Fight the Good Fight

If life in ministry was like stepping in to a boxing ring, what would Jesus be coaching us to do? Dallas Beutler addresses Horizon’s graduates with some key strategies for fighting the good fight of faith in the Kingdom of God. This instruction is an encouragement for all Christians, and particularly for those in ministry and leadership roles.

Dallas Beutler pastors at The Rock Church in the heart of Saskatoon. The Rock Church reaches out to children, youth and adults from the inner city and beyond.

When memories become more distant than recent you recognize all that has taken place for things to go ahead and you recognize and see that God’s faithfulness over time is amazing. We often get caught in the moment praying for the immediate crisis but when we can actually look back over time and see his faithfulness over all those moments of crises, it builds and strengthens our hearts and our fortitude. So enjoy [this moment] and set it in stone in your memory.

I drove past 1303 Jackson Avenue this week in preparation for today. It’s interesting to drive down that street and look through the imaginary walls and see all the way through to the other side. I have some great memories of classes, friends, speaking in chapel, fine times of discipleship through the means of the college rec hockey team (which seems to bring an edge to discipleship and language curtailing and all that stuff). One thing I saw that I wish I could have forgotten was where the old student lounge was just off of the cafeteria.

It was in that old student lounge where I began my rookie boxing career. And I had my first fight, or I should say, my first moment. My first minute of boxing, only to be lived in that one minute and moment in time. Somebody had brought boxing equipment into that room, and we all thought it would be fun and so I decided to fight my friend. My friend. And with all my experience, I thought, “this will be fun, I should lead with my chin.” And so I kept my hands back and my chin out, and I never saw the right hook coming and I was down for the count, on to my knees. All I remember is coming to on a chair with people’s arms underneath mine holding me up.

In some ways, that boxing match as I thought a bit about it, was more prophetic in regards to the things of ministry than I care to admit. That there’s been times I thought I was knocked out for the count, but people around me, God’s grace lifted me up and repositioned me to start again. To carry on and to learn a little bit from what had just taken place.

(Keep your chin tucked in.)

So in that match, I thought I knew my surroundings. I thought I knew my opponent, my friend. Even at that moment I thought I knew something about ability. I thought I knew what I was doing only to get knocked out pretty quick. And the reality is that I had an understanding of what was going on, but I hadn’t been trained that much.

I hadn’t developed. The fight was more difficult than I thought, and there was strategy that I did not know about. So in sports, including boxing, there’s defense and there’s offense and my boxing experience carried neither. What does a good defense and offense look like for you moving forward from this place, beginning the next stage?
It’s like been a rolling start, and you are in process already. The discipleship’s happening, you have to exert leadership. But now it moves into the next stage. What does the next strategy look like for your life?

Jesus’ kingdom is an upside down kingdom. If we’re to follow Christ we’re to follow a different strategy, one that is far different than the world. One that Christ both modelled and taught. If Jesus was coaching us, giving the strategy, what would He do?

Strategies For Staying in the Game

Well, first of all, unlike my boxing match where my enemy was my friend, it is important for us to realize that our enemy is our enemy and that we too often as Christian believers mistake the people that the battles seem to be fighting around for our enemy. We must remember that we fight a spiritual enemy, the people are not the enemy. The people are not the problem. The people are God’s image. And that we are to have a strategy that takes on the spiritual enemy while still loving and supporting the people that we are fighting for. We’re not fighting with them because they too are made in God’s image.

Our best defense is a good offense. And our offenses in the kingdom are subversive. They’re upside down. They seem backward to the world. And so I want to give you a few phrases that I think Jesus might say if he were in our corner. (He’s actually not in the corner. He’s in the ring with us but in matters of this analogy, consider him in the corner coaching us and shouting to us and cheering us on.) What would he say? And I think he would say, possibly, these phrases.

In that first round of the fight, he would say, “Love God, love people. Love God, love people.” The Great Commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, love your neighbour as yourself.”

This is the strategy for round one, and it sets the tone for the entire fight. That we would love God and go after him. Interceding with our whole hearts. And we would go after and pursue and love people with our whole heart and not mistake them for the enemy. It’s easy when the going’s good to love everyone, it’s a little more difficult when the going’s difficult to love people and not see them as the enemy. We don’t want to lower our expectations, but we want to have an accurate perspective that we are to love. Our discipleship calls us to love well, and the temptation as we go through that first round is to think that there is an end somewhere, and we turn our love into simply duty and obligation. Performance.

So at the beginning of my ministry, coming out of high school, I developed a “good boy” theology. See, I was a good boy. I didn’t party, I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that. I liked hearing the accolades of being “good” and it served me “well.” But what doesn’t serve well is in the midst of going through the difficulties and the challenges of life and following Jesus and trying to do ministry is when you find your value hooked on your performance. Because there’s bad days. There’s difficult days.

I was reading a book by Josh Hamilton, the autobiography of the famous baseball player. He tells the story of when he was caught in addiction and divorce. He was crawling, groveling down a gravel road, trying to get to a trailer in the bush to get a 20 dollar hit of drugs. As I’m reading this at 2:00 at night, I thought, “Why am I reading this?” He swears a bit in the book and “I’m a good Christian and all.” Within that moment, Jesus said to me, “he might have been crawling down the road for a hit of drugs, but you’re groveling, crawling down the road looking for your hit of approval from the next person.” I knew that that was driving me and that that path led to condemnation and guilt and never being “good enough.”

