Jesus Wants You to Lose | Romans 14:13-23 | Crossroads Daily

How do you choose to lose? For me, like one of the things that I try to do is just be vulnerable. Like I would like to keep all my stuff hidden. I would like to just appear to you like I got it all together. Great leader, writer, podcast host, whatever, right? But choosing to just like rip your heart out and be like, here's this ugly thing I'm dealing with, that helps knock me down. This is the Crossroads Daily. No experts, no perfect people, just honest conversations about what happens when the Bible shows up in real life. Welcome to Crossroads Daily. My name is Caleb. I'm Caroline. I'm Chris. I'm Victor. And we're still tromping through the book of Romans. We're gonna finish up Romans chapter. Tromping. Tromping on it more like it. There's a lot to chew on. Tromping and chomping, that's right. We're finishing Romans chapter 14 today, the kind of the last half of Romans 14. And Paul is still talking about how we use our freedom. We have freedom. We can make choices.

And we can have a clear conscience in those choices, but we should not make choices that destroy other people. Because then we're not using our freedom very well. Basically, what I hear him saying is we lose, we choose to lose so other people can win. So thinking about that, is there a time in your life when you experienced that? Maybe someone chose to lose so that you could win, so you could be elevated, or you've seen someone do that recently? One of the times that comes to mind for me is a previous job I used to help coach like world-class speakers. As people talk to like thousands of people on stage. I used to be a science teacher. I talked to 30 people at a time, right? So I don't even know how I ended up here, right? I'm sitting down, my first time doing it, I'm talking to this person I have great respect for who can command tens of thousands of people at a time, and I'm supposed to help him make his speech better, make his teaching better. I'm like, why is he gonna listen to me? That is ridiculous. Who am I? That's freaking ridiculous. But I still went for it. And you know what? He did what I said. I'm like, why?

Like that's insane. And I mean, I guess it did help or he wouldn't have done it. But the fact that he listened to me, who again, like I'm maybe a little self-doubtful, but I'm like, what am I doing here? Talking to this person who has these great skills that I don't have. But they took what I had and they used it to sharpen what they were doing. And like, those are them choosing to like knock themselves down a little bit and take advice from some young upstart, whatever used to be a science teacher. I don't know, it still blows my mind. That was like 10 years ago. And it still kind of blows my mind that those people took advice from me. They chose to lose. And that, well, you know, the kind of confidence that gave me for my job? Insane, insane. As a science teacher, what color folder would you say science is? I do not align colors with subjects. Sorry, Caroline. Thank you, you're weird. It's green, by the way. I mean, it makes sense. Green makes sense, but I just don't do that.

That's fair. A few years ago, I started trying to get into the practice of fasting. So abstaining mainly from food and just figuring out how the heck to do that. And I would get to, I'd be like, all right, I'm gonna fast for a full day. And then I'd get to 10 a.m. And I'm just like, McDonald's breakfast is still open, I think? And I was just horrible. And I would quit instantly. And I had no backbone or muscle for it. And my wife would start to jump in with me early in those days. And I didn't expect that from her at all. Be like, hey, talking about food here. It's like, eat whatever you want, you're good. But she saw that this is something we could do together. And that spurred me on of, at the end of the day, if she's eating, it's not a problem. There's times where she was pregnant. She's like, I'll fast with you. I'm like, you shouldn't do that. For everyone's sake. For so many reasons, don't do that. But that helped me. That grew me into someone that had that muscle to begin fasting and doing it regularly. And it was her laying down a freedom that she had.

Where she didn't have to do that with me. But it grew me into being more disciplined in that area. What a great example. The example that comes to mind for me is my mom. So I grew up with divorced parents. And I live pretty much the entire time with my mom. Sometimes I would see my dad. But just looking back, even some decisions of my mom, she would not engage in certain things so that she would support me. I think at first, when you're a kid, you don't really realize these things. But in hindsight, it just makes me think like, wow, somebody, how much love that somebody is willing to essentially give up their entire lives, their fun, their dreams, their goals for the sake of somebody else. And I don't know that I do that all the time. with people around me, with my kids. And even as we're talking, I feel like deep conviction of, man, I know what it looks like to sacrifice. I've seen it. There are times that I've seen it. But more often than not, I'm more selfish than what I think. People like my mom, or even a better example of what God did himself with Jesus. So it's pretty convicting. Now, on a less serious note, I love food.

