What if Christians have mistaken passivity for faithfulness? 

In this podcast, hosts Scott Brown and Jason Dohm are joined by pastor Michael Clary to discuss his new book, Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth. Together they examine how a passive view of the Christian life has weakened the church and left many believers afraid to lead, build, and take righteous risks. Drawing from Christ’s Parable of the Minas and David’s brave stand against Goliath, they remind us that God calls His people to boldly steward what He has entrusted to them. Their challenge to Christians — especially young men: Don’t fear failure, but take dominion for God’s glory and pursue lives of courageous action. 

Thanks for checking out the podcast. Just a quick reminder, not to use this as a replacement for the good pastoral leadership and teaching in your local church, but really just an encouragement for quiet faithfulness through the sufficiency of Scripture. Scripture. Okay, so Michael Cleary writes this book, you know, I have an advanced copy edition right here that I got to read. It's just coming out now, Loser Theology, Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth by Michael Cleary.

He says this, Jason, he says, an entire generation of Christians was taught that being a loser for Jesus is the best way to comprehend the gospel. And then he says, this totally cracked me up, we are most faithful when we lose. Okay? So there's the book. First half of the book is diagnosis of the problem.

Second half of the book is really an inspiring picture of what the counterpoint should look like. So Michael, thank you for coming on and talking about this. This is a really important matter. I'm happy to be with you. Thanks again for the invitation, brother.

Yeah, Michael is a pastor at Christ the King Church in, well, it's not Cincinnati now, right? It's Fort Thomas, Kentucky. Fort Thomas, Kentucky, like right over Cincinnati, right? It's right there. Cincinnati area, for sure.

Cincinnati area. Now you saw the wokeness of the social justice movement roll over evangelicalism, And you saw some of the most important evangelicals, conservative evangelicals in the Gospel Coalition and others telling us to give up power and squash ambition, things like that. So tell us the story on how you came to realize that you'd embrace some of these ideas. At some point you snapped. Yeah.

You know, it's just interesting how that happens with men. They go through a season and then they snap. It's happened to me a couple of times. So anyway, go ahead and tell us. Yeah, there was a series of moments where I realized that the tools that I had been trained on in ministry were not meeting the needs of my congregation as we entered into a season of our culture that is increasingly hostile to Christianity.

And so the tools that we were given was that we should be winsome and likable and inoffensive and just, you know, we make our case and may the best ideas win. And it started to dawn on me that a lot of people just aren't interested in that because they're not sincerely seeking truth. And there was a need for a more confrontational edge to at least have some role in the way that we speak about Christianity. It cannot be all invitation, all Jesus loves you kind of messaging. There has to be some like we have offended a holy God and we have to name the sins that we've sinned against him and that are offensive to him so that we can repent and be forgiven and find life in Christ.

So I was like, we need to be able to preach the gospel with clarity and with teeth. And so what happened with me is there were people that would get upset any time I would try to speak more clearly about cultural sins. And any time I'd mention homosexuality or abortion or any of these sort of woke related critical race theory type of issues, people would get upset with me and they would say, well, Michael, why are you not preaching the gospel anymore? And I would say, well, I'm preaching the gospel, but I'm preaching the whole council of God, and I'm not limiting it to just this narrow band of topic. And over time, I just realized I can't do this anymore because I am depriving my church of vitamins from the word of God that are needed.

And I tried a number of different ways to address issues and to not be offensive, but at the end of the day, I was just like, I have to be faithful. My conscience is bound to God's word, and some people got upset, but our church is healthier and stronger in the long run for it. You call it the theology, you call it loser theology. Explain the theology. Yeah, so there are a number of Christian leaders that have said that very plainly.

Like we should lose, and that is following the path of Christ. They'll say this is the way of the cross, and what they do is they take the example of Jesus, and they limit it to the Passion Week, where when we follow Jesus's example, well, he was led like a lamb to the slaughter. He did not open his mouth. He laid down his life for the sheep, for the church. And of course, we do follow his example in those things, but there are other things that are also part of Jesus's example that we must follow.