Those are hard taskmasters. Because there’s no love, there’s no grace, and there’s no mercy. And that’s what our fight for people, for this kingdom, is supposed to be about. It’s supposed to be based in love, grace and mercy.

God loves you – whether you do something, perform anything, go anywhere from here… he loves you as you are and he died for you. And from being in that place of being fully loved and secure, you don’t have to change anything. You just get to obey and follow what he has for you and leave all the consequences up to him.

It’s a discipleship issue, tied to the great commission, that we will make disciples and teach them to follow all the commandments. Our obedience to Jesus is directly connected to our growing level of discipleship.

So now you get into the middle of the fight. What would Jesus be cheering and saying from the corner? I think he would be saying “Thick skin, soft heart.”

Ephesians 4:30 “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, for whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving one another just as in Christ God forgave you.”

This is maybe what Jesus is calling to us in the middle of fight when it’s really difficult. When the fight feels more real than we want it to be. In the tough situations, in the real tough realizations, be even tougher people.

A boxer has to absorb a lot of tough shots. They need thick skin. But for the Christian it’s way too easy for us to have a thin skin. Those first considerations or those chastisements or those critiques actually pierce and hurt our hearts. So we get a soft skin and a hard heart. And a hard heart in ministry is dead.

We need to be shock-absorbers that have thick skin. So that we can actually cradle and absorb the pain and suffering of the world, but our heart isn’t affected. Because we are dealing with our anger and our malice and our resentment. The risk in ministry and life is that we can be thin-skinned and hard-hearted. If you allow that to take place, you could actually follow God’s call and get where he’s calling you to be and not be the person he made you to be when you get there. It’s important that you celebrate well when you can. And it’s important to grieve well and feel the losses.

Most people experience four or five significant losses over the course of their life. Unfortunately, people in vocational ministry may experience four or five significant losses every year. And so we need to grieve well. We need to hold that up to the Lord. And we need to feel that, so that our heart doesn’t get hard in order to be able to deal with those losses. We need to actually process them, invite Jesus in, and heal. It’s a surrender issue. We need to keep giving it to Jesus.

Then, as we get into the final round, what would Jesus be cheering?

I think he’d be saying something like, “Long road, same direction. Long road, same direction.” 1 Timonty 6:11, “You, man of God, flee from all this and pursue righteousness, godliness and faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

Resilience in ministry it is not common enough.

To be able to go the distance, and to finish well is the challenge in this day and age. We know all too well of the Christian celebrities and Christian leaders that find themselves bleeding and dying on the edge of the road. And so, to not just start well with enthusiasm, not just to hang in there in the middle, but to actually end well is the challenge for the leader.

The call to ministry requires that we walk in suffering. The cost of leadership is different than discipleship. Discipleship is the call to greater obedience. Obedience, the call to leadership, is a call to greater sacrifice. Not everybody in the kingdom is called to the level of sacrifice that a leader will have to do. But when you sign up for leadership, you are going in to greater sacrifice.

Jesus will be with you all the way. I want you to perceive that, truly, at the beginning, the middle, the end, all the way through the fight… you are the gift. That Jesus would be wrapping his arms around you. Although we say, “Jesus is a gift,” I want you to know today, that you are actually the gift. You are the gift of Jesus to this world. You are the hands and feet. The Spirit lives within you. He fills you with his Spirit, and it is to flow out of you into the world around you. First, in our relationship with him, we get to experience that love and then out of the place of experiencing his love – filled, secure, healed by his love – we actually have something to bring to the world . We make sure we’re fighting the enemy, not each other.

I could never be a boxer. I proved that. But when you watch a real boxing match and you get to the end, it doesn’t matter whose won or lost. It’s been a messy fight. And there will be mess that goes along with this life.

But, like Paul who kept going, and Paul who had this huge legacy of encouraging even us, centuries later… he was beaten. He was bruised. He struggled. It’s part of your training. It’s not finished now. I’m sorry to let you know, you have now entered graduating from the hallowed halls of Horizon to the not-so-hallowed halls at the school of hard-knocks. That’s just part of what will happen.

But know that God has won the war. So we continue to fight the battles with great hope, with Him. I hope this isn’t too brash for a fine institution like this, but we still believe in heaven and hell. And so your job today is to go out, recognizing that whatever you are stepping into, that you are actually to bring heaven to earth, light to darkness, and to literally go out and love the hell out of people. That you get to go and you get to bring Jesus to the people around you.

Being in ministry for 30 years, you hope that someday you’ll get to heaven and get to hear some “well dones,” and get to hear some testimonies. This year, I had the privilege of hearing one from a girl who’s now in her mid-twenties and had children. She was such a handful when she came to our children’s program years ago, and she came up to us and said “I want you to know that this place was the only place I got a regular meal. There was drugs and dysfunction in my house, and I know I was so much trouble. But the reason I was so much trouble was that I wanted to see if you guys would love me no matter what.”

And now she’s back serving the Lord, after all those years. Love the hell out of people, and it just might happen.

Romans 15:13-14. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another.”

Be blessed as you go forward in His strength, and as you fight the good fight in the kingdom.