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