And so it's not as though Jesus going to the cross and losing his life is the only thing we must do. Rather, we must also follow Jesus's example in courage and asserting himself, speaking boldly, you know, being a prophetic voice. And so there's a number of Christian leaders that would just say, well, If you wanna be like Jesus, you're going to lose faithfully and you're going to lay down your life. And if you seek to save your life, you're gonna lose it. But if you seek to lose your life, you'll save it.

And so there's little verses and there's scripture verses and they can give it a little twist. And that twist kind of makes it sound like we're supposed to just be a doormat for the world to walk on. And it leaves out so much of what the Bible says on the whole. And I started to notice that this rhetoric was coming from left of center Christians, and they were always aiming that rhetoric at more conservative Christians. And so it became pretty obvious that you want the conservatives to lose, but you are asserting an idea, and the fact that you're asserting this idea means that you want your idea to win.

And so you actually don't believe what you're saying because you're promoting an idea. You want influence, you want power, and you want power to get conservatives to lose. And so I was just like, this is a theology where they use the scriptures to promote this idea and well-meaning sincere Christians who are humble They will fall for it Many of them will fall for it because it does sound holy if you don't really think about it very deeply You know you you lay out a number of I think really graphic handles throughout your book that I found very, very interesting. And I want to throw some of them back at you and have you explain what you mean by them. Let's start with low agency Christianity, because you're saying that this theology led to this low agency Christianity.

Yes, so agency is our, We're created in God's image, and part of that includes the ability to make free decisions, to act in the world as an agent. We have agency, we have the ability to choose decisions and how to act. Low agency Christianity has this idea of outsourcing all of my agency, and I went out, but I'm outsourcing it to God, so that makes it good. And so I'm not gonna choose which way to go, I'm gonna pray God show me a sign, and if I see a sign, then that means it's from God, and the fact that I had no agency in that decision makes it feel more spiritual. We do this in a number of areas where we end up being passive, and we feel as though being passive is an act of faith.

And so I'm not gonna try to control this. I'm just gonna let go and let God and God's will be done. And whatever happens, happens, and that's the Lord's will. And that is basically saying, I'm not gonna assert any agency in a situation. I'm not gonna try to change things.

I'm going to be passive and that's gonna be an expression of my faith and then whatever happens, I could say, well, I believe God is sovereign and since God is sovereign, then this must have been his will. So are you saying that this low agency Christianity, it sounds like it's a rejection of the commands of God, because agency is really a derivative of a command of God, not a feeling that you might have that God is leading you. Well, God is leading you, but he leads you by his commands. Yes, I think so. Now, the way a lot of people think through this is that if there is a command to not do something bad, well then that's very clear.

I have a boundary that I cannot cross. You shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not bear false witness and so on. So I will assert agency if it is something explicitly moral and has to do with my inner character. But if it's a general command, like do good works, glorify God in everything you do, love your neighbor as yourself, things like this that are kind of unspecific, that means we're gonna have to make a choice about how to apply that command. And since we're having to make a choice, that means we're having to assert some kind of agency about what do I do.

And a lot of times, the loser theology gets in our head and we feel like, well, I can't do that because what if I get it wrong? And if I get it wrong, that might be sin, and if I sin, God will be upset about that. So better for me to do nothing, and if I do nothing, then I've not offended God. And so let's say the man who locks himself in a closet and never leaves, well, he's not going to commit adultery, and he's not going to steal, and he's not going to be lying to anybody, but he's not doing anything. And so that is like a, that's kind of an absurd caricature of a low agency man.

But we believe, a lot of Christians, and I don't think this can exist in any number of us, myself included. These are things that we do to suppress our agency fearing that we might sin if we do. And so we just opt for passivity instead. Right. You know, You talk about, you call it spectator spirituality.

I love that section in the book. Talk to us about spectator spirituality. Spectator spirituality is the idea that I wanna feel like I'm in the game, but I want to be in the game more as a passive observer. And the way we do this is we bifurcate the Christian life into things that are explicitly religious, and then everything else is more the stuff of earth, and that doesn't matter, it's irrelevant. And so when it comes to explicitly religious things, my prayer life, my theology, my church attendance, my Bible study, being just a general good person, Those are things that Jesus really cares about.

