Zoom Out

Chains and tribulations were waiting for Paul and he still moved forward, not because he loved suffering, but because he refused to live small. That moment in Acts 20 sets up a challenging idea: many of us are not held back by failure, we are held back by comfort. We talk about what it means to “zoom out” and see our lives the way God sees them, with purpose, mission, and a long horizon that stretches beyond our own preferences.

We use a simple camera metaphor to get practical about Christian discipleship and spiritual formation. When we live zoomed in, church turns into a consumer choice, prayers shrink to personal maintenance, and faith becomes a tool for convenience. Kingdom vision asks better questions: What does God want through my life? Who is waiting on my yes? What kind of life is actually worth giving my life to? Along the way, we name the fear-driven culture of self-protection and contrast it with the bigger biblical story of Abram, Moses, Esther, and Paul, where obedience creates ripple effects that outlive the moment.

This also gets specific about daily leadership: choosing excellence when culture normalises minimum standards, thinking in terms of legacy and multiplication, and treating time, money, relationships, and service as resources for the kingdom of God. We end close to home with spiritual leadership in the family and the power of ordinary obedience repeated over time. If you’re hungry for purpose, direction, and a faith that reaches beyond comfort, press play, then subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.

Transcript

Scripture And The Call

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Verses twenty-two and twenty-four. And see now I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that chains and tribulations await me. But none of these things move me, nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I receive from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks to God. Amen. May God add his blessing to the reading of the word. You may be seated. This message called Zoom Out, I think fits perfectly at this point in our church season. And the series Lead Your Life, A Bleadable Vision has been and is a journey through formation, surrender, vision, cost, endurance, and obedience. I want you to know through this, God is not forming passive believers, who survive spiritually, people who drift through life reacting to fear, comfort, distraction, or the culture around them. No, instead, he is forming people who can be led by him. People whose lives become aligned with his kingdom purposes. A bleedable vision is a God-given burden worth surrendering for, sacrificing for, enduring for, and carrying into the world. Last week we learned that someone may be waiting on our

Zooming Out Changes Everything

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yes to God. Today we take the next step. A bleedable vision is never ultimately about personal fulfillment, it is participation in God's greater kingdom purpose. And if you like fill in the blanks, you got your first three. Do you have a camera? Anyone not have a camera? Or a phone with a camera? Anybody ever not use a camera or know how? Most of us have them on our phone or somewhere. Used to be a separate item, and the phone was hooked to a wall. But a camera has the ability, if it's, you know, more than just a plain point and shoot one, to focus for different distances. You possibly change color schemes in the settings, like black and white, or color, the quality of the picture, and you can get really close on some of them to focus on stuff real small, grains of sand and small like that. And some that you can zoom out to see the large horizon in front of you in a panoramic view. My favorite feature is on the camera that is the zoom feature. It lets you bring those items closer that are farther away to fill the shot so you don't get all that stuff you don't want in the picture there. It mirrors, I think, what I think is important in life. The ability to see things from multiple viewpoints and color shades and hues. And different qualities of image and picture. Changing our perspective on things may also change how we do things. For example, when it comes to the meaning of life, people often ask, What do I want from life? What's on my bucket list? What am I all about? But Kingdom Vision learns to ask additional questions, more focused, like, what does God want through my life or throughout my life? This is today's question. Do I live my life zoomed in, zoomed out, in focus or out? And what is the picture I'm trying to see develop in front of me? Sometimes people live smaller than what they are, and sometimes they live bigger than what they are by the way they approach their life. Some people go into debt just so they can look like they're living bigger than what they are, and then they have trouble because they can't live that way. I've heard many people,