I deeply love food. I mean, you can see it. If you're around me, you'll know it. And that's one thing that, from a fasting perspective, you were talking about having somebody to come alongside you. It is so powerful. Because if it's on my own sake, I would just eat all the time, anything I want. I wouldn't do McDonald's breakfast, but I would still do a pastry or something, or a candy. Yet, I think the power of community to help you remind you of these things, I think it's key. It is. Yeah, don't worry. We're all in the selfish boat together. Maybe not together, on our own. Rowing our own little selfish boats. Right, we're all way more selfish than we think or realize. Which kind of like the next subject I wanna bring up, losing, we know from scripture and from Jesus' example, choosing to lose is how you show love to other people. It's humbling yourself, it's elevating them. And it is hard. I still don't wanna lose, even though I know it's technically the right thing, or it may push God's kingdom forward,

I still don't wanna lose. How do you convince yourself to do that? What gets you over the hump of, I see this opportunity, it's gonna suck, I don't wanna do it, you got a fork in the road, how do you choose the right one? I personally struggle with pride a little bit. I think that's just part of, a little bit of how I was raised. Like I feel like being right was how I proved my worth. And so that's like a battle that I have going on inside of me often. And so I was, I have a devotional that I read every morning and he talks often about the difference between horizontal relationships and your vertical relationship with God. And so I've started to recognize that pride in me is oftentimes me putting myself in the position of God and not, it's opposite of humility. And when you read Romans, you start really talking about sin. A lot of it is anchored in, okay, well, if you recognize your sin, then you recognize your need for a savior. It's a good reminder for me often to help me lay my pride down by recognizing that I am not God, so I don't know all things. So choosing to lose for me

might look like I think my way is right, but I'm not God. And so I'm gonna close my mouth and see how this plays out. And sometimes I'm right, but there have been many more times that I've been wrong because God's doing something different that I couldn't see. And so for me, losing looks like zipping my lips and trusting that there's a different way than my way. And that is really hard to do sometimes. Totally. Okay, so for Caroline, it's zipping her lips. What are some other quick hitters? How do you choose to lose? For me, one of the things that I try to do is just be vulnerable. I would like to keep all my stuff hidden. I would like to just appear to you like I got it all together, great leader, writer, podcast host, whatever, right? But choosing to just rip your heart out and be like, here's this ugly thing I'm dealing with that helps knock me down, that's one way that I can lose. Similar. Humility. I like thinking that I'm right. I like thinking that I'm smart. I like winning.

I'm good at board games. And I win a lot there, so it doesn't help me. No, but seriously, something that I feel at times feels costly is choosing to be in a room where I think I have the capability of leading. I have the capability of making the right, the best decision. That might not be true, but I might think that. And accepting it is not my decision to make. In fact, not only that, I am going to accept the decision that is made. That can be hard at times for me. Being prideful. which I deal with a lot, it doesn't cost me anything, but it has a consequence. And the humility has a cost. And I want to choose humility, even though at times it feels like it is very costly. Well, that's what Paul's talking about here, right? So he's writing to the Romans who, there's like this whole idea of tribalism happening, right? Like my way versus your way. That's why he talks so much about food and drink, because that was like so culturally ingrained in the two groups of people that he was really trying to address for the heart of unity. And yeah, it's just so hard. Totally. So we're gonna take a page from Paul.

We're gonna try to lose today, okay? So your challenge is to find a way to lose, with your kids, with your spouse, lose the argument on purpose, lose the board game to the kids, lose the decision-making process in the office, whatever it is, choose something that you can lose. It's so hard. It's hard. This challenge is not supposed to be easy. Let's see what God does with that willing heart of humility. We'll see you next time.