But when it comes to these other things that are not explicitly religious, then it's best for me to stay out of it. I want to work with my hands. I want to lead a peaceful and quiet life I'm just going to mind my own affairs and stay out of it And somebody somebody else is going to have to be doing the hard work of opposing evil and culture and making hard decisions And being unpopular for taking difficult positions. I want to stay out of that because that's just worldly stuff. That's not really where I need to focus my attention.

And it ends up rendering us like fans in a stadium, watching the game. We're here hoping, Boy, I sure hope that somebody opposes this drag queen story hour. Boy, I sure hope a Burgerfell doesn't become the law of the land and gay marriage is normalized. But I'm not going to do anything about it myself. I want to be a spectator and I'll vote every couple years for whoever has a Republican or by their name, but otherwise I'm just going to stay out of the mess.

Because that's a little messy that can cause problems and make you unpopular. So I'm just going to stay out of that and be a spectator. Would you liken this to sort of a misplaced pietism where the Christian life is pretty much categorized by what you just do spiritually in your own heart. The Christian life is you're doing well if you're studying your Bible, if you're praying, if you feel impulses toward God. But it's a pietism that ignores dominion.

And so you become kind of a spectator because you have this wrong view of spirituality. Yeah, spectator spirituality is a, it's a pietistic impulse. And I do distinguish piety, which is good. Godly piety is you're a statesman, you're active. Pietism is poisonous because that is where you overdose on the religious aspects of our Christian life.

And that makes us ineffective in the world. So what's victim farming? You got a section on victim farming. Well, victimhood is a form of currency in our modern world. And so if you can be the victim, then you can, there are benefits for being a victim.

I'm oppressed. And if you're oppressed, then benefits accrue to you in the way that our culture incentivizes these things. And so Since loser theology tends to see people as having Kind of being robbed of agency in some form it it kind of finds common cause with the left Which we say like well These these poor people they don't have you know, they can't help themselves. They are just victims of circumstance and Because they have no agency. Well, then there's a there's an affinity for them.

And so there's a sense of feeling as though Christians, basically it plays into like a Marxist framework where my duty as a Christian is to take care of victims. And you have people out there who are incentivized to be victims and Christians feel as though this is the way that we honor Jesus is by playing into their victim mindset by being the rescuer that comes along and plays the good Samaritan for them. And what it does is that it makes it easy pray for the left to buy into a Marxist framework. You talk about teenage girl theology. Teenage Girl Theology.

So Teenage Girl Theology is the idea that there is an immaturity, so that's the teenager part, and it's feminized, that's the girl part, and theology, this happens in the church. And so there's a theology in the church of a girl who is a feminine ethos that is heavy into image and sensitivity to discomfort and a desire to just be compassionate and sentimental all the time. And this is the ethos that governs a lot of the modern church. And women are, God made women to be, to follow the lead of strong men. And so whenever this is the ethos of the church, it sort of conditions both men and women to adopt a more feminine posture, which is to be passive and to follow the lead of somebody else.

And their agency is what sets policy and the rest of us, we go along, even if we don't like it, we submit. And so the teenage girl theology, it's a feminine frame for the church and it tends to drive the strength of the church along with the men who are under this. And so it makes the church weaker on the whole whenever it adopts this feminine ethos. You know, in this first part of the book, I think you give these really, really helpful handles. We've talked about some of them, but you've got the doormat doctrine, white flag Christianity.

I just thought those were really, really helpful. You're in diagnosis mode here in the first part of the book. Talk to us about how all that fits in to this first part of the book in diagnosis. So the first, there are three chapters that do the heavy lifting of diagnosis. We've already talked a lot about spectator spirituality, which causes Christians to withdraw into the metaphysical, the non-physical.

