Dad climbs mountains while carrying weight of late daughter

A grieving father recently ascended the tallest mountains in Scotland, England, and Wales while wearing a vest the weight of his late daughter. Nathan Morris completed the Three Peaks Challenge in honor of Zoë, who died of cancer in 2017, three months shy of her second birthday. He wore a twenty-two-pound vest, the same weight Zoë was when she died, to model her resilience through her treatment and to “carry” her with him every step of the way.

His decision illustrates the fact that leverage is central to life. The question is the ends we choose to serve.

In Nathan’s case, it was using tall mountains to honor his beloved late daughter. In several other examples in the news, the purposes are less uplifting.

The US and Iran are continuing their stalemate while blaming one another for the war. Russia and Ukraine are continuing their conflict despite a US-mediated ceasefire, each accusing the other of launching drone and artillery strikes. Republicans and Democrats are using the rise in consumer inflation to blame the other party and advance their midterm prospects.

You can see the pattern.

What physicians and plumbers have in common

I am leveraging my time this morning by writing this article in the hope that God will use it to help you know Christ and make him known more fully. You are leveraging your time by reading it with the same hope in mind (I hope).

I can leverage hunger later today by eating food that will make me fit or food that will make me fat. Doctors can leverage our illness by prescribing unnecessary responses that profit them personally or by prescribing appropriate responses that enhance or even save our lives. The same principle applies to attorneys when we face legal issues, to electricians and plumbers when we face electrical and plumbing issues, and so on.

Satan is the master at leveraging our circumstances for the worst possible outcomes. He uses attractive people to tempt us to lust that leads to adultery, financial challenges to tempt us to theft that leads to criminal convictions, and injuries inflicted on us to tempt us to anger that leads to retribution and even murder.

Jesus, by contrast, is the master of leveraging our circumstances for the best possible outcomes. He uses physical illness to lead us to faith that positions us to experience God’s best. He uses temptation to lead us to reliance on the Spirit that empowers us to spiritual victory. He uses the sins of others to lead us to compassion that forgives and heals.

How I’m being tempted right now

Here’s my problem: Apart from the sanctifying work of the Spirit, I am more likely to cooperate with my enemy than with my Lord.

I am tempted right now to leverage this article to impress you and to engender your support of our ministry rather than to glorify my Lord and help you follow him more fully. You are perhaps being tempted right now to read this article to earn “religious” favor with God more than to glorify him and learn how to serve him more faithfully.

We’re told that if Satan can’t make us bad, he’ll make us busy. The corollary is that if he can’t make us busy doing bad things, he’ll tempt us to do good things for less than good reasons.

But if we allow the Spirit to guide our thoughts and lead our actions, he will use us to leverage all that comes our way in ways that honor our Lord and impact the culture for his kingdom.

“Neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess”

Let’s consider an example.

In Acts 17 we find Paul in Athens, having been forced from Thessalonica and Berea by opponents of the gospel. Here “his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols” (v. 16). Provoked translates a Greek word meaning to be “irritated” or “angered.”

The apostle could have leveraged his frustration by belittling and ridiculing these idolators, but instead he “reasoned” with them (v. 17); the word means to “dialogue respectfully.” This earned him a hearing before the Areopagus, the highest intellectual and cultural authority in their society (v. 19). Here he quoted their own poets and philosophers (v. 28) and led several Athenians to faith, including “Dionysius the Areopagite” and “a woman named Damaris” (v. 34). Both were so well-known at the time that Luke could identify them merely by their names.

Paul and his fellow believers continued to engage the pagan Greek culture by “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) so respectfully that even the idolatrous town clerk in Ephesus said they were “neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess” (Acts 19:37). In so doing, they “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) and paved the way for the Western expansion of the Christian faith that has come down to you and me today.

“Destined to reign with him and to share his glory”

The key to impacting our culture for Christ is choosing a lifestyle of submission to the Spirit and then leveraging the temporal for the eternal.

You and I are God’s divine change agents, the salt and light by which his Spirit is working in the world to lead multitudes to Jesus. He has worked miraculously in us, as Didymus of Alexandria (AD 313–98) eloquently observed:

The Spirit frees us from sin and death and changes us from the earthly men we were, men of dust and ashes, into spiritual men, sharers in the divine glory, sons and heirs of God the Father who bear a likeness to the Son and are his co-heirs and brothers, destined to reign with him and to share his glory.

Now he wants to do through us what he does in us. The salvation and sanctification of eternal souls will matter eons after the galaxies are forgotten and time is no more (Revelation 10:6 KJV).

Accordingly, as Francis Chan cautions us:

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”

What is your “greatest fear” today?

Quote for the day:

“It is not your business to succeed, but to do right: when you have done so, the rest lies with God.” —C. S. Lewis

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