Comfort-Centered Faith Shrinks Vision

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including over many years of life, of people who like the church hop, or when they come to a new town, they start looking for a church. It's almost like church is a consumer choice for what they can get out of it or what they can use to get their kids acclimated to other kids and learn about Jesus. This is sometimes called comfort-centered Christianity. For some reason, we approach church like we approach everything else in our life. What's the benefit of it? Is this worth it to me? And the problem with consumer Christianity is we wind up comfortably living beneath the calling God has placed on us. One of the great tragedies of life is not failure. It's living smaller than what you can live. Not financial smallness, I'm not talking about that, and not social smallness, spiritual smallness. When we live only for comfort, survival, convenience, routine, personal fulfillment, that leads us, if we stay on just that mindset, to living smaller than what we could. Many people spend their entire life trying to build things. Like a safer life, an easier life, a more comfortable life, but never asking this question. What kind of life is actually worth giving my life to? In a culture obsessed with self, which is what we have, comfort is also a focus in personal happiness or fulfillment, kingdom vision can feel disruptive. The reason why is because God rarely calls people into lives centered entirely around themselves. I don't think I've ever seen that happen, actually. If you look throughout Scripture, you'll see whenever God gives a vision, he pulls people into something larger, a bigger vision than personal preference. And it's larger than their comfort zone, larger than who they are and things they can accomplish on their own. I think if you think about church, the best one, this is my thinking, and I really think this is important. The best church is one where you can serve and be challenged to grow and to serve. That's important. To improve your serve. I mean, tennis players, pickleball players, ping pong players, they all want to improve their serve. Wouldn't we, as a believer who serve, want to improve ours? I think so. The reason we want to do that is because God is calling us to see a bigger story of our life. To zoom out. That's why I like Zoom. You can see the zoom out and see more of the scene. Well, what happens when your vision is self-focused? Your prayers become smaller. You don't dream big dreams with that. And your faith becomes smaller. And the areas where you serve seem to be small as well. Eventually, then Christianity becomes more about comfort maintenance rather than advancing the kingdom of God. Jesus called his followers into mission and transformation. To impact. But we think impact means we have to do something great. This big thing. But what if it also means to serve where we already are with intentionality? To serve intentionally where we are. What if that's what that means to have the greatest impact, to do what you're already doing, but intentionally, with an idea about why you're doing it and a purpose and a direction for it.

Fear And Self-Protection Versus Calling

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The danger we face, though, is trying to preserve ourselves. We live in a culture obsessed with self-protection. Protect your comfort, protect your property, protect your image, protect your identity. Every one of these things has an item you can buy or a service you can subscribe to to make you feel safer. Then you can protect your preferences by hanging around with people who agree with the same way and don't challenge you. Or protect your ease of life. And protection sells for one reason: it's based on fear and uncertainty. If you want to feel safe, don't invest in today's stock market. It's up and down, up and down. One day it's I'm rich, next day it's, oh, why did I do that? It's just frustrating if you're going to go and follow it like that, because one piece of word from somewhere in the world will change all the investments for the next day, and then the next day they go, oh, it was just something, a rumor, now it's back up again. And you wonder, oh, fear and uncertainty. Sometimes they call doubt. Doubt also is one of the reasons protection sells. We just don't want bad things to happen. And if we can do something about it to prevent them or prevent the major catastrophes of those, that'd be good. But listen, God always calls people to see the bigger story. There's a bigger story being woven through our lives and just those few things that we think about. When God called Abram, we talked about him, it was never just about him, what God would do with him. Nations were connected to his obedience. Faith and the definition of faith and what that's like and justification by faith before law was connected to Abram's call. When God raised up Moses, an entire people group were connected to his calling. People who were in bondage for years and years were dependent on him standing up and saying yes to what God asked him to do. And God wasn't going to take no for an answer with Moses. And what about Esther? She stepped into courage. A nation was preserved. That, my friends, would have been a very scary audience with the king that she had that day. Life was in the balance, but she said it's worth it. When Paul the Apostle traveled across regions and nations, the gospel spread across the known world. Remember in our verses for today, he says, chains and tribulations await me. They're waiting for him. But he's going anyway. Not about preservation, it's about proclamation. God repeatedly calls peoples and people into stories larger than themselves. And one of the dangers in modern Christianity is this. We reduce faith to personal benefit. How does this help me? But kingdom vision asks a different question. How can my life participate in what God