The doormat doctrine is the belief that there's lots of Bible verses that tell me what to do when I'm suffering and how God uses it to sanctify me. Therefore, suffering is the preferred mode of the Christian life. And I should seek suffering, I should pursue it actively, because when I'm suffering, that's when God is bringing these wonderful fruits into my life. And so it conditions Christians to think I should be a doormat for other people to walk on and when you let people trample on you That is you being that's like you laying down your life so that you could save it And then the third one is the white flag Christianity is and that's when you take the first two phenomena and you scale it out at the cultural level to where you have an evangelical culture that on the whole sees itself as we are supposed to surrender before the world. And as the world gets increasingly hostile, then they'll persecute us for what we believe and that persecution, that gives us the opportunity to play out fantasies that we have about being these persecuted missionaries and the heroes of church history.

And so there's a lot of people kind of have a fetish about persecution where they want to be hated, they want to be mistreated so they can show the world how virtuous they are in their suffering. All of These things are conditions that make us weak, and we have basically a refusal to assert power and culture. And whenever we refuse to assert power and culture, the culture declines, and the world turns increasingly predatory, and it harms the church, and it harms especially future generations that will have to live with the wreckage of what we handed down to them. So you were going through a change and all of these things really define a shift in your thinking. Kind of what was the timeline?

How did your church react? What was the fallout from this? Well, the church planted in 2010. And so during that time, there was a, there was still this vestige of a plural public square where we can all engage ideas in good faith. And over the decade from 2010 to 2020, that all changed.

A lot of it I think came about as it was the Obama effect, where, where Christianity became the enemy. And, and I was I was feeling this in my church, where as I would get more bold, people would get upset. And a lot of it really came to a head in 2020 when there was COVID was one thing. So we're seeing a tyrannical government telling us you have to inject this, you have to put this on your face, you have to shut down your church. And in my church, there were people who were like, well, we gotta obey what the government says.

If they tell us to do it, we must do it. And even though that was unprecedented, A lot of us were like, okay, yes, we know the Romans 13 exists, but let's make sure that the government is not overreaching or telling us to do something that is not lawful. So I was wanting to think through this theologically, but I had people in my church that they were just like, no, the government says to do it, we must do it, period. Around the same time we had George Floyd was killed, they had the Black Lives Matter summer of rioting and violence all around the country. And once again, there's like, well, we're this is the victim farming.

These people burning down our cities and looting and rioting, well, they're victims. This is the voice of the oppressed. We need to, we just need to show Christian compassion and Christian love to them. And it was very difficult for people to say like, well, though this is wrong, this is unlawful. We should oppose this.

We should speak out against it with boldness and clarity and conviction. And if you did, people would say like, well, why are you wanting to be a culture warrior? Why are you wanting to be hostile? Why don't you believe in the, like don't you believe in loving your neighbor? Don't you even love your enemy?

You're not showing the love of Christ. As though confronting evil is unloving. And so these things were playing out in my church and I had a lot of people that would, that would accuse me of being mean-spirited or something. And it got to the point to where about half of my church, they just said like, we don't wanna be a part of this and they left. And so it cost personally in my own church, it cost me very dearly to hold the line on these things, trying to do so in a way that was very kind and gracious, but still, it was the people just, they weren't having it.

You know, something happened where the chief virtue of a pastor was winsomeness and nuance. And, you know, pastors became afraid of saying the things that the Bible explicitly says and taking stands. And I think that was a very, very harmful thing. COVID was actually very helpful to smoke a lot of that out. Yes, it really was.

And it, and it caused, caused tremendous migration of church going people, probably like nothing in American history. Millions of people changed. They either stopped going to church or they were live streaming from the lake or they found a church that actually wasn't as winsome as the one they left, you know? That's right, that's right. Yeah, the church, I think COVID was a pivotal time, and I think, you know, years from now, it will be seen as a clarifying moment where a lot of the church went one direction or another.

And I think that that made a huge, that exposed fault lines that had been there but didn't have an inflection point. And that inflection point said, okay, this is out now. This is, we can no longer ignore these problems. And then, you know, we have, that has become, a lot of people have, the way they handled COVID have, have changed the direction of their churches as a result. Yeah, yeah.

Well, okay, so that's what happened, right? That's what you're reacting to, rightfully. But you spend the other half of the book really, you know, casting a really beautiful vision for how we counteract it in our own hearts and what we do about it. And I really, I really hope this is something that young men particularly will listen to, to try to make their way out of a culture like that. But you talk about in chapter four, the righteous pursuit of power.

