Zoom Out

Chains, tribulation, uncertainty, and still Paul says yes. We start with Acts 20 and sit with a question that refuses to stay theoretical: what do we do when following Jesus costs us comfort, control, and a carefully protected life? We’re talking about kingdom vision, not as a slogan, but as a way of seeing that changes what we ask for, what we pray for, and what we’re willing to endure.

We use a simple camera zoom image to expose a common pattern: living zoomed in on preference, safety, and personal fulfilment. That mindset easily turns church into a consumer choice and faith into comfort maintenance. When we stay self-focused, our prayers get smaller, our risk tolerance disappears, and our impact fades. Kingdom vision does the opposite. It pushes us to zoom out, to ask what God wants to do through our lives, and to recognise that Scripture constantly ties one surrendered “yes” to the wellbeing of others, from Abraham and Moses to Esther and Paul.

Then we bring it all down to street level with practical discipleship: integrity at work, excellence when nobody requires it, serving with intention, and leading at home with honesty and courage. We talk about how spiritual leadership is happening either way and why ordinary obedience repeated over time can echo for generations. If you’ve felt the nagging thought “there has to be more than survival,” this is your invitation to see the bigger picture. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a wider lens, and leave a review telling us: where do you need to zoom out next?

Transcript

Paul Chooses The Cost

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Acts chapter twenty beginning at verse twenty two. 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, The 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. Amen. May God add his blessing to the reading of the word. You may be seated.

God Forms Active Believers

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This series, Leads Your Life, Unbleatable Vision portion of it, has been and is a journey through formation, surrender, vision, cost, endurance, and obedience. I'm trying to tell you, God is not forming passive believers. Now, if you're a bulletin follower, fill in a blank kind of person, there's some quotes in there for you, and some of them are fill in the blanks. You got your first one there, and the next two are coming quick. God is not forming passive believers who survive spiritually. They are those who survive are people who drift through life reacting to fear, comfort, distractions, or cultural expectation. God is forming people who can be led by Him. People whose lives become aligned with His kingdom purposes. That's what God's doing. A bleedable vision is a God-given burden worth surrendering for, for sacrificing, and willing to endure and carry it into the world. Last week we learned that somebody may be waiting on our yes to God. Today we take the next step. Ableatable vision is never ultimately about personal fulfillment, it is participation in God's greater kingdom purpose. Participation in God's kingdom purpose. We're going to look at that today, what that means. Anyone

Zoom Lens Perspective For Life

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have a cell phone or a digital camera, or even just a regular camera that has lenses and things like that? Anybody not familiar with what I'm talking about? I'm sure some of us somewhere along the way have had some sort of camera, right? And what's interesting about a camera is it has the ability, especially if you have the old kind, uh XLRs that you had where you could manually focus. And you could focus for different distances for uh different uh shots that you want to capture. On the phones now, you got things where you can change the color schemes. You don't have to switch to black and white film, for example. And the quality, you can change settings on a camera. You can also change the amount of pixels in a picture on a phone, and you can get really close to focus on those small items on some of those really good lenses, like grains of sand or little petals and stamens on a flower if you're doing close-up shots. A lot of people like those zoom close lenses. But my favorite feature, which I haven't mentioned yet, is the zoom feature. I remember really liking that when it first came out. Because what it does is let you bring things far away up close to fill the shot so you don't get all this other stuff in the picture you don't want, just the thing that you're trying to zoom in on. It mirrors what I think is important in life. The ability that is a camera does, the ability to see things from multiple viewpoints. Up close, further away, in focus in certain parts, and in focus on different parts as you look at them. Changing our perspective like that on things may also change how we do things. For example, when it comes to the meaning of life, most people ask questions like this. What do I want from my life? What am I all about? Mark Twain said it like this. There are two most important days of your life. The day you were born and the day you find out why. Kingdom Vision learns to ask this question. What does God want throughout my life? Through it. This is the question I want you to wrestle with. Do I live my life zoomed in, zoomed out, in focus, or not? And what's the picture I'm trying to see develop in front of me? We're going to unpack that.

Comfort-Centred Christianity Exposed

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I think a lot of people tend to live a little smaller in vision and they zoom in rather than zoom out more often than not. For example, I've heard of like when people are looking for a church to attend, they'll church hop, or when they come to a new town, they start looking for a church, and it's almost like it's a consumer choice. Like what they can get, or if their kids get better stuff here, better there, so get to know Jesus, and they're looking for things as a consumer would. And what this is called is comfort-centered Christianity. Well, what fits and what makes sense for us to get what we want. For some reason, we approach church like we approach everything else in life. Like it's the same. What's the benefit of it? What's it going to do for me? Is this worth it for me? The problem with consumer Christianity is we wind up comfortably living, but beneath the calling on our life most of the time. One of the great tragedies in our life is not failing at something, but living with a less than what you could have been. Living smaller than what you know you could if you did. I'm not talking about financial smallness. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about social smallness. I'm talking about spiritual smallness. That's when we live only for comfort or surviving, convenience, to keep our routine, or personal fulfillment. That's smallness in thinking. Many people spend their lives trying to build something, whether it's a safer life, an easier life, a more comfortable life, but never asking what kind of life is worth giving myself to? What kind of life do I actually want to live rather than physical comfort? We're in a culture obsessed with self, comfort, and personal happiness. It's very interesting to go to Malawi and not see that kind of culture. I've never seen it until I went there. I'm excited to go back and see what else I didn't see. Kingdom vision feels disruptive because God rarely calls people into lives centered entirely around themselves. God's not calling you to live selfish, is what I'm trying to say. Throughout Scripture, whenever God gives a vision, he pulls people into something larger than personal preference. Larger than personal comfort. Larger than ourselves. The best church is where you can grow and serve and be challenged to grow in both. To mature in all areas of your faith. God pulls people into something larger than themselves. God wants us to improve our serve. Tennis players try, ping pong players, pickleball players, all of them try to improve their serve. Wouldn't you think if we're serving as a Christian, we'd want to have the same mindset? I want to improve my serve. So at the end of the game, it isn't 45 love in tennis, or in church, we want to say it's love at all costs. One of the things I'm beginning to realize is that the reason God is calling us to serve and improve is God's calling us to see a bigger story of our life, to zoom out, to see a bigger picture instead of up close, narrow, and focused, sometimes tunnel vision. What happens when your vision is self-focused, self-centered? Here's part of it. Your prayers become smaller. Lord help me make it through this day. Let me not make anybody mad today. Let me not hit a deer while I'm driving home. Those become the depth of the prayer, and your faith becomes smaller of what you believe God can do and through your prayers and through your life. Because you just focus on what's going to happen through you and to you. Eventually, when you do that, Christianity becomes more about comfort maintenance than advancing the kingdom. Jesus called his followers into mission and transformation efforts to have an impact. But we think impact means we have to do something great. Something big. But what if having an impact also means to serve where we are already doing things with intentionality? To know why we're doing it and have a better, more bigger picture of what we're already doing.

The Trap Of Self-Protection

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There's a danger in preserving ourselves. We live in a culture obsessed with self-protection. You think I'm kidding. We protect our identity, protect our finances, protect our homes, protect all sorts of stuff. You can buy services like protect your data, protect your computer. Each of these things that we need to protect, they charge us a price, a subscription that we pay regularly so we can feel safer. It does not guarantee safety, but that feeling of safety feels better than not having that protection, so we shell out for what we think is unsafe. Otherwise. You understand what that means, don't you? We want to protect, not only that, but we've got to protect our comfort so we feel safer everywhere we go, but we've got to protect our image. We don't want people to, you know, assume our identity and put our likeness out there. We have to protect our preferences. We don't want people to tell us we're thinking wrong about things because then we'll just get in arguments and it just becomes a mess. We want to protect the ease of life we have, so we want to make sure our finances don't someone uh you know infiltrate and take our stuff through whatever way they might defraud us. And protection sells because it's based on fear, it's based on uncertainty, and it's based on doubt. If you can create a doubt that someone is safe, they will buy whatever you're selling. It's true. We don't want bad things to happen. I don't. They're gonna, but we don't want them to. But God always calls people to see a bigger story than just that.

Biblical Lives Larger Than Self

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Look at Abram before he became Abraham. It was never just about Abram. Nations were connected to his obedience. Not only that, righteousness and justification by faith were connected to him. He was considered righteous before the law was ever given. When God raised up Moses, an entire people group suffering for hundreds of years were connected to his obedience to say yes. Do you think God was going to let him say no? Every excuse Moses gave, God said, I understand. Go. You're the one I've chosen. How do we know whether we're the Moses for a certain area of life? Or when God called Esther, she stepped into courage and a nation was preserved. A nation was preserved because she had the guts to risk her life to go into the king, which could have cost her her life, by an uninvited audience, even though they were connected otherwise. She had to trust favor. She had to do something that risked her life to save a nation. But she figured it was worth it. When Paul the Apostle traveled across regions and nations, the gospel spread across a known world. But listen to what Paul says. I left the verse on the screen for you. He says, chains and tribulations await me everywhere I go. Well, Paul, go somewhere else. Don't go there. You're going to get hurt. You're going to get persecuted. You're going to get flogged. Don't do it. And Paul said. The Holy Spirit says these things will wait me no matter where I go, because I live to preach and make known the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's why he said in that very next verse, none of that stuff moves me, and I'm not counting my life precious. What I count precious is the gospel more than my own life. That's my impact. Whatever God does with that, he does with it. But I'm not going to be disobedient to the call. I received it from Jesus to testify to his grace. And so he went and he did that. It wasn't about him, it was about the gospel. God repeatedly calls people into stories larger than themselves. One of the dangers in modern Christianity is reducing faith to personal benefit. How does this help me? What's this going to do for my growth in Christ? But kingdom vision takes and asks a different question. How can my life participate in what God is doing? God's not asking us to do anything but participate in what He's doing with what we may already be doing. Another question: how can I better serve in what I am already doing in my life?

Excellence At Work As Witness

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I had that dilemma in June of 2015. I was working at Fort Rivers Behavioral Health as an employment specialist, which meant I helped people who had emotional and mental struggles to find work. Our reporting agency that paid us for this was the vocational rehab over there on 6th Street. And we would go there on the first week of the month and we would talk about our clients and any issues we might have, and we'd turn in our previous month's paperwork during that first week. Now, when I was hired on, they said the paperwork that is done in that month is to be turned in by the first of the next month to vocational rehab. We would all turn it in on that first week during that meeting, and vocational rehab was fine with that. Well, one day, I didn't have my work with me. I didn't have my notes done. And I said, I don't have them, I'll get them to you. And they said, that's fine. You still got a couple more weeks, we're not going to get to them for a while anyway, so no worries. Now listen to this. I was told this is minimum standards by the first of the month, and now the culture says we'll just hand them in the first week like everybody else. And then they gave me even two more weeks of grace because the culture of the ones receiving them offered me grace by the cultural standards. But minimum standards were the first of the month. And I wasn't even hitting minimum. And I asked God about that. I said, God, is this okay? He said, well, you're a minister. You're a Christian. You're not even keeping minimum standards. I said, well, nobody else is. He said, are you judging your standards according to your excellence I call you to? To serve me and do all things with glory and honor unto me? Or are you doing it to compare yourself to other people in other people's terms of grace? Whose are you using? Whew! Talk about being humbled. And so from that day forward, I committed to having them done and turned in on the last day of the month, not the first day of the month, which was the next day. So the next time we meet, we're all meeting, I think it was the fourth, I'm not sure, but it was the fourth. The 4th of July would not have been the day we met. But it was around that time we all met, and everybody's turning in their notes, but Jonathan. Oh, didn't get them done again, huh? And I said, No, I already turned them in. Oh, you did? I said, Yeah, I turned him in on the last day of the month of June. They went, huh. Trying to show us up, aren't you? Cultural pressure to stop you from doing what God says is just excellent. And I said, No, I just want to do minimum standards, and I've been slacking, and I wanted to step it up to show that I can do the work. And they said, Good job. Good job. Thank you. You set the example for all of us. Which one would you rather live with? Minimum standards, not even keeping? Because culture says it's okay? Or setting the standard of God setting you as an example for others to follow with excellence. You see what I'm saying? We have this idea, how can I better serve in what I'm already doing when you start thinking kingdom-wise? Instead of sliding to the lowest acceptable level, setting the standard that God calls us to, to serve in excellence. And sometimes we've got to grow into that and change our mindsets. But I'll tell you when you start doing that bleatable vision, it leaves a mark. A bleatable vision leaves evidence. Not necessarily fame as an evidence, not platform or 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. How can I talk about Jesus and how he's called me to serve him when I wasn't even doing my job right? And as a pastor, not a good witness, would it be? I had to have legacy-minded leading in my mind. Multiplication, I want other people to do what I do, then I got to do it the way I want it to be multiplied like, to have generational impact. What was really interesting is after that, when I'd get my stuff done early and earlier, I had time to go throughout the offices there. And ask if there's anything I could do to help them do their job. I became available to people because I wasn't focused on what I was doing, because what I was doing was done. So I could begin to minister with love just by saying, Is there anything I can help you with? Anything I can support you with? And people were blown away by the change. They saw it. And people began to seek me out when they needed something. Only because I was trying to do things to God, for God, in a way that showed excellence. That's why my wrist here says excellence on this bracelet.

Priorities Shift With Kingdom Vision

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Kingdom vision changes your priorities. When vision becomes bigger than you, your priorities change. The way you look at money as a tool and a resource, it changes. Your relationships change and what you're looking for in them. Conversations, your time use, and your goals will all change because you've been evaluating life differently and what those things mean for you and what it means for God. For example, in the military, and the reason I bring this up is because Memorial Day is a great time to talk about this. In the military, you don't serve yourself. You serve your country. That is, that's what we recognize on Memorial Day, those who serve the country. You see, those guys know in conflict it's about what matters the most. The guys fighting alongside you, and the goal, the greater goal of the conflict that you're engaging in. That motivates to keep going, to fight for the right reason. And it's the same thing with living for Jesus and the kingdom of God in mind. You want to get on the front lines and be with the people who are out there making a difference and fighting for the things that matter and showing that this is all about the kingdom of God. And you say, put me on a front line. I want to make that impact, and I want people alongside me to know I'm there, got their back, and they got mine. We're doing this together. It's not so lonely then. And then it's not about you anymore, it's about us. It's about God. You start asking this question what impact that I'm doing, thinking, or saying will this have on others in the kingdom of God? You ask that about everything you say and do. You start asking that question, your life changes. And that's where many people who believe in Jesus resist. It's where they get stuck. Because kingdom vision confronts convenience. It may require of us a generosity like we've never shown or known. It may require us to have a sacrifice, or to be available when we don't really want to be, or to be flexible when we're not that flexible. And to trust where trust may not have been given. It may disrupt carefully constructed, controlled, committed plans that you made. The kingdom is always moved through surrendered people willing to place God's purposes above personal comfort. The early church understood this. The early believers shared their resources in common. They served one another. And they carried the gospel forward in great measure. Why did they do that? How could they do that? They understood that they belonged to something larger than themselves. Christianity was never designed to become isolated individual spirituality. Never the intent. We are part of a kingdom movement. A life centered around yourself will eventually feel too small for you and for the soul God put within you and created. You'll start to say there's got to be more to life. There's got to be something more to life than just trying to get through the next day, or this current day, for that matter, or the next moment. Got to be more than that. Eventually that question will come up, and to ask it sooner than later is better. Let me

