A buzz was in the air that something was going on in the fellowship hall. When Moses saw the bush being burned but not consumed, he said, “I think I’ll go over there and take a gander.”  He didn’t know what the Father was up to.  If he’d known, he’d hustled back to Midian for some mincemeat pie.

“I’m the under-shepherd of this flock, so I better go in their and take a gander,” I said.  I didn’t see any burning bushes.  I didn’t get any tacos either.  Actually, I saw a group of people conspiring to give up tacos, ice cream, apple pie, the # 3 burger at Braum’s, and crinkle-cut French fries and ketchup with lots of salt and pepper.  I walked into a trap. These were all the people huddling up to collaborate a conspiracy to do away with all the Christmas presents they ate over the holidays.  These were the people diabolically planning to change their eating lifestyle and start exercising, and whole-heartedly intended to enjoy it.  They were signing up for The Biggest Loser.   These were the people thrusting the sign-up paper in my face—“Pastor, aren’t you going to join us?”  I started to feel a pinch of conviction about the whole deal, so I gave a pastoral nod, pastoral handshake, and then acted like I had to get to my pastoral duties at home. You know, the taco thing. 

Nobody wants to be called a loser, much less, “The Biggest Loser.”  In the Kingdom of Cross-carrying folk, losing is a virtue.  In this crooked world, losing is the worst thing that can happen to you.  In the Kingdom, losing is the best thing.  Go figure.  “To live for Christ, you must die to self.”  Loser. “If you want to be powerful, be a servant.”  Loser.  “Do good to people who harm you.”  Capital L on the forehead.  “You wanna be first? Be last.”  Loser.

Listen to the words of a big loser, the Apostle Paul:  “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).  If you were to practice the truths in verse in your family, at school, and in your work, people just might think you are a loser.  Bummer.  Can you imagine a business or corporation adopting this methodology to grow a thriving business—“Okay, guys, new policy…start approaching your clients with humility and treat them as if they are better than you.”  Losers.  You can’t make any money that way. Profits are for winners. 

The strange truth I suppose is that Jesus’ way actually works.  When we decide that we are willing to lose all those things we are working so hard to gain, we actually discover the biggest losers in the world are the biggest winners in the Kingdom of God.

Category : Tommy Talk