So I'd like you to just talk about what you mean by that. What's the biblical basis for the righteous pursuit of power? Because I think we want to encourage, particularly young men, to have a righteous pursuit of power instead of acting like, well, that's just for the other people. Yes. Power has become a boogeyman in evangelicalism in some circles.

And anytime the topic of power is brought up, there is a presumption that the person that is talking about it or wanting to see Christians assert power, they're doing so for nefarious reasons. They've made an idol out of power, they have a sinful desire for control, it's selfish ambition, they're grasping for power, is the language I've heard a number of evangelical leaders use. And so as I studied scripture, what I noticed is that, okay, the scripture certainly addresses the abuse of power, but also without power, nothing good can happen either. And so to do good works in society, There's a lot of talk about authority in the church, authority of the husband and father in the home, which means there's power that is given to him in order to do good. And so every husband, every father has authority in his home to wield that power to do good things.

And so that can't mean that the power is evil in itself. It means that it must be stewarded in a righteous way. And the scriptures warn, do not exasperate your children. Do not lord it over as the Gentiles do, but you use that power in a righteous way for the good of others that are under your authority. And so there's a lot of evangelical leaders have totally missed the boat on this and they've trained Christians to be suspicious of any assertion of power, which basically means you need to suppress your ambition and you need to aim low, don't try very hard, just kind of keep your head down and don't try to be a boss at work, don't try to have too much ambition, don't try to be excellent, just basically be average or even below average and God will take care of the results.

And really That is an unchristian view of the Christian life. We need to be able to assert power, which is an expression of the power of God ultimately that was delegated to us. You know, you see this working itself out in marriages and in fatherhood. You have a whole generation of husbands who are, they're a little shell shocked. They're afraid to lead.

They're afraid to lead their wives and they're afraid to lead their children as well, you know, for fear of rejection. And so you have this sort of latent passivity that exists in family life that's really, really harmful. And so you don't have women who have strong men who are leading in the directions that God has called them to because they're actually afraid of their wives, but it stems from a fear of authority. Yes. Yeah, I think so.

The whole idea of servant leadership that has become very a common talking point in modern Christianity is the idea that I need to determine where the people follow me and want to go. And so my job is to serve them, is to lead them by serving them. And so I'm going to be a servant leader. I'm going to do all the hard stuff. I'm gonna have all the responsibility.

I'll have none of the authority, but all the responsibility. And I'm going to use all of my authority to give them what they want. And that is the opposite of how authority actually works. And a lot of Christians, they think of the Christian life and Christians in public this way. They think the church is supposed to, what does the world want?

A lot of megachurches will do this. What is the world want? What are they looking for? Well, they're looking for this sort of religious experience in four or five things. Well, let's serve them by providing this experience to serve them to meet their needs, even if it's a distortion of the truth.

But they see it as, well, we're serving. And it's the opposite of what scripture would have us to do, which is to assert the authority of Christ in public. And as Paul says in Acts 17, that God commands all men everywhere to repent. And so there's little authority in our message. It is all service.

It is all doing what they want you to do and providing religious goods and services for them. But it doesn't actually change or transform because it lacks authority, which is how people describe Jesus' teaching. They were astonished because of how he taught with authority. Yeah, and I think one of the reasons I really hope that young men particularly can get ahold of the things that you're saying, it really, it comes out of this chapter five high agency Christianity. And you said this, think of your life as a wide open field expecting you to do something good with it.

And I really, I hope young men think that way. You know, there's all kinds of discouraging economic news and challenges today that my generation didn't experience. But I get the feeling that some young people, they've kind of given up hope, but actually your life is a wide open field and it should be pursued. What are your thoughts about that? The parable of the minas was a very paradigm shifting for me.

And once I really grappled with what it was teaching, it changed my understanding of how I am to act as a Christian man significantly. Because Jesus had three servants. He gave one 10 minus, one five minus, and the third one, they gave one minus. The first two guys, they doubled what they were given. But the third guy didn't do anything.

