I don’t know about you, but my best victories in life were all because of me. And all of my worst mistakes in life were someone else’s fault. Seriously! I would have been an amazing student if I was only given better teachers. I would have been a star athlete, but my coaches never put me in the right position. Right now, I would be a better dad…but my kids are so __________. And I promise you I would be a better pastor, but have you seen our congregation?

It is so easy to blame everyone else for what is wrong with us, but somehow that never provides the freedom and joy we’re seeking. As we begin this series, I want to say this right from the start:

We do not have to take ownership for everything that has happened in our lives.

We are not responsible for where we were born, for our family of origin, for how people have mistreated us, or for all of the evil in this world. And yet:

Our future depends on us taking ownership for what we are responsible for.

What happens when we refuse to take ownership? We get stuck and we stay that way. We forfeit the growth that could propel us into our God-given purpose. We begin to live with a victim mentality. And we miss out on the very freedom Jesus came to give us. And the years go by, but our spiritual maturity stays the same.

We’re going to cover a number of specific topics in this series, but for today, I want to walk us through a process of taking ownership for our lives. I’m calling this message, “The Ownership Process”.

Step 1: Recognition

You’ll never take ownership for something you can’t see. Even if everyone around you sees what’s going on, you’ll forfeit taking responsibility until you can see what you’ve done. There’s a Scripture that invites us to invite God into helping us see what we might be missing.

Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

We’re not inviting God to know something He doesn’t know yet. We’re inviting God to show us something we don’t know yet and to lay ourselves open before Him. We aren’t focusing on what someone else has done in the process, at least not yet. We’re asking God, “What is in my heart? What am I anxious about? Is there any offensive way in me that I need to recognize and take ownership for? Lead me in the way everlasting, which is to say help me to be formed more into your ways.”

Jesus knows that our tendency is to put the judgment and responsibility on everyone else. So in his most famous sermon, he says this:

Matthew 7:3-5 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Before you try to see clearly what everyone else has done, give attention to seeing what your part has been in the process. Deal with your issues before going after what’s wrong with other people. It is not saying that no one else is responsible for some of what has happened. It’s just saying that the place we need to begin is within. Deal with yourself first.

How would our relationships be different if we would deal with our issues first?

Think about the arguments you have with your friends, your coworkers, your kids, and your spouse. Can you imagine if you spent the first part of the conversation owning your part in what went wrong?

Jesus says that if we’ll deal with our part first, we will gain clarity on what’s really going on. Yes, we can and we should address what others have done wrong…but that needs to come after we’ve owned what we’ve done wrong. So recognition is step 1.

Step 2: Admission + Confession

Admission involves naming what you have done without making excuses for what you have done. It sounds like this:

Luke 15:21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

Here’s what I did and I was wrong. You probably know a lot about the parable of the prodigal son, but I simply want to point out how he eventually took ownership for what he had done. He did not blame his father or his brother or his friends or the media or the culture or anything else.

1 John 1:8-9 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

We have this idea that freedom will be ours as long as we hide what we’ve done. But it’s the opposite; freedom comes when we confess our sins.

When we uncover what we’ve done, Jesus is glad to cover us.

Confession to God

Confession to the person we wronged

Step 3: Build the necessary structure.

structure – the way that something is built, arranged, or organized

Lie: Having structure removes our freedom.

Truth: Without the required structure, we miss out on freedom.

We’ve got to get clear on what definition of freedom we want to live in. So many of us believe that freedom = doing whatever we want to. But what if freedom is being able to live in the way of Jesus, just like we were designed to live? As you think about taking ownership of your character and who you want to become, ask this question around any topic in your life:

How much structure do you need?

When we first moved to San Francisco in 2010, I was not a morning person. At some point, I began to have a desire to spend more time in a quiet space with God. I realized the only way I was going to get that was if I started waking up before our young children woke up. This was hard for me at first, which meant it was a discipline. Now that I’ve been doing it for 10+ years, it is natural to my body and to my mind.

One of the ways we know we’re maturing in our discipleship to Jesus is over time, what used to take discipline becomes natural to us. I once heard Christian psychologist and author, Henry Cloud, talk about the importance of creating a structure for whatever you’re trying to do. He talked about a guy who was a severe alcoholic. Because of how strong his addiction was, he needed a pretty extreme structure. For him, this meant attending Alcoholics Anonymous 3 times a day. Over time, he moved to twice a day and eventually only once per day.

Build as much structure as it takes to gain your freedom.

Jesus speaks to this when he’s talking about lust in the Sermon on the Mount, but the principle can be applied to anything in our lives.

Matthew 5:29-30 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown in hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

What’s his point? Do whatever it takes to structure your life so that you can orient it around the way of Jesus. What is taking you away from it? Cut it off. You might need to delete a dating app, stop going to happy hour, get a pornography filter on your computer, or a thousand other things.

Step 4: Engage in practices that bring freedom and spiritual growth.

These could be classic practices or what have been called spiritual disciplines: Sabbath, Solitude, Prayer, Fasting, Scripture, Community, Generosity, Service, and Witness. Or it could be any practice that will help you mature in Christ.

“The purpose of the Disciplines is freedom. Our aim is the freedom, not the Discipline.” Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline

There are practices of engagement and practices of abstinence.

What do you need to practice abstaining from, if only for a season?

What do you need to practice engaging in, if only for a season?

What begins initially as a discipline can, over time, become as natural as breathing. Imagine the good things that seem so foreign to you now becoming so habituated in you that you do them without even thinking about it.

habituate – make or become accustomed or used to something

Today was for us getting an overview of the ownership process. Starting next week, we’ll take a topic each week and work through the framework we’ve learned today. We’ll look into pride, anger, greed, scarcity mindset, distraction, and who knows what else.

This is the vision for our personal lives. And while we are the ones who must take ownership for our lives, we have not been left alone in this process. Let’s go back to the ownership of the younger son in Luke 15. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” He owns it. How does his father respond? His heart filled with compassion. He ran to his son. He threw his arms around him. He kissed him.  He gave them the best robe. He put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. He had the fattened calf killed for him and threw a party in his honor. He celebrated his return. This is the God who’s ready to meet you today.

Speaking of ownership, listen to what Peter writes about all who put their faith in Jesus.

1 Peter 2:9-10 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.‍