Kingdom Leverage

 

Several years ago, I remember hearing a story about my wife’s cousin. He and his wife were missionaries in Romania for a number of years. During one of their missionary visits, they were invited to the home of a poor couple for dinner. At just the right moment, this humble couple took out a bottle of Coca-Cola and presented it as a gift to the visiting missionary couple, insisting that they drink it with their meal.  

 

I’m starting to call these simple acts of strategic and preferential treatment – Kingdom Leveraging.

 

In Luke 16 Jesus gives a lesson in Econ 101, the difference is He turns the way we often think about economic common sense on its head. After telling his disciples that they need to be wise and shrewd in how they engage in economic realities, He then makes an amazing statement. Listen to this,

 

“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:9, ESV)

 

In straight-forward language, Jesus is telling His disciples to utilize ordinary (unrighteous) wealth to advance Kingdom purposes. This theme is often repeated in the Gospels. In other words, Jesus is advocating using commonplace means to further His Kingdom. The Apostle Paul picks up this same line of thinking in Acts 20, where he says, 

 

“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)

 

In a world that tells us we need to love ourselves and get all that we can, Jesus tells us to lay down our lives, take up our cross, and deny ourselves. When it comes to Kingdom economics, the math ain’t mathing.  

 

Here’s how I have been thinking about this…. God has generously given both small and large everyday gifts to His people. There’s not one of us that can say we don’t have anything to give, share, or “leverage” to advance Jesus’ Kingdom. I’m talking about everything from the smallest of God’s every day gifts to the largest of His kindnesses. All of these can be used to advance (read leverage) God’s purposes in the world. Something as seemingly insignificant as a Coca-Cola over dinner is a demonstration of God’s largesse when given to a stranger. 

 

There’s another Bible story about a real woman who had a troubled past (a woman of the city, a sinner) coming to see Jesus (Luke 7). She was chided and belittled by the local cadre of religious leaders, but not so, Jesus. In her gratitude for Jesus’ kindness and the forgiveness He offered to her, she took out a bottle of perfume and wept real tears, washing Jesus’ feet with their mix. She then proceeded to dry Jesus’ feet with her hair. Can you imagine? This woman, moved with gratitude to Jesus, uses a bottle of perfume and her own tears make the declaration of her love known to both Jesus and the world as she knew it. In a word, she leveraged the things she had at her immediate disposal to advance the Kingdom of God.

 

So now I’ve been asking myself the question…what do I have that God can use? What ordinary resources can be leveraged for Kingdom purposes? It won’t do to say I simply don’t have the means and resources to be generous! I have an abundance of skills, personal possessions, and even enough wealth, to offer for use, and I’ll bet you do too. 

 

Along this line, Eric Liddell, the young man portrayed in the movie, Chariots of Fire, said it like this, 

 

“We are all missionaries. Wherever we go we either bring people nearer to Christ or we repel them from Christ.”

Here’s how we can pray, God give me wisdom and help me to think strategically. And God help me to leverage your generosity to me so that your name may be known in all the earth, even if that means gladly serving a stranger my last bottle of Coca-Cola. 

 - DJM 

August 31, 2025

The Storyteller's Story

'Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see." And he said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.'
-Luke 24:24-27

'Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.'
-Hebrews 1:1-2

'The entire Bible finds its unity in what can be best called holy history - Heilsgeshichte. It is a record and interpretation of the events in which God visits men in history to redeem them as persons and also to redeem them in society - in history. This means finally the redemption of history itself.'
- George Ladd, The Pattern of New Testament Truth, pp. 110-111

'The story is God's story. It describes His work to rescue rebels from their folly, guilt and ruin. And in His rescue operation, God always takes the initiative.'
- Edmund Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery, p. 11


Dear Friends,

The Bible is all of a piece. Sixty-six books with a variety of authors from varying backgrounds and written at various times in various places, and all with a unified story-line. This book stretches over thousands of years of history and each author contributes to the integrated whole. The voices and nuance are different, but the refrain is the same and the story continues to build to a crescendo. The God of history has a story to tell and of His initiative He will tell it. Starting from the beginning, in a garden, paradise was lost. The ruination and sorrow that would follow would be retold in stories of treachery, war, betrayal, misery and bloodshed. 

Thankfully, throughout the story of fallenness and depravity, another story is told. From the beginning a promise was made. The Storyteller would not let ruination have the final say. Genesis sets the trajectory with a paradise lost and the promise of One who would come. Revelation ends with paradise restored through the One promised. The plot line winds its way through the multiplicity of stories like a crimson thread. And at the end of the day our stories are woven into the whole. It is a story of grace unbound and mercy throughout. It is a story of perilous rescue. It is a story of incomprehensible love at unfathomable cost. The God of history has a story to tell.

