Quest 8 - Do The Unexpected
Have you ever been around someone that was truly great? I have been around an incredible amount of gifted people in my time here on Earth and it always shocks me how different they are than the average person. It didn’t matter if it was the 15 year old kid who could play any song on any instrument or the explosive athlete that was better than everybody else on the field or the 55 year old businessman who had complete control of every room they walked into. It’s always fascinating to watch them from afar.
When someone is great there is a gravitational pull to them. As I sit here drinking my morning coffee, I have to ask myself why. Why is everyone so attracted to greatness? Why do we want to watch people who are great or listen to people who are great or be in the presence of greatness?
I believe I have the answer and it’s really simple… We all have an innate desire to be great. God gives us this desire because greatness glorifies God. The more we maximize our gifts, talents, and abilities the more we glorify the creator of all of those things.
There is no one that is a better example of that than Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate example of a life maximized due to his perfect life. Jesus while He was here on earth was (and for all of eternity is) great.
Jesus was a great leader. Jesus was a great man. Jesus was a great listener. Jesus was a great communicator. Jesus was a great friend. Jesus was a great theologian. Heck, Jesus was probably the best carpenter of all time and would put Ron Swanson to shame.
If you read through the gospels, which are biographies of Jesus, you will clearly see how great he was. There is no denying the impact and draw that people had towards Him.
Ultimately how did he achieve that status? I believe that it’s because Jesus constantly did the unexpected.
This section of verses that we read in Quest this week sums that process up perfectly.
Mark 10:43, “But it is not so among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave to all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
I want to hyper focus on the section where it says, “but it is not so among you. On the contrary.”
See the language that Jesus is using? He is telling James, John, and the rest of the disciples that if they want to be great, they can’t do what people would expect. Most people think that to be great, you have to put yourself above others, you have to put yourself in the spotlight, you have to be willing to do anything to rise above others.
Jesus has shown us otherwise. The people at the time thought the Messiah would be a King that would restore the Jewish people to cultural and physical dominance, that wasn’t Jesus’ M.O though. Jesus wanted to restore the people through the work of the Spirit not the work of an army. The only way that would occur too is if Jesus was willing to serve people.
Through the Gospel, we know that Jesus did the unexpected and served people that way. Whether it was by hanging out with the outcasts, healing people who had been sick for years, washing feet, teaching on subjects people wouldn’t dare touch, and ultimately being sacrificed on the cross for us. Jesus was the epitome of the unexpected. That also means that Jesus was the epitome of greatness.
We MUST follow in the footsteps of Jesus if we want to be great. Those footsteps will lead us down the path of the unexpected. So what’s that mean in your life?
One of the first things we can do to do the unexpected is to look less at ourselves and more at others. This is a world that keeps their head down focused on themselves. Greatness isn’t found in the mirror. Greatness is found in looking out the window. We miss more opportunities than we could ever realize by focusing on the me, not the we. If you start looking around you might see a need for a prayer that needs to be prayed, a person that needs to be talked to, or even a subject that needs to be brought up in a small group. The reason that this is unexpected is that it’s a world that is focused on ourselves and how we can benefit. That’s not how Jesus operated at all.
Another way to do the unexpected though is to put in the work. What kind of message about God could you communicate to the world if every Christian was the hardest worker at their job, sport, classroom, volunteer time. I believe that it’s a world that tries to do just good enough and the great ones are the ones who go above and beyond.
Think about the people that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. The musician, the athlete, the businessman…. Chances are they got to that spot after hours upon hours upon hours of work. I guarantee you that it wasn't fancy, fun work either. It was the basic things that went the longest way. It was scales, drills, and studying. The things you don’t expect them to do. Jesus was the same way… He worked HARD, but most of the time it wasn’t anything fancy because it was talking to people, it was listening to people, it was studying the scriptures, and it made a huge difference.
Wherever you are, be willing to work. It leads to greatness. It won’t always be fun, but the path to greatness takes it. I love Colossians 3:23 because it gives a great reason why this is the case. “Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.”
The last unexpected thing to do to reach greatness is to be humble. Don’t be great to glorify yourself. Be great to glorify God.
This life isn’t about what we can achieve for ourselves, it’s about what we can achieve to glorify God. The disciples didn’t understand this. James and John wanted to be seated at the right and left hand of God for their glory and power. Through this interaction in Mark 10 you can almost see Jesus being exasperated at them missing the point. Everything we do in this world is to glorify God. Everything that Jesus did was to glorify God and bring people closer to Him. That’s not pride. That’s humility.
If Jesus was full of pride, He wouldn’t have achieved that greatness that drew people to Him because they would have seen that He would have been only about Himself. Yet, Jesus practiced humility and that brought others near to Him and ultimately to God.
I want all of you to be great and I want to be great. Not for our glory, but for Gods. Greatness glorifies God. To glorify Him we have to do the unexpected. We have to focus on others, we have to be willing to work, and we have to practice humility. If we do that, then we can follow in the footsteps of Jesus.