He gave back the one minus that the master had given him. The first two guys were praised, but the third guy, the master calls him, you wicked, worthless servant. And that's kind of a shocking thing. But when you realize that, Why was the master upset? Why was he disappointed in that servant?

It wasn't because he tried something and failed. It was because he didn't try anything at all. And you find out a little bit later why he didn't try anything. And he says, because you're a severe man and I was afraid of you. And so I think there's a lot of Christians that that is the way they think about God.

They have this idea that if I stick my neck out there and try to do something bold and daring, What if I get it wrong? What if it doesn't work out? What if I fail? What if I commit some sin and I commit a sin because I get stressed out and I do something bad. And that fear of what bad thing they might do prevents them from ever attempting anything.

And they're afraid of God. And the thing is, that's why loser theology attracts people that are very sincere, because good Christian men and women don't want to offend their master. And so the answer is like we have to trust that the grace of Jesus means something. It's not merely that our sins are forgiven. It is that we now have freedom, that we can step out in faith and try bold things, knowing that even our future sins and our future mistakes and just errors and failures I've been accounted for at the cross.

And so we need not fear some reprisal of harsh treatment from the master if we're stepping out in faith and trying to do something daring for the glory of God. Because like, so I'm a church planter. When I've planted a church, the fact that I'm planting a church means I'm stepping out in faith to do something. And along the way over the last 18 years since I've moved to Cincinnati, there have been sins that I've committed. I've made mistakes.

I've lost my temper. Lots of things that I've done in the building of a church. But by faith, I can trust, okay, Jesus has accounted for those mistakes and he's accounted for my sins. But because I'm in motion, because I'm doing things, I am growing and being sanctified in it and I'm becoming more of the man that God created me to be. And that is far better than reaching the end of my life and saying, hey, Jesus, I didn't really do anything for you, but the good news is I didn't do anything bad either.

And so here's your minor back, And Jesus said, you worthless servant. That's a harsh indictment. But that's a life controlled by fear that God is some harsh taskmaster. And that's not who he is. And that's what I would hope that young men reading this book and encountering this message would take away is that God is not a harsh taskmaster.

Yes, we need to be holy and righteous and try to fight sin, absolutely. But let not that work of mortifying the flesh prevent us from attempting to do things that would increase the kingdom of God to bring growth and fruit into the kingdom. You know, you say that we should pursue glory. It almost sounds scandalous to say that we should pursue glory. Yeah.

There's a very odd verse that I've wrestled with quite a bit in Romans chapter two, and he said, he speaks about those who seek glory and honor and immortality will receive eternal life. And of course, we don't earn eternal life through those pursuits, but there is a participation in glory that I think we're meant to pursue. And so I think a lot of Christians that have ambitions, that have great things they might pursue, they won't do it because they're afraid that they'll be prideful. And if you do something great and you enjoy it when you've accomplished it, that feeling they interpret as, oh, that must be sinful because it feels good. And I'm not supposed to feel good after accomplishing things.

I would say you may be deceived into thinking something is wrong when actually that's an echo of glory that you're enjoying the pleasure of your father who delights in his children accomplishing great things. So I was at your conference a few months ago. I'm sure after a conference well executed, everybody's gone home and you're reviewing and reflecting. There's probably some high fives going around, saying, man, that was awesome. Man, that was so great.

We loved the singing, we loved the teaching, we loved the fellowship. And there's a thrill and a delight that comes to your soul having worked hard. And that is an echo of glory, I think. Now, is there pride mixed up in that? Possibly, and so if there is, repent of that, but don't let that fear prevent you from trying good things.

And so that's a lesson I've had to learn over and over again. The example from scripture, one example at least, is David, when he slew the giant, he didn't have to do that, he could have been home. He could have just stayed back and tended to sheep and stayed out of the trouble. But He went and he was a high agency man. He's like, how dare you defy the armies of God?

And with zeal, he stepped out in faith and courageously killed the giant, cut off his head. And he is praised in scripture. And of course, God is the one who accomplished the victory, but the Bible does not act as though David had nothing to do with it. The Bible praises David also, which is, I think, pretty remarkable, and the Bible does not condemn him for pride or vain glory because He did something daring with a heart of zeal for God, and that is the sort of heart that we should bring to our endeavors. You know, you've probably had this weird situation where somebody does something really, really good.