Thank God for including us in His Story.

- DJM

Why Do I Think What I Think?

What does everyone need, though everyone has, and yet each of us would likely have a difficult time articulating it, or describing it?

 

We all have one, I guarantee it, and whether we want to admit it or not. We all have one, though we may not know where it came from, and, quite frankly, some of us may even be a bit embarrassed by it. What am I talking about? I’m talking about worldview.

 

What I mean by worldview is that internal thought process, aided by external influences, pressures, and evidences, whereby we make sense out of the world in which we live. There’s a three-dollar philosophical word used to describe this genre of philosophical understanding. That three-dollar philosophical word is the word ‘cosmology.’ Worldview and cosmology describe how we understand the created dimensions around us. What is the nature of the material universe? Where did it come from? Is it material alone? Is there a spiritual aspect to it? Is the material universe self-creating, self-existing, and entirely explainable by the scientific or empirical method? Or, in or more rudimentary terms…worldview and cosmology ask and attempt to answer questions such as who am I? Why am I here? Where did all of this come from? Is there any purpose to life? Are humans only material beings? Is the created world only an illusion? Is there life after death? Or any number of questions that come up in everyday life.

 

So, here’s the question, and one for all of us to ask…what is my worldview? What is the interpretive grid that I use to answer foundational philosophical questions about life? Am I able to explain my worldview? Does my worldview make sense, at least from some reasonable perspective? Does it satisfy intellectual inquiry? Maybe for you, you just shrug your shoulders in resignation saying, ‘I just don’t know.’ or maybe your response is, ‘This is what I grew up believing, and so, this is what I believe.’ Have you ever thought about these things? I’ll bet you have. There is an example from the Bible that shows why worldview is important. There are more, but I thought this one particularly poignant. This example is taken from the Book of Proverbs chapter 23, and the first part of verse 7. Here it reads:

 

For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. (Proverbs 23:7a)

 

It makes sense, right? If our minds are set in a certain direction, we’ll head in that direction. Have you ever heard of the term target fixation? In driver’s education one of the things they tell you to never do is to look intently at things on the side of the road because you’ll get fixated upon them. Next thing you know, you run over a mailbox! When we spend time fixating upon something it determines our behavior. This passage is making the point that the heart is the determining factor for our conduct. In other words, what you think, will set the trajectory for your life. To put this another way, our worldview, or how we think about God, how we think about ourselves, and how we think about the universe around us, will set us on a path. It’s inevitable. This is no ‘power of positive thinking’ mumbo jumbo. In fact, the Apostle Paul makes the point that part of God’s redeeming work in the life of the Christian is the assurance, and inevitability, of a redeemed mind, one that is able to think God’s thoughts after Him. Listen to Paul’s language in Romans 12, verse 2,

 

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (vs. 2)

 

For the Apostle Paul, in the new life that is imparted to every Christian, there is an exchange of worldview. What once looked like conformity to the fallen world, now becomes a transforming mind-renewal that sees the world from a completely new God-ward orientation. It is so significant that Paul uses the words ‘transformation’ and ‘renewal.’ Christian author and counselor David Powlison says it like this,

 

“To think Christianly is to ‘think God’s thoughts after Him.’ …God sees all things in bright, clear light – and this God is the straightener of crooked thoughts. He makes madmen sane.” (Powlison, David, Seeing with New Eyes, p. 10)

 

This change is so significant that the Christian mind has an entirely new orientation. Christ makes madmen (of which I include myself in that category) sane.

 

My goal in all of this is to get you to think about how you think. Maybe you’ve never done this before, but you hold certain things…certain ideas, about most everything. Where did those ideas come from? Was the philosopher Aristotle correct in that the mind is but an ‘unscribed tablet’? Or how about the 17^th century French philosopher, Rene Descartes, who said all humans are a ‘tabula rasa’ or a blank slate. Are we simply an open receptacle for ideas about life and how we interpret them is nothing more than connecting synapse to synapse in everyday experience and translating it into a coping mechanism for dealing with life? Or, perhaps Freud was correct and we are nothing more than familial impressions and sexual urges formed into a mishmash of behavioral compunctions? Where did you get your ideas about how you understand the world and your place in it? Perhaps your worldview is syncretistic. In other words, your worldview is a little bit religious, a little bit secular, and a little bit of a crap-shoot. The question is, why do you think you think what you think? You may not know, but the Christian faith offers you a new worldview, a new way of thinking and a new trajectory for life. 

If you’d like to talk more, send me a note.