Excellence That Pushes Back On Culture

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is doing? How can I better serve in what I am already doing? I had a challenge like that in June of 2015. I realized that there were certain minimum standards at the work where I was doing at Forever's Behavioral Health. And I realized that our notes to the vocational rehab in the position I was at were due by the first of the month, at the end of the month of which they were done. And traditionally, we would turn them in at the meeting with the vocal rehab in the first week or two of the month. And that was acceptable. That's what everybody did. And that's what I would do. And one day I didn't even have them then. And they said, well, it's okay, just make sure you have them to us in the next two weeks. So they gave me three weeks of grace beyond when they were actually due, that they would actually need them. But they asked for them early so they could process them as they got to them rather than rushing at the end. And one day, as I was thinking about that, I realized, as a pastor, as a Christian, that the minimum standard was to have it done by the first of the month. That was a minimum standard, and nobody was doing that, and it was okay. That's culture. Listen to me. That's culture. It's okay because culture said it's okay. But when we're called by God to do something, he asked us to do it with excellence. Not just minimum standards are culturally accepted, which is less than that, and I was in the cultural standard rather than in the excellence God called me to do. And I felt convicted, and I said, God, I got to do something about this. Help me raise up to be excellent rather than trying to do minimum standards what was okay by culture. Because that's not the example I wanted to set. I didn't want my life to be well, he did what everybody else did. He set the standard, and so I started doing that. I started turning them in on the last day of the month, a day early. And when we get to that meeting, and people would be sitting around handing their notes in, and they'd say, Are yours done? I said, I handed them in already. And they said, Oh, you're trying to show us up, huh? And I said, No, I'm just keeping the minimum standards. And they said, Good job. Good job. You understand, we sometimes just float with the culture because we don't think about the impact of what that means for us as a witness. And so we we come, rather than how can this make me my life easier? How can I better serve the calling God has on my life rather than what culture says is okay? Bleatable vision leaves a mark. Wherever it goes, it leaves evidence of what it stands for. Not necessarily fame, not a platform

Legacy Thinking And Kingdom Priorities

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for a voice, not applause, but fruit. Lives changed, people discipled, hope restored, needs met, the gospel carried, communities impacted, yet many people are protecting the very thing God intended to multiply, which is their faith into others to have faith. If you want to have legacy-minded leading, you've got to think multiplication, generational impact. We don't say this much in church, do we? We don't talk about it. And I realized as I was learning to lead my own life, if I don't start thinking like that, how can I show others and guide us to do the same? Kingdom vision changes priorities. When vision becomes bigger than you, your priorities change. And that's not the only thing. The way you see money as a tool or resource changes. Relationships and how you view them change. Conversations, your time use, your goals all change because you begin evaluating life differently and the purpose of all those things. In the military, for example, you don't serve yourself. You serve your country. That's what we recognize on Memorial Day. They gave it all to serve the country. They know, in the military, in conflict, about what matters most. The guys fighting alongside you and the greater goal of the conflict. They're not thinking about, I wonder if this is going to be easy. How can I make this easier for me? I'm not comfortable. I don't know if I want to do this. They're not thinking like that. Their thought is something more relevant for their life and their call. It's the same way with living for Jesus with the kingdom of God in mind. Start asking, what impact will this have on others in the kingdom? Because I'm going to be on the front lines here. I want to get this thing done for the kingdom of God and for the people who fight alongside me, who believe the same way, and need some encouragement and support on the front lines. That's where I want to live this thing. But we go, wait a minute. I never signed up for the front lines. And that's where many people believe yet resist. Because Kingdom Vision confronts all the convenience of life. It may require generosity you didn't expect, or sacrifice you didn't intend, or availability you don't think you have, flexibility that you don't want to learn or adapt to. And it asks you for a trust that may not seem logical. It may disrupt carefully controlled plans that you had for your life. But the kingdom has always moved through surrendered people willing to place God's purposes above personal comfort. The early church understood this. You can read about it in Acts and in Paul's writings. They shared resources. They served one another and the community and carried the gospel outward. Why do you think they did that? Because they understood that they belonged to something larger than themselves. Christianity was never designed to become isolated individual spirituality. We are a part of a kingdom movement by being a believer in Jesus Christ and following him. A life centered only around yourself will eventually feel too small for your soul that God created. You'll end up saying, I haven't done anything. Why am I living this life? I think God needs to do more with me. Here's an example of what I mean by changing perspective. There are many men, and their wives also struggle with this, for the husband or the man to be the spiritual leader of their family and what that means. What they misunderstand is they are spiritually leading, no matter how they present themselves. If it's not for Christ, or if it is for Christ, or if it's haphazard. Or if it's here sometimes and there sometimes and not faithful, they are still spiritually