Maybe somebody preached a really good sermon and you say, that was a great sermon. And the comeback is, well, it was all of Jesus. Well, that's kind of true, but it's not completely true. Yes, Exactly. Yeah, and I've had to train myself.

How do I respond whenever people give me a compliment? And I've learned to say thank you very much. Thank you, yeah. I appreciate that that's encouraging to me. You know you're an idiot, okay, but.

So you can say thank you. Yeah, I think those are where we can be a little conscientious in ways that are crippling. And out of a conscientious Christians do have this paralysis by analysis problem. And that prevents us from accomplishing or attempting to do bold and courageous things. Yeah.

Hey, I want to ask you, you in the book with disciplines, 12 disciplines of high agency Christianity, I'd like you to just cherry pick maybe some of the ones you think might be the most relevant for a young man. Oh, good question. The first one I think is vital, which is fear God, not man. And that has to be like a core conviction of your life where you realize, or you're acting because of who you believe God to be. And I'm speaking of fear in the sense of reverence, not fear of God is like a harsh taskmaster, but you're driven by this deep reverence and zeal for God.

So that has to be the foundational layer. One layer up from that is to know yourself, which is to have the humility to recognize here's where I'm strong and here's where I'm weak, an accurate self-assessment, not a false humility, which says I'm just a terrible worm, I'm scum of the earth. Know that a good, humble self-assessment will say, here's where I'm strong, here's where I'm weak. I do have gifts, God has given me gifts and to recognize those and to humbly submit those to God. And then you build from there a life of excellence.

So you take responsibility for yourself. You refuse to be a victim. You work with excellence. You pursue righteousness, you grow in wisdom. The last of the 12 disciplines is to learn how to take spirit-filled risks.

And this is one part of the Christian life I think is terrifying for a lot of people because it means putting yourself out there and doing something that might fail. But anything worth doing is gonna involve some degree of risk. And there are ways that you can mitigate the risk. So it's not, so I call it a spirit-filled risk because a foolish risk is just to throw caution to the wind and just act in a foolhardy way. A spirit-filled risk will say, okay, I wanna dedicate this risk to God.

I wanna step out of faith and trust God to do something that I don't know how it's gonna turn out. And I wanna count the cost, which means I'm going to, I wanna look up contingency plans. How might this work out? Here are some ways that will go well, here are some ways that could go poorly, and I wanna account for that in my planning. But at the end of the day, I wanna step out, I'm like, okay, I wanna go for it.

I have done that on a number of occasions in my life. Sometimes I've failed and I learned from every failure, and sometimes I've succeeded and I've been able to build on that success. But in either case, you reach the end of your life and you've learned how to take risks and you've failed some and you've succeeded some, you may find that you've doubled the minus that God gave you. God gave you some talents and gifts. You reach the end of your life and you're like, you know, I came into this life with just me, but now I took a risk and I asked that girl out and now we've had six children and 27 grandchildren.

Or I started off, I didn't get a college education, but I saw a business opportunity and I took a risk and I built this business and now I've been able to employ a bunch of people. That's what high agency Christians do and they do it with this passion for God that is like, I want to make this world better. I want to improve it as an expression of my devotion and loyalty to King Jesus. And that is what I'm hoping people will, what we'll take out of the book, especially as they read it, is like, okay, At the end of all this, there's going to be some risks that I have to take. And that's probably one of the disciplines that'll be hardest for a lot of people.

Amen. I hope that's the legacy of this book. I think it has a real potential for doing that. And I really, I want to see young men really grab on to this and pastors and church members and mothers and business leaders, and people in politics to shift the victim mentality, the loser mentality into a dominion taking mentality. So I really appreciate your writing in and thank you so much for spending the time with us.

I hope God really blesses this book. Loser theology, why the weak will not inherit the earth. Go out and get it. You can get it on Canon Press right now. Well, thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast.

I hope you can be with us next time. I also hope you can click on our campaign, We Worship Together, where we're just really encouraging families to enter into the worship of God together in their local churches. See you next time. Families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com