- DJM

(photo of Dayville Community Church, Dayville, OR)

 

When We Lose a Furry Friend

Several years ago, we became the custodial ‘parents’ of a female Chesapeake Bay Retriever puppy. Her name was Daisy. She was beautiful with auburn fur and steely yellowish eyes. She lived her life traveling at hyper-speed. She was busy and curious and she was a focused and incessant chaser of tennis balls. Man, she was fast! I’d no sooner let fly out of the ball launcher and she’d have chased it down, returned, and dropped it by my feet for another round. She was a bundle of energy. Then one day it happened…. Even though still a young dog she began to slow down and became lethargic. The tennis balls had nowhere near the attraction. She slept more than normal. There was something wrong.

 

When we took her to the vet the diagnosis was dire. She was failing fast. She had massive kidney failure. It wasn’t but a short time and the kidney disease took her life. Daisy was gone. I was devastated. Our family took it very hard. A hole was left where Daisy once held a firm and secure place.

 

If you’ve ever heard Chris Stapleton’s, Maggie’s Song, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Chris sings about a dog named Maggie, a stray castaway that makes her way into a place of love and prominence in the Stapleton household. If you’ve ever had a pet that you loved, the song will certainly resonate.

 

This past week we said goodbye to another family friend. We only knew him for a short time, but my daughter and son-in-law recently acquired a male Anatolian/Great Pyrenees pup to raise on their farm. His name was Vern. He was purposefully acquired to help keep the enemies of their farm animals at bay. Vern was a character…all legs and feet and energy enough for a small pack of dogs. Vern would play hard and crash hard. When he was done playing you could find him sound asleep somewhere. In a tragic accident Vern’s brief life was cut short. It was a farm accident that could not have been prevented. Now Vern is gone, and for such a young pup he’d already made an impact on those that knew him. Losing a beloved animal is hard.

 

Thinking recently about Daisy, and Maggie, and Vern I was reminded of a quote from British author C.S. Lewis. In a book entitled The Four Loves, Lewis says this:

 

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

 

There’s something about the connectedness and love we feel with beloved pets, whether it be a dog, or a cat, or a horse, or something other, and to lose them leaves us yearning for their company. We’re often overcome with grief and sorrow for their loss.

 

Part of the reason for our grief is the recognition that death is an intruder. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s interesting that the Apostle Paul calls death, ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed….” The Christian faith does not obfuscate grief and sorrow, and certainly death. The Christian faith addresses these things square on. The loss of our furry friends is excruciatingly difficult, but the Christian faith speaks of a future, full of hope, and without tears (Revelation 21:4). The Christian faith is anti-Gnostic. In other words, people matter, dogs matter, cats matter, and even matter matters.

 

For now, as Christians, we grieve. We thank God for the joy that dogs and cats and every sort of animal brings into our life, and yet knowing with certainty that death will not have the final say. The Author and Creator of life cares about even the smallest sparrow that falls (Matthew 10:29). And surely, He cares for Daisy, Maggie, and Vern.

 

 

    

 

Dan and Judy Morse live near Prineville, Oregon. Over the years Dan has done bi-vocational work, church planting, and served as a senior pastor in several churches. He now serves with InFaith, a ministry that assists small and rural churches. He can be reached at danjmorse@icloud.com

Memory - the Handmaid of Hope

MEMORY is very often the servant of despondency. Despairing minds call to remembrance every dark foreboding in the past, and every gloomy feature in the present. Memory stands like a handmaiden, clothed in sackcloth, presenting to her master a cup of mingled gall and wormwood. Like Mercury, she hastes, with winged heel, to gather fresh thorns with which to fill the uneasy pillow, and to bind fresh rods with which to scourge the already bleeding heart. There is, however, no necessity for this. Wisdom will transform memory into an angel of comfort. That same recollection which may in its left hand bring so many dark and gloomy omens, may be trained to bear in its right hand a wealth of hopeful signs. She need not wear a crown of iron, she may encircle her brow with a fillet of gold, all spangled with stars. When Christian, according to Bunyan, was locked up in Doubting Castle, memory formed the crab-tree cudgel with which the famous giant beat his captives so terribly. They remembered how they had left the right road, how they had been warned not to do so, and how in rebellion against their better selves, they wandered into By-path Meadow. They remembered all their past misdeeds, their sins, their evil thoughts and evil words, and all these were so many knots in the cudgel, causing sad bruises and wounds in their poor suffering persons. But one night, according to Bunyan, this same memory which had scourged them, helped to set them free; for she whispered something in Christian’s ear, and he cried out as one half amazed, “What a fool am I to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty! I have a key in my bosom, called Promise; that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle.” So he put his hand into his bosom, and with much joy he plucked out the key, and thrust it into the lock; and though the lock of the great iron gate, as Bunyan says, “went damnable hard,” yet the key did open it, and all the others too; and so, by this blessed act of memory, poor Christian and Hopeful were set free.

 

-       Charles Spurgeon, Memory, the Handmaid of Hope (Lamentations 3:21), 1865, MTP