Spiritual Leadership Starts At Home

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leading their family. Nobody else gets that role in life, but the person who's the leader. It was set up that way. My wife and I had lots of conversations about this, and our children and our sons and our daughter's husband, and how do we help them learn to be spiritual leaders? And we wrestled over this and what that role looked like for many years in our marriage. And at the end of last year, I chose to be intentional about being the spiritual leader for the family. To actually go to each of the children and speak to them about the areas I want to see them grow in their life and the areas where I neglected and to make apologies and put things in place to set it going forward. And then each month to sit down with the family and talk about what that means and what I am doing and showing them how to lead. And when it's announced that we're going to have communion as a family, they know what's coming and they say we can't wait. It's a different kind of tone in our family now. It changes relationship dynamics among our children and between us and our grandchildren as well. But if you don't believe that that matters, you're just going to run through life whichever way you want. But us guys, we got that role, and if we don't do it for the kingdom, then it's just going to be whatever we've been doing, and they're going to get an example that we may not have meant to see. Now I'm going to tell you this. I had to think different. Because my family didn't have that kind of leadership. Nor did anybody else I know. So I've had to learn how to do this. It's not something you just go, well, just step up and be a leader. You have to know where you're leading and what for, what the direction is, what's needed there, and continually evaluate and listen and take time. And this requires some sacrifices. But in the end it's worth it. Because you can impact future generations, including the current one, including the one who lives with you. Listen, your life can echo deeply beyond you. One surrendered life can influence generations. Think about this. Parents who modeled faith, if you had some that did that. Or teachers who showed the compassion of Christ, even though it wasn't necessarily in the curriculum or allowed. Pastors who would disciple and come alongside and help you to live the life of faith. Missionaries who willingly go even to be uncomfortable. Or other believers who serve quietly and people who say yes to God consistently and show us it's possible. These are examples around us. The ripple effects of all those examples are often impossible to measure or to know the generational, eternal impact of them. Listen, some of the greatest kingdom impact happens through ordinary obedience, repeated faithfully over time. The world needs us as believers living beyond ourselves. Our world does not need more self-centered Christianity. It needs believers who are willing to serve, willing to sacrifice, willing

Ordinary Obedience And Closing Prayer

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to love, willing to go if needed, willing to live for something eternal. People are desperate for, and this includes our families, our neighbors, our friends, our co-workers, people are desperate for truth, for hope, for healing, purpose, and grace. Even the new generations, they're sometimes called the why generation. I say, why not, right? But they're asking questions and nobody's giving them these answers. God works through surrendered lives, not perfect people. People who are willing to be available to him. Kingdom vision refuses to stay self-contained. We learn to live right where we are, doing what we're already doing, but with a zoomed-out perspective on our life and who it impacts. A kingdom perspective. At the end of our life, very people will have wished, when they have done that, that they would have lived more selfishly. Very few will wish they had protected their comfort zones more aggressively. But those who don't live with a kingdom vision will regret not serving more intentionally. The lives they could have impacted. Not loving more sacrificially, not spending time on the things that really mattered most to them and others. Deep down, we're created for more than survival and comfort. We know this deep down when we listen to the longings of our heart and soul. We know that. Our lives, when lived intentionally, focus on the impact of what we say and do for others and the kingdom. The question I leave you with this morning is do you know how to do this? Would you pray with me? Lord, thank you for calling us into something greater than ourselves. Forgive us for the ways we've reduced life to comfort, convenience, and personal preservation. Expand our vision. Teach us to see beyond ourselves. Help us understand that our lives can carry eternal impact when we surrender them to you. Give us hearts willing to serve, love, sacrifice, and obey. Break the small thinking from us in selfish ambition. Awaken in us a burden for your kingdom, for your people and your mission in the world, even right where we are. May our lives leave evidence of your work. May we become people whose vision extends beyond comfort and reaches into eternity. For your glory and yours alone I ask. Amen.