Spiritual Leadership Starts At Home

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give you an example. Many men struggle with what it means to be the spiritual leader of their family. And what they misunderstand is they are spiritually leading their family no matter how they present themselves. Broken families, detached fathers, angry relationships, all those things are leading their family to show what family's supposed to be like and what children are supposed to act like, whether the father's there present and active or gone. It leaves an impact. Let me tell you, it's not necessarily something that we like to think about. But last year I was having a conversation with God and my wife about our children and their husbands and their wives and how they need to be spiritual leaders of their home. And I said, Well, they already are. And she said, Well, you need to show them how to do it. And I said, Well, uh, what? And God put on my heart, I need to step up. And so on Christmas, the gift I gave to my children was to step up. To say, I'm going to step into that role as spiritual leader. I'm already there. I'm going to do it intentionally. So we now have a monthly communion where I talk about the issues that matter and the things that are important for our family and how to grow together. I went to, I've been going to each of my children and telling them what I believe about their life and apologizing for the places I haven't stepped up or the things I've caused harm and damage. It was not easy conversations, but if you don't want to lead, you don't have to have them. But if you want to lead, you've got to get honest about how you have been so you can go the direction God's calling you to be. I wanted to leave my family with intentionality. And listen, it's changed the culture already. So when I announce in our group text we're going to have communion this Saturday and a dinner together, they're excited for the communion. They want to come because they know that I'm going to share something with them that matters to me and matters for the family to build and grow. And I have to be intentional about that, not go, well, just be good people. I have to example myself. I had to get out of my comfort zone to do that, to learn. And I'll tell you why. Because I didn't have that in my family growing up. And I didn't have many people I saw in my life growing up or as an adult where I got to see spiritual leadership properly done by a father. I didn't get that. I had to learn, still learning, and how to do that with excellence, integrity, with the understanding of what it's going to do for the family, and how to lead it that direction. So I had to have an idea, where do we need to go? It wasn't, do my kids like me? Are we getting along today? It was how can I build this family to be a place of safety and security that other people can example later? And my grandkids will share in this work I'm doing now. And the people they know will say, I had an example of a spiritual leader in my home the way it was supposed to be done. The

Ordinary Obedience Creates Ripple Effects

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world needs us as believers living beyond ourselves. Our life can echo beyond us. One surrendered life can influence generations. Think about parents who model faith, teachers who showed you the compassion of Christ, even when the school system says don't talk about Jesus. Pastors who've discipled you, missionaries who went, believers who served quietly, people who say yes to God consistently and don't say no. The ripple effects of all these people are impossible to measure. Some of the greatest kingdom impact happens through ordinary obedience repeated faithfully over time. People watching your example of how you continue to trust God even when it looks difficult. Praying for people out loud if you need to, faithfully. Our world does not need more self-centered Christianity. It needs believers who are willing to serve, willing to sacrifice, willing to love, willing to go, willing to live for something that's eternal. Not perfect people, available people. Kingdom vision refuses to remain self-contained or self-centered. We learn to live right where we are, doing with what we're doing, but with a zoomed out view of life. A kingdom perspective. At the end of life, very few people who have had a kingdom perspective will ever say, I wish I would have lived more selfishly. Wish I'd have spent more money on myself. Spent more time in the sun on a beach. And very few will wish they had protected their comfort more aggressively. They're not going to talk about that. But many will regret not serving more intentionally. Not loving more sacrificially. Not spending time on the things that mattered most and wasting time on things that don't. Deep down, we were created for more than survival and comfort. Our soul, our heart knows this. Our lives, when lived intentionally, focus on the impact of what we say and do for others and for the kingdom of God. The question I leave you with this morning is: do you know how to do that? Do you?

Final Challenge And Prayer

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Pray with me. Lord, thank you for calling us into something greater than ourselves. Forgive us for the ways that we've reduced life to comfort, convenience, and personal preservation. Expand our vision. Teach us to zoom out, to see beyond ourselves. Help us understand 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 our minds and the selfish ambition. Awaken in us a fresh burden for your kingdom, for your people, and for your mission in the world. May our lives leave evidence of your work. May we become people whose vision extends beyond comfort and reaches into eternity. I pray this, Lord, in the name of Jesus. Amen.