Martin Luther King Jr. had been preaching on servanthood and love for two decades when he stood up and said: the laws you have on the books are unjust. I'm not going to follow them. And I'm going to break them publicly, accept the penalty publicly, and show you through my willingness to be punished what injustice looks like. He didn't need a rule to tell him what the right thing to do was. He had moved beyond rules — to a transformed life from the inside out. That's what genuine maturity looks like.
Three attitudes keep most people from getting there. The first is the belief that you don't need authority, mentorship, or guidance in your life — which is what a 13-year-old thinks. Real freedom requires coaches who can see what you can't, tell you the truth when you don't want to hear it, and warn you about curves in the road you haven't reached yet. The second is the belief that you don't need a community of faith. Jesus didn't think that way — he said I will build my church, and the lone ranger approach isn't freedom, it's a ceiling on your growth. The third is the belief that your life is primarily about your own happiness. You'll be surprised to discover that the harder you chase it, the more it retreats.
The most memorable experiences in most people's lives aren't the things they did for themselves. There is tremendous freedom in discovering that you're not the center of the universe — and that Jesus's plan is far better than your own.
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Discussion Questions
- Do you have coaches or mentors speaking into your life — people who tell you the truth and have earned the right to do so? If not, what's kept you from pursuing that?
- What is your actual relationship with a community of faith right now — and how honest are you being with yourself about whether you need it?
- When have you done something genuinely outside of yourself — something that cost you — and walked away feeling more alive than you expected